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I agree wholeheartedly with Nick Taylor that the nation needs someone like Harry Hopkins to act as a point person if we are going to get some economic stimulus money allocated to the NEA. During the 1930s Hopkins had to deflect pretty vicious criticism of his insistence that artists get WPA funds. His response: "Hell! They've got to eat just like other people." This program not only allowed artists, musicians, actors, and writers to continue with their work but brought wonderful theatre, symphonies, murals, and literature to the American public, an enduring legacy.

To debate the "value" of the arts is ludicrous. Of course they're valuable. Arts eduction is important, and everyone benefits from it. A terrible speaker, our last president could have benefited from an acting class or at the least a speech class. While I disagreed with his policies, Ronald Reagan was a great communicator because of his acting background.

Arts organizations help communities. As an actor, I've played in cities that were moribund, close to dying before a theatre or arts center created a venue that attracted audiences to the area. More business sprang up, more people were working. Look at Delray Beach, Florida, Walnut Creek, California, the Temple Bar neighborhood of Dublin, Ireland, look what's happening in Long Branch, New Jersey, now.

I was employed as an artist in public service in the CETA (Comprehensive Employment Traiing ACt) Project in 1979-81. Congress and the cities found this replication of the WPA Arts Project worthwhile then. Isn't there data on that now? My students in schools and senior centers were grateful and beautifully productive. Now the new understanding of eidetic imaging upon which the new Image Psycology is founded proves that the proper use of imagination is essential to public health.

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I work as a theatrical designer, and it would seem at first glance that I would stand to benefit from an arts stimulus. However, the reality is that governmental money is most often granted to those larger organizations which are not the most needy in a cultural environment.

Lincoln Center (for example), large regional theatres and arts centers employ huge bureaucratic staffs of people who produce the work of a very limited few individuals most often channeling from a few select conservatories and training programs, while at the same time fight to limit the working wages of the designers, stage crews, musicians and other support artists. At the same time, these organizations benefit from the charging of luxury prices for admission, existing simultaneously as non-profits and Broadway producers, or low-expense feeder developers for commercial producers.

While I support the idea of a governmental stimulus for arts education, museum programs, and specifically needy arts producers, the old model of rewarding the larger institutional arts organizations should not be a part of a future stimulus. We are no longer rewarding banks which spend callously; we should point the same microscope at arts-funding recipients.

There is a significant multiplier effect when money is channeled to musicians and artists, in that there will be a subsequent flow of revenues to bartenders, liquor stores, criminal lawyers,second-hand clothing stores, and rehab clinics.

I was employed as an artist in public service in the CETA Artists Project in 1979-81. Congress and the cities saw this replication of the WPA Arts Project as worthwhile. Isn't there any data supportive of that? It should also be pointed out that many of our most famous artists were part of the WPA project. My students in schools and senior centers were most grateful and beautifully productive. Now the new Image Psychology based on discoveries about eidetic images proves that the proper use of imagination is essential to public health.

The critics that say the arts do not create jobs for all classes are living in a bubble remote from the real world. We should be bursting that bubble. Haven't they heard of the Emmeys, Oscars and Grammy's? Don't they have any art in their homes?

And those who say that European governments don't support art for all classes have not been to Europe with their eyes and ears open and mind engaged.

schools have cut too many arts programs from the curriculum to use that time to prepare the students for the tests. if students arent being prepared to appreciate the arts, how will they prosper?

The stimulus package MUST have arts funding involved - the arts jobs are just as important as the bank and auto industry jobs.

I think 6 million might even be a small number - many of us fly under the dept of commerce radar.

Additionally, theaters help keep the coffee shops, bars, restaurants, bodegas, hardware stores, etc., and other self-employed people in their neighborhoods in business. I know of one coffee shop in the East Village that, judging by its size, is probably kept afloat almost entirely by the three theaters across the street from it.

How does the government think we're going to get through these coming months without the relief and release provided by the Arts? There is nothing frivolous about expressing and/or alleviating the grief we all feel every day as we hear of more cuts, bigger losses, and greater uncertainty. It's non-optional - we need the Arts to survive.

We may not be in the Great Depression, but we have had a Great Depression of Art appreciation and cultivation in our society for years. During the Great depression, Men wore ties, no matter how poor, and women put on hats, there was more of a sense of a civilized society. The way people entertained themselves was through books, plays they could read, craft, and live music, organized or people who in the community knew how to play.
Today we have people who are willing to give up their houses but not their cable because they may miss an episode of The Bachelor. Unfortunately the arts are not valued, though did we not have a great display of the performing arts at the inauguration?
Even the crappiest movies have a few people there on set who went to art school, whose only trade IS the arts.
I am a costume designer and illustrator, I cannot type well, I do not know how to do databasing or microsoft excel, but I can sew and paint and make beautiful things.
I also live in New York, where these things are still somewhat valued.
We need to get MORE money into arts education, to get more kids, and get a new generation interested in how art is in everything, math science, even politics(at least the democrats).

Republicans still rant about Robert Mapplethorpe and the NEA. No fiscal conservative will ever support arts funding.

on. THe WPA artists were often OF THE PEOPLE, depicting workers and their struggles in plays (WELLS) and paintings. One component of today's art world is what your panelists can never admit: we're in a period of LOW QUALITY. The problem is contemporary art is so way out in its own world. Videos depicting adolescent nonsense, artists "living" in a gallery or cheaply drawn figures (OPIE) in led lights in public squares...These trends alienate the vast majority of people, and thus find little good will among Americans. Im a contemporary artist working full time underneath the artworld establishment, and with little usr for it.

As an "ancillary" employee of the arts, building scenery for stage and television, I find it hard to swallow the implication that the job I hold and those in associated industries across the country don't count.

Regardless of the social impact of the arts, these jobs are not window dressing or the left wing luxury of major metropolitan areas.

Demanding, blue collar type labor positions are the backbone of artistic projects from plays to public art. Electricians, laborers, carpenters, trucking companies, not to mention retail and rental services are all at risk when even one theater goes dark due to lack of funding.

Why shouldn't the arts get support? Why are we fighting wars and trying to strengthen our economy? To build bigger houses and bigger planes?..No. The whole range of art provides our inspiration and our soul. We are humans that need support for all our senses.

First of all, the artists of the WPA started off making tourism and public service posters. And ended up making (necessary) war propaganda.

The way I see it, artists will be the ones driving the popular support of the green revolution. Branding it, marketings it, making it as cool as the moon mission.

Show me the money Obama!

-Tonky

Congress person Pense and others say that arts don't provide jobs and art funding is not necessary. We'll, does he wear a tie with color and design? Do his kids play video games, board games, etc.? Does he go to the movies, listen to the radio? Music? I can recall another country that went without style and artistic images, in clothing and personal things, whose population wore the same, grey uniform and hat!

Food, water, shelter and health care. These 4 things essential to living. Jobs provide the income to maintain that.

The stimulus bill should go directly toward those basics.

The place for funding in the arts is the omnibus bill. Fighting for and debating the arts is a worthy goal to be advocated for an annual basis.

Aaron Copland also wrote a WPA-funded score: "The Plough that Broke the Plains"

I also want to expand on what #7 (Robots Need 2 Part'ay). I think that they are right, but one thing: The U.S. seems to have collectively forgotten the value of making things and creating things. Even on a factory level.

I don't think we have ever lived in an era where manual labor or all kinds are disparaged. And I feel much the same way laborers in the U.S. are looked down upon, artists are also looked down upon.

the arts have always been a creative export for the USA.
therefore a healthy arts community is a benefit for the whole economy

The cultural importance of the arts need not even be debated if one recognizes that artists are small business owners and consumers. Projects in the arts consume materials, demand shop labor, and pay salaries.

I think there are more than 6 million jobs at stake - there are also half-jobs, and quarter jobs held by artists who have to have a patchwork quilt of gigs in order to barely survive.

I have always thought that this culture does not realize how valuable the arts are. Instead, artists are seen as people who don't really work. It's heartbreaking.

I'm wondering how much of the discrepancy in estimations of jobs in the arts (with the government saying 2 million and arts organizations saying 6 million) is due to freelancers and the self-employed.

I'm a freelance stage manager; I don't have a permanent "job" anywhere, but work frequently for a handful of theater companies (as well as doing temp work). I'm working in the arts, making actual money, paying self-employment tax, and contributing that income back into the economy, but I'm betting I'm not being counted as such because I'm not on the payroll of any one organization--and so the government is undercounting the contribution of arts employment to the economy.

Food, water, selter, health. These 4 things are essential and jobs are the engine of that.

Culture isn't something that I would want to be without as it enriches the experience of living.

However it shouldn't be part of this stimulus bill. The stimulus bill should be a direct jump-start to the essentials of the economy.

The arts should be part of the omnibus budget bill. That's an annual debate worth fighting for and debating about regularly.

These people cutting funding to the arts are idiots. The arts is a career choice. Careers are jobs. People need jobs. The amount of funding needed to help fund the arts is so minuscule cutting the funding isn't going to really help elsewhere. Its millions of dollars, not billions.

I think this comes down to the perception that working within the arts isn't a real job. It is thought that being an artist or musician isn't real work so why help them. They should go get real jobs like everybody else. Which is the kind of thinking that makes me think these people are idiots.

Here is why we need to provide stimulus for the arts: Practically every country in the world but the U.S. appreciates the art created by artists in the U.S.

Music, film, museums, etc... The U.S. simply seems to hate it's creative output for no valid reason. Bring the appreciation back home and the money will follow.

The arts creates middle class jobs like electrician, carpenter, painter and hair stylist. To strip provisions for the arts from the economic stimulus bill is to place the burden of recovery on the backs of hard working Americans and give the bankers a free pass.

Coburn's daughter is a soprano opera singer. kinda Cheney and his gay daughter. Do these guys have to have a boy before they value their children?

Opps - typos:
Here is

I Here si a company i hope doent get bailed out:
MUZAK has filed for bankruptcy.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10463112/1/muzak-files-for-bankruptcy.html?puc=_tscrss

Oh frabjous day, unless you work for Muzak (but then you really have to ask your self; Are you a good person?)!

Government funding for the arts is especially vital during difficult times. Health Care for the soul.