Artists! On you I call
Blake vs. Non-Profit-whose speech moves you? Why? Are our ills bad speech?
https://www.artsactionfund.org/
The mission of the Arts Action Fund is to enlist and mobilize the largest grassroots arts advocacy network in America to help advance the arts on both the electoral and legislative landscapes to promote more vibrant and livable communities throughout the country. The Arts Action Fund’s goal is to enlist at least one million citizen arts advocates that will help ensure arts-friendly public policies are adopted. There is no financial barrier to becoming a member as arts advocates can join for free or contribute.Â
In addition, the Arts Action Fund Political Action Committee (PAC) provides direct support to pro-arts federal House and Senate candidates. The Arts Action Fund PAC strives to support as many Democratic and Republican pro-arts candidates as possible in all 50 states. Through the Arts Action Fund PAC, 100% of contributed funds directly support the campaigns of pro-arts federal candidates. Just as your voice is stronger in a chorus with others, your support for pro-arts candidates will be stronger with others too. By pooling pro-arts contributions into larger donations, we can provide worthy candidates with more impactful funding than most are able to give individually. What we accomplish in the future will help us towards our long-term goal for the future–a future where the federal government invests at least $1 per citizen in the nonprofit arts and local governments invest 5% of their local education budgets in arts education. Moreover, a nation that values profoundly the societal, educational, and economic contributions of the arts to the country, the economy, and our everyday lives. Â
We can continue to have an influence on Capitol Hill, but we can only do it with the financial support of our members. The Arts Action Fund is the only national bipartisan voice for the arts that dedicates 100% of its time, money, and political clout to advancing the arts in America.
Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court, & the University: who would if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call! Sculptors! Architects! Suffer not the fashonable Fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of Men whose whole delight is in Destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just & true to our own imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live forever; in Jesus our Lord.
All very good - perhaps!
But with very rare exceptions most artists are just as much trapped in the dominant narcissistic death-saturated reductionist zeitgeist of the times.
Put in another way, without exception all of ones artistic output is in effect a biographical portrait/description of the author/artist/composer. Narcissus looking in the pond enamored of his/her reflection!
Please. There is nothing like public money to ruin the arts. We can't even agree on what is art and what is it for. We live in ugly urban surroundings because our landscapes are built and inhabited by people without aesthetic sensitivities. A government facing movement will not change this.