The Arts Funding Crisis

A double problem faces the American arts: declining government funding and a shift of priorities in the private sector away from cultural patronage. A new approach is needed. “Boards of cultural institutions still attract new money, of course, but the sort of steady, ongoing support for institutions that was considered noblesse oblige not long ago seems increasingly quaint in the eyes of today’s globally-minded, results-oriented, techno-savvy plutocrats. “This is a generational issue as much an institutional issue,” says Alberta Arthurs, former head of the Rockefeller Foundation’s cultural programme and an advisor to cultural benefactors.”