If I ran the NEA...

if i ran the NEA..........would try to separate politic from the art.tru art is independent.

Alone, with thinkers such as Frank Gehry as one of the contributors, you know the NEA must have some substance.
There has been a history (long before America was a spit-shine-sparkle in the civilized world's eye) of the arts having a direct link with a nation's culture. That is to say, that the arts are a direct representation of what a nation has to offer the world... The World!
How a nation takes care of their artists, i.e. support, recognize, distribute knowledge of, etc., is a statement to the global audience of how said nation takes abstract thought and puts it into their own perspective. This type of consideration for the arts has been proven to be the most outstanding attribute that a nation, presently organized or disengaged, has offered up to the 'Toute l'Histoire' of the human race.

If I ran the NEA .....

.....I'd disband it!

I'm torn when it comes to the NEA. Art is art and will always be there but the jobs in the shadows of art may not. Throughout my short career so far as a photographer, I've had to rely on guerrilla marketing to get by and to let people know about my product. It is the same amongst my peers whether they make clothing or graffiti walls.

With that being said, art is business as well. And what do businesses need? Money. I understood that even more when my job, working front desk and in the gift shop at a museum, had a terrible business model and people like me started to suffer. It's not just about the artists or the curators anymore. It's become about administrative assistants, the IT guy, gift shop associates, accountants, housekeeping. Because when art becomes this thing bigger than itself, it requires the people and the tools to handle something so big.

We want to support the arts so bad, but we fail to realize that within that, we must support those behind the scenes making it work. Maybe that is where we're hurting. Maybe that's what the NEA should be about.

Art will continue regardless. If it attenuates due to lack of funding, that just differentiates the true artists from profit hacks. Art is an emotion, not a means of money; the latter on the other hand would be marketing, which could use a little less emphasis anyhow.

What ever happened to the notion of a starving artist? My ilk revels in such a life.

"But the Academys want there to be no Purpose, no Definition, No Reason for Art, For it is now a commodity, for sale, degraded, decadent. Let the Market support these other forms of selfishness, the Meism of the Age of Excess is over. Contempt Art left as road kill, DOA."

I say remove all art from Washington, all the presidential paintings, Lustitia the statue of justice, the Washington monument, the Lincoln memorial, and so on, and see how they like "Life without Art."

I think way more care should be given to fledgling artists and post-graduates. There are so many programs, internships, and opportunities for students, and then the minute you graduate it's like, "Do it yourself, punk." And we have mountains of debt to work off!