As I research government art funding, something (aside from the illicit use of taxpayer money) that is suspiciously curious is the difference in funding levels between different kinds of artists, writers, and so on. This raises a true question of equitable funding - in other words, you're a writer, I'm a visual artist both seeking a grant to produce 'art' over the same period of time. Is the funding the same or different? Let's take a look under the covers.
In the wake of the 9/11 victim death toll, the government had to determine a fair compensation to those whose loved ones were taken during that event. A equitable fiscal calculation had to be made and it was.
Similarly, with recognizing that National Arts funding exists (and there is plenty to discuss about that fact), what is the value of a grant that will speculatively produce something of human societal value?
The argument I will explore involves the difference between a visual artist and a fiction writer. Both artists need time to create their work and the first drafts or experimental prototypes may need refinement so an arts grant of, for example, $1000 just for subsidizing living expenses for a few weeks is equitable - a visual artist and a writer on a day to day basis have common expenses.
Where there is a difference however is in material expenses, visual artists (generally speaking) have expenses that writers (even digitally leaning) simply don't have. Browse the cost of paints, brushes, or home depot materials required to create something and this fact is obvious. Yet there doesn't seem to be any recognition of this difference at any level of government arts funding at all. In other words, a request for arts funding should solicit the size of a requested grant AND an expenses stipend.
In a previous essay, I commend the National Endowment for the Humanities for objectively soliciting, describing, and dispensing their funding. But something else they do that is different from the operations of the Arts Funding apparatchiks is that their grants have a temporal duration. In other words they fund humanities scholarship for months or even a year. Its not the same as tossing a small lump sum at a writer and wiping the administrative dust off their hands.
The NEH can (if they desired) make an argument that NEH research writing is different from NEA fiction writing. Here I'm using NEH and NEA as a allegory for every ladder rung of administrative entity that funds their respective grants.
My counter argument (and I've been making art for over a half century) is that creating original work as opposed to curating, refining, and synthesizing existing research is every bit as time-consuming and exhaustive as research. The NEH's grant framework makes perfect sense and the NEA has nothing comparable (at least in my survey).
To clarify the difference, an NEH researcher can solicit a $6k/month funding for whatever duration they choose within funding guidelines and NEA grants have no such funding option. To understand the insulting indignity of this difference compare and contrast the CT State artist grants of $5k, $3k, and $1k awarded here. Keep in mind that NEFA has NO visual artist options to even apply for a Regional grant at all. NEFA launders national arts funding to exclude everyone aside from special interests from accessing those funds.
The State of CT's cluster muck of arts, humanities, "development", and "tourism" entanglement is an administrative masterpiece of wasted energy, money, and legitimacy. Somebody, somewhere/anywhere really needs to audit these mofos.
In previous essays I questioned how a dead artist, Sol Lewitt somehow managed to become a statewide money sink for arts funding.
Then there's the evaporating wall mural on the Lewitt building in New Britain.
So imagine my surprise when I'm looking up the individuals responsible for handing out the funds.
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