[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6zZpOwYdck?rel=0&wmode=transparent&autoplay=0]

Kilbourn Hall – The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives.

Arts Funding In The United States Is Nearly All Private

Arts funding in the United State as opposed to other countries is largely privately funded.  My music educational institutions were both publicly and privately funded.  However, the tuition was largely privately funded, basically by student loans, scholarships and of course my parents.  In the United States, you can’t go to a university unless you can get enough money rallied up to pay for it.

Even though Western Kentucky University is a state institution, it raises huge amounts of it’s money privately to pay for projects to keep the university viable among the university ”businesses” in the US.  Today, most buildings built on campuses are named for those who put up the most money on the project.

The Eastman School of Music is of course a private institution and part of the University of Rochester.  Private schools are much more expensive than the public institutions because they do not receive the same amount of funding from public funds as the state institutions. The price of education is pretty much the same no matter where you go, the only difference is who pays for it, philanthropists, corporations, government through the taxation of the common population and the individuals paying tuition out of their own pockets.

Philanthropy For Arts Funding

Back during the industrial revolution it became common for industrial giants to provide arts funding for fledgling institutions.  Andrew Carnegie once said his job was to make a lot of money so he could give it away for projects that needed to be created in the US and in Europe: Carnegie library, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science,Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Peace Palace in The Hague Netherlands.

George Eastman, the founder of the Kodak Corporation, set up an endowment for the University of Rochester, The Eastman School of Music and the Eastman Institutes of Dentistry and countless other projects. The list of corporate giants providing arts funding is long and today what keeps the American arts organizations possible.  To these efforts artists should be grateful.

Arts Funding in Europe is From The Government

Having lived in Germany for 25 years and worked in the German theater system I have enjoyed the stability of the way life is set up in Germany.  I worked for theaters as a full time employee as an opera singer which is of course the reason why singers who actually want to do their art for a living come to Germany and try to get work.  It makes total sense to do this because only in a theater whose funding is consistent is it possible to do all of the repertoire that I have done.  Many new works would never get performed without the German and European systems of theaters.

Arts funding in any society can only remain consistent when society deems it as important to it.  Rudolf Bing, past General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera once said, ”The opera always loses money. Thats as it should be. Opera has no business making money.”   This statement alone is why many people think that the arts are a waste of time and money.  So, part of the job of arts organizations is to remind people as to why the arts are important.  That is a different article!  But suffice it to say that the merits of the arts cannot be placed under the category of ”because it is good for you.”  Which of course it is, but it is much more than that.

Obviously things must change everywhere in order for arts funding to continue and the pressure of art’s extinction can be lifted from artists.  But, one area that has become very crucial to artists is the ability to fund themselves…. that is also another article.