
With Kickstarter, Who Needs the National Endowment for the Arts? - jalanco
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-power-and-the-peril-of-our-crowdfunded-future/259304/
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greggman
I'm sure this will get down voted but why, in the last 30 years, have we
needed the National Endowment for the Arts at all?

Art is massively funded. The Motion Picture Arts, The Musical Arts, The Art of
Literature, The Art of Architecture, The Popular Arts (as San Diego calls
comics and graphic novels), The Video Game Arts

Kickstarter will help fund more art. That's great. I doubt it will get rid of
NEA. The NEA is about funding things nobody wants. If people wanted them
they'd already fund them directly.

~~~
tfinniga
> The NEA is about funding things nobody wants.

That's an interesting perspective. I see it more as a tragedy of the commons
situation. It's possible to make important and influential art which is not
commercially viable. NEA is great for funding art that wouldn't look good on a
T-Shirt, but is beneficial to the culture as a whole.

~~~
tomjen3
Is it?

The majority of art created today isn't founded because it doesn't look good
on a T-shirt. It is because it is crap.

And you art doesn't have to fit on a T-shirt to be founded. Stories could be
printed in beautiful books, movies and documentaries made available as high
quality downloads, paintings as posters, etc.

The only art you couldn't found this way would be art that didn't say anything
to anybody. §100/year from 10 thousand people is a pretty good wage. If you
can't get 10 thousand people to see something in you art, then it is properly
because your art is crap.

~~~
xorbyte
Is it?

You equate financial viability with artistic value. But, there was Vincent van
Gogh; large swaths of what we consider art today was commissioned by kings and
popes and presidents on their dime, not sold or traded; it is virtually
impossible, in the Kickstarter model, to fundraise sculptures and
installations.

I certainly don't think art needs an erudite committee approving it for
'value' (in a non-financial sense), but neither does it need to be subjected
to the tyranny of the majority, lest we want to limit ourselves to bazaar
kitsch dolls and whatever else can be easily mass-made and sold. So while
Kickstarter can certainly replace entities like NEA for many artists (many
projects seem easier, logistically, to fund through KS) I don't know this says
NEA is no longer needed.

~~~
tomjen3
But that is the key issue, you are not subject to the tyranny of the majority.
Your quest is just to find a few people who like your art. The majority can
hate it, consider you a witch and attempt to burn you at the stakes.

All of that doesn't matter. Just that a few people like you.

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luriel
I will make a slightly more controversial claim: With Kickstarter, who needs
government granted monopolies for the arts? (ie., copyright)

One should realize that most of the greatest artworks in history were created
without the "benefits" of copyright (and in many cases would have required
infringing on copyright, writers and painters have borrowed from each others
works all through history).

~~~
TylerE
I don't think you can argue that at all. Until very recently (on an historical
time scale), mechanical copying wasn't possible at all, so copyright isn't
some new thing, practically, it's just that in ye olde days it wasn't a
relevant concept because you couldn't copy art - there were no CDs or records,
lithography, etc.

If you wanted to hear a Beethoven symphony, you had to find an orchestra that
was playing, and travel to see it.

Even duplicating printed work was much more work, since the type would have to
be reset by hand.

While the funding model was certainly different, the era was much _more_
different. Using the romantic era or earlier as proof that (in modern society)
culture could flourish without copyright is ludicrous.

~~~
jonhendry
Cervantes had to deal with a ripoff of Don Quixote while he was writing the
second part of Don Quixote, after publishing part I. It even makes up part of
the plot of part II.

Another author published what they claimed to be part II.

It's a different form of IP infringement than simple unauthorized duplication
of a work, but it's been around for a long time.

~~~
luriel
Shakespeare and many others also "stole" from many other authors, both classic
and contemporaries.

Art, by its own nature, tends to infringe so called "intellectual property"
rules.

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jalanco
From the article: In 2012, Kickstarter has provided over $150 million in arts
funding, more than the NEA.

~~~
bhb916
The best part of that is that every drop of that kickstarter money was
voluntary. That is to say that the donors gave their money up willfully
without the application of compulsive force. The same cannot be said about the
NEA.

Regardless, the article hints at the primary problem with the replacement
suggestion: this would effectively replace the current, centralized, political
decision making with a distributed form of decision making. I don't see that
happening anytime soon.

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kmfrk
Could we please cite some facts in this mounting tirade against public funding
of the Arts?

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daniel_solano
To what extent are facts necessary? Public funding of the arts is in a large
part a philosophical issue. Either you believe that it should be done or you
don't. That's primarily a question of what you think the role of government
should be.

It's only if you agree that public funding of art is a good thing that then
facts can come into play. What is the best, most effective way of doing it?

~~~
lallysingh
The criteria the NEA uses for funding work is unusually absent from this
discussion.

And the comparative question, are differences in the results between
kickstarter and the NEA significant? If so, are the NEA's results valuable?

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cdcarter
The NEA is a grant-maker. Kickstarter is a platform for a capital campaign.
These are two incredibly different types of "unearned income."

I have never seen an organization have a successful annual campaign through
something like Kickstarter. Kickstarter itself makes it very clear it is to be
used for capital campaigns with very specific purposes.

Take a look at the 2012 NEA grants and think about how many of them would
thrive on Kickstarter. The BSO for example, the Tanglewood grant miiiight be
able to be funded but the general grant almost certainly would not. These arts
organizations are modeled around an in person annual campaign through their
development offices, and large-scale grants from charitable foundations (or
the NEA). The entire model would break down if all funding came direct from
patrons.

Whether or not that model should be broken down and disrupted is a different
story, but almost none of the arts organizations that are receiving MAJOR
grants from the NEA are set (or may ever be set) to deal with it.

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abrown28
The only problem I have with the NEA is I'm being forced to pay for something
I don't want. I don't care if you make a painting of the Virgin Mary out of
elephant poo or put Jesus in a jar of your own piss but I do care if I'm
forced upon pain of imprisonment to pay for it. I will never understand the
"Greater Good" argument and the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument is just
stupid in this case.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ofili>

EDIT: The Virgin Mary painting was not, according to wiki, paid for by the
NEA.

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skilesare
National funding is for things that can't get done by themselves. If
kickstarter works for you, you don't need NEA there are plenty of valuable art
undertakings that do not have public appeal. that is what the NEA should be
doing.

~~~
noonespecial
I don't mean this as snark. When it comes to art, if nobody wants it, why is
it valuable?

~~~
haliax
It's possible that the art in question is ahead of its time, or expresses
radically unpopular ideas.

I'm not saying that a piece of art that no one ever cares about after it's
created is valuable, but it's hard to judge the value of art based on
_current_ popularity. Plus, the judgement of popularity is influenced by the
culture at a given time, and the existence of a given work or works might have
a pretty big impact on the course of that culture's evolution -- regardless of
its initial ability to gain funding.

There are also the practical difficulties of making sure that the funding
request gets in front of the people who'd appreciate the work in question, and
that they have the money to be able to afford to donate, and that they're not
disinclined from donating for reasons that have nothing to do with the artwork
in question (e.g. they think kickstarter is some phishing site, or think
there's no point since they can only give a very little bit).

~~~
tomjen3
You would have to express an idea that you couldn't get 10 thousand people to
support with 100 usd. In the entire world.

That seams a pretty damming statement against your art, from my point of view.

~~~
cdcarter
Two words: educational programming.

