criticalrant.com Alexandra Bonifield

Q: Save the arts? Really? Why do so many people think the arts need saving? Do we need to save the arts, and if so, what does saving them mean?*

Why do so many people think the arts need saving? Well, first of all, the arts bubble from the latter half of the last century is bursting, as predicted by the late Alice Goldfarb-Marquis in her book Art Lessons: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding. Arts funding and profitable arts work is drying up, and drying up quickly. I’ve written about this from both a jazz and classical perspective, and this excellent blog post by David Beem provides the perspective of an accomplished classical insider (the post went viral in the music community this weekend). Basically, people are concerned that when incomes in the arts disappear, then the arts will disappear, so we should do something…