I’m biased, but I fell in love with the headline the moment that I read it. Because it’s true. Yes, we’re monumentally absorbed in the drama of the Orange Manbaby and consumed with guessing when he’ll ignite a constitutional crisis by firing Robert Mueller, but as that Shakespearean tragedy finally reaches the end of its first act (the Bard wrote five-act plays), terrible and scurrilous acts are taking place elsewhere within our disintegrating federal government, and at the center of many of them is our Secretary of (Mis-) Education, Betsy DeVos.
In an article for The Clyde Fitch Report, an independent (and not fake) site covering the crossroads of arts and politics (full disclosure: I’m the founder and one of 25 contributors), one of our new editors, Robert Burney, considers the disconnect between the strong philanthropic support that people like DeVos have given to the arts in recent years, especially visual arts, while at the same time going well, well out of their way to prevent arts education in our schools — like, ever:
It’s no secret that artists tend to lean politically to the left, but even the sole congressional initiative to support the arts, the Congressional Arts Caucus, is overwhelmingly composed of Democrats. Publicly, Republicans and the arts world could not operate in a more obtusely arms-length manner.
Behind closed doors, however, these two star-crossed cultural movements never miss a chance for a quiet tryst, especially when it’s financially lucrative. Despite the ideological sour grapes involved, the American art world has long been absolutely riddled with wealthy Republican financiers making large contributions to major public institutions.
...In 2008, for example, GOP godfather David Koch pledged $100 million toward the renovation of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (home of the NYC Ballet), a building now named for him. In 2013, Libertarian billionaire Larry Ellison leased his famous Japanese art collection to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. In 2015, Citadel CEO and Marco Rubio funder Ken Griffin donated $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art. These aren’t outliers. Some people claim that Republican money is privately keeping the art world alive.
Burney writes about the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation and its support of the arts. Surely, he writes, “this must be the sign of a Republican who understands the necessity and importance of public art and arts education.”
But no. No, you knew it wouldn't be the case. As if we needed to be reminded...
DeVos is part of an administration proposing a $9.2 billion cut to the Department of Education, including a $27 million cut to arts education programs. Devos is currently being sued by multiple former students of a fraudulent, for-profit arts institute for freezing the implementation of student loan forgiveness programs meant to hold abusive higher education institutions accountable. Fraudulent arts education programs will likely benefit from this freeze, while arts students holding useless degrees will face back-breaking student debt.
Burney goes on to systemically demolish the various feckless canards trotted out by the Republicans around the arts, such as it being for the “liberal elite” and that funding has a “coastal bias.” Facts are facts — not fake propaganda designed to brainwash imbecilic conservatives: 40% of projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts “take place in high-poverty areas; 36% of NEA grants go to organizations that reach veterans and people with disabilities and in institutions; and a third reaches low-income audiences.”
As for “coastal bias”:
...arts education funding initiatives of the Department of Education and the NEA focus on supporting and developing arts programs in rural communities. By contrast, it is estimated that only 5.5% of private philanthropic arts donations go to rural areas.
Burney’s final graph that goes in for the kill:
DeVos and other wealthy Republicans who style themselves patrons of the arts ultimately have a choice to make. If they keep gutting government funding for arts education, removing federal regulations meant to protect artists, and destroying public arts projects, they will lose the future: their supposed love of art will be for naught if they strangle the next generation of great artists. If Republicans are willing to abandon free market principles to support nonprofit arts institutions, they should abandon free market principles for the artists whose work fills them up.