Essay: NEA "Research Agenda" - Another Money Pit

This essay references The National Endowment for the Arts Research Agenda - FY 2022 - 2026.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funds an Office of Research and Analysis that claims to keep and report statistics about the arts ecosystem. It becomes increasingly apparent that arts ecosystem refers to a slew of government agencies that suck the soul and funding intended to advocate arts and artists for themselves.

The agency heavily relies on the usual suspects - "the design and conduct of studies addressing priority research topics through the social and behavioral sciences" - in other words academia unrelated to, well, the arts.

This paper cites concerns about

• health and wellness for individuals; cognition and learning; and U.S. economic growth and innovation
• healing and revitalization of communities
• diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the arts
• adapting and responding to social, economic, and technological changes and challenges to the sector

In other words jack shit concerning artists, art, or artist issues - a wholesale end run around actually promoting the welfare of artists and their ability to create excellent art. My ongoing research into the NEA's policies and practices exposes lots more of this.

These agendas come and go, nothing more than academic ATMs that finance NEA junkets and worthless, disposable research papers, one after another.  Burp (cha-ching)!

 The research started over a decade ago and this latest batch of DEI infused wisdom is only in its second year of the latest "5 Year Plan". 

The NEA has just hosted a junket for research authors who apparently were funded above and beyond their academic salaries to create - not a public document - but a privately owned and distributed book of their -cough- "research" findings.

As usual, my interest is piqued when the discussion has to do with education of artists, MFAs, and the visual arts in general.

Here Joanna Woronkowicz talks about her book, Being an Artist in America: How Artists Build Careers and What Society Can Do to Support Them.

I couldn't help but look her up on Rate My Professor.  She apparently is paid to instruct a course on Statistics that she - based on the ratings - doesn't show up to teach and whose teaching assistants are clueless to act as proxies. She also accused some students (who plead innocence) of plagiarism.

Putting that into context already raises suspicions about the quality and veracity of the book (unpublished to date).

In the YouTube documentation of the NEA Meet the Authors event she talks about the unintended consequences of Arts policies over time. Assuming this observation is true and based on fact, why has it taken over twenty years for the NEA to continue to fund and practice the creation and administration of these policies.  Why aren't these people being fired and why aren't corrections being made?

When it comes to the mass production of students graduating with MFA degrees and life altering debt, she has this to say, Art School Loans. This is all well known material and if her concern about bang for the educational buck were sincere she might consider performing her own teaching duties - just because $$$.

Most disturbingly are her policy recommendations that include this; Cost and Benefit. I suspect that art students are not the only ones straining government welfare programs. 

Given this research, it seems to me that an easy and obvious recommendation might be to fine each and every current employee of the NEA immediately and start fresh.

And part of starting anew  must include independent studies of arts and artists in America. Enough of the self-serving academic community whose quality of work is manufactured to be ignored by everyone aside from tenure committees.

https://www.arts.gov/initiatives/nea-research-labs