Is this a misuse of tax money?

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"without funding of the arts, there will be less of them. a country with less art is a lesser place"

I am in no way unwilling to see Art [inclusive] and Science [inclusive] appreciated and funded. I got more REAL work done as a wage slave for the University than I would have as a wage slave for General Motors or as a hunter gatherer. Ditto mutatis mutandis for Leonardo and Bach.

BUT support or no support, there is an irreducible minimum. We hold these truths to be self evident, specifically the human drive to create, the human drive to know, the human drive to reach toward the higher.

In all things there is balance. Too much support - well, an artist who works only for the federal grant is no different frm the scientist who works only on research sponsored by the pharmaceutical giant - not different from the caged tiger who doesn't know how to eat anything but hamburger.

I am highly offended by the fact that the original poster finds this work of art highly offensive!

Highly!! !

The delight in seeing creative people work for no money while armaments manufacturers are abundantly rewarded for horrendously overcharging to produce goods whose ideal is mass destruction of people and property strikes me as about as perverse as a thought can get. Great art gets produced by being well financed and the more it is financed, the more will be produced. Why should businesses be stimulated by public support and not science and art. The latter are far more fertile for creating a dynamic economy. If you know anything about creative science (and I have strong doubts about your knowledge in that area) you know how much basic new and rewarding knowledge resulted from government support.

because, as one other poster is fond of repeating, TINFL. you get more of what you pay for. people, for the most part, are unwilling to work for free. artists, starving and otherwise, need moolah to keep a roof over their heads just like everybody else.

One of my main arguments for "if there were a god, he lost and the devil won and re-wrote himself as god". That and the high level of sexual predators in the various holy men positions.

or that god just got tired of messing with god's dysfunctional creation and decided to go for greener pastures elsewhere, and said "to hell with 'em."

To add to that point, I'd like to restate what somebody else here said, that art is essential to our commerce, and that anyone who'd defund it is doing a disservice to our whole economy. I am reminded of a particularly interesting lecture I attended, around the time I entered art college. The instructor made a stirring speech about how the essence of art is all around us, in every single thing human beings have ever created. From the clothes you wear and the buildings that provide you shelter, to the currency you use and TV shows you watch (and the TV itself, too!)-- all of it has been designed by somebody who has at least some rudimentary understanding of aesthetics, or plot development, or the theory of light and color, or social context, etc. And of course, art also shapes the intangible things as well-- the society's cultural attitudes and ideals. Art has a well-established mutually beneficial coexistence with science; artists and scientists frequently bounce ideas off each other, and collaborate. Without the arts, my instructor said, there is no culture-- there's no market, and there's no discussion.

Which, thanks to the commercialization of the arts, is something that we are ever nearing.

Thanks Pop/American Idol and Total Request Live and the big 2 in the record industry(if there's even that many anymore).

" If you know anything about creative science (and I have strong doubts about your knowledge in that area) you know how much basic new and rewarding knowledge resulted from government support."

Oh, put a sock in it. Most of my [too few] dollars came out of federal funds, supporting the Department as well as research grants. And if you do not want to let the noble label science get too stained by my unaware Dwarf paws smelling of wolf dung, I am also aware of whence for just one Richard Feynman got support.

Really, before you fire your blunderbuss check that it is loaded with something besides buffalo chips. I won't start saying what I have strong doubts about.

Whatever we may say about politicians, a lot of government money at least in the US has funded research with not too many strings [not always with discrimination, but balance in all things]. The same is true of at least some corporate funding - I know people who worked for Bell Labs who indicated that they were largely set to do research come what may.

But patronage is patronage, and leads to Paintings of the Annunciation with the Mayor and his good wife watching as the angel says his piece. And to studies that tell us that the drug worked better than placebo if we use THIS statistical benchmark, and that it is good for relieving dypepsia; side effects include flatulence [10%], gastritis [7.5%], constipation [20%], diarrhea [18%] and dyspepsia [12%].

I do NOT say don't support art an science - I didn't say it. I just say that Nazi and Stalinist art and science [let's hear it for Rassenwissenschaft and Socialist Realism!] may help us to understand how it ican turn out when Big Brother helps himself by supporting us.

Yet another fine example of the right straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

marshall -

exact reference is not clear.

Not assuming you are responding to my winged words [I bet you think this Song is About You - Not], but for the record.

I am not part of the right, though today's left can be frightening.

I am not part of the left, though the right is often wrong.

Apolitical eclectic iconoclast me.

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery has succumbed to pressure from conservative politicians and the Catholic League and have removed David Wojnarowicz’s video ‘A Fire In My Belly’ from their current exhibit ‘Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture’, which is scheduled to run through the Christmas season. The exhibit’s curator David C. Ward describes the video as:

Incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., called the video and exhibit an “Outrageous use of taxpayer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season.”

House Republican leader John Boehner, describing the widely praised exhibit a “mistake,” wants it canceled.

Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said, “Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves [in].”

The Smithsonian pulled ‘A Fire In My Belly’ earlier this afternoon, one day before World AIDS Day.

This is the offending video, featuring Diamanda Galas. Watch it while you’re still free to do so.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fC3sUDtR7U&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]


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So thanks to your (and all the other sheeple's) false outrage, a piece about AIDS was pulled the day before World AIDS Day. Thanks, a**hole.

Here's some information about the artist who died back in 1992 at the age of 37 from AIDS-related complications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wojnarowicz

His self portrait with his lips sewn shut seems very appropriate, and sad.

I watched the video and found he images very dramatic. It is noteworthy that the Republicans who daily sent American soldiers to endure the same type of drama in Iraq and Afghanistan and to inflict much the same horror on the citizens of those lands were to cowardly to ace the truths of their actions even in mere artistic simulation.

I also came across this quote:

"With all these occurances of death facing me, I thought about issues of freedom. If government projects the idea that we, as people inhabiting this particular land mass, have freedom,, the for the rest of our lives we will go out and find what appear to be the boundaries and smack against them like a heart against the rib cage. If we reveal boundaries in the course of our movements, then we will expose the inherent lie in the use of the word freedom. I want to keep breathing and moving until I arrive at a place where motion and strength and relief intersect. I don't know what's ahead of me in the course of my life and this civilization. I just don't feel I have reached the necessary things inside my history that would ease the pressure in my skull and in my future and in my present. It is exhausting, living in a population where people don't speak up if what they witness doesn't directly threaten them."
— David Wojnarowicz

Let freedom ring.