AFS Cinema
Culture and Anarchy
RECEIVED Fri., May 9, 2025
Dear Editor,
Let me start with the declaration that I am a patron of the arts, regularly buying tickets, attending performances, and making contributions to annual funds and capital campaigns. I do not condone the “NEA Massacre” ["Arts Groups Lose Promised Grant Money in Friday Night NEA Massacre," Daily Arts, May 5]. A contract is a contract. However, I could not help thinking as I read the article that the arts, along with many programs supported by federal dollars, are in trouble because they are being funded by the printing press (i.e., debt) and not tax dollars. My (and your) kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids are paying for Tapestry Dance Company’s Soul 2 Sole International Festival. (Full disclosure: I’m a longtime fan and student of Acia, Tapestry, and even the Festival.) As a country, we are running trillion-plus-dollar budget deficits, yet we keep creating new programs to fund with ever more (non)existent tax dollars. This is intergenerational taxation without representation. Maybe the day of reckoning has arrived not so much for fiscal reasons but because of reckless leadership. Are we ready to tax ourselves – either through actual taxes, through voluntary contributions or through higher event prices – to support the nonprofits that bring us the arts (and all those other programs we want)? In a democracy, government isn’t “them,” it’s us, and we have shown no discipline when it comes to spending, clearly an unsustainable path. In our heart of hearts, we know this to be true but the temptation to spend “other people’s money” is just too irresistible and impedes the necessary conversations about how to allocate what will always be limited resources.
Let me start with the declaration that I am a patron of the arts, regularly buying tickets, attending performances, and making contributions to annual funds and capital campaigns. I do not condone the “NEA Massacre” ["Arts Groups Lose Promised Grant Money in Friday Night NEA Massacre," Daily Arts, May 5]. A contract is a contract. However, I could not help thinking as I read the article that the arts, along with many programs supported by federal dollars, are in trouble because they are being funded by the printing press (i.e., debt) and not tax dollars. My (and your) kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids are paying for Tapestry Dance Company’s Soul 2 Sole International Festival. (Full disclosure: I’m a longtime fan and student of Acia, Tapestry, and even the Festival.) As a country, we are running trillion-plus-dollar budget deficits, yet we keep creating new programs to fund with ever more (non)existent tax dollars. This is intergenerational taxation without representation. Maybe the day of reckoning has arrived not so much for fiscal reasons but because of reckless leadership. Are we ready to tax ourselves – either through actual taxes, through voluntary contributions or through higher event prices – to support the nonprofits that bring us the arts (and all those other programs we want)? In a democracy, government isn’t “them,” it’s us, and we have shown no discipline when it comes to spending, clearly an unsustainable path. In our heart of hearts, we know this to be true but the temptation to spend “other people’s money” is just too irresistible and impedes the necessary conversations about how to allocate what will always be limited resources.
Wendy Gordon