Paul Hodgins

A highly respected and honor-winning arts journalist. In partnership with Heide Janssen, Hodgins has in only over a twelvemonth established a community-focused, accolade-winning and widely respected Arts & Civilization section at Voice of OC. In improver to his work here as an arts author, columnist and editor, Hodgins teaches at USC. Previously, he was an arts writer and critic at the Orangish County Register and the San Diego Wedlock-Tribune and a professor at UC Irvine and Cal Land Fullerton. Hodgins holds degrees from USC, the University of Michigan and the Royal Conservatory of Music.

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C alifornia'due south 2019-xx upkeep, signed by Governor Newsom on June 27, contains an Easter egg for the arts: a $10 million increase in the general fund to the California Arts Quango. The bureau, which doles out money to arts groups throughout the state, received a near doubling of its annual upkeep from $16 million to $26 meg. It was the largest increment for the CAC since 1999.

The state budget too contained $27.v million in gifts for several California museums, including one-time allocations to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust ($half dozen 1000000), the Armenian Museum and Cultural Center ($v million), the Korean American National Museum ($4 million), the Latino Theater Company ($2 million), the Italian-American Museum ($1 million), the National LGBTQ Center for the Arts ($500,000), and $ix million to San Diego'due south NTC Foundation to help turn a long-empty building into a performing arts center. (The NTC Foundation was established to renovate 26 historic buildings at the former Naval Preparation Heart and transform information technology into an arts district.)

The budget increase for the CAC really represents the restoration of relative normalcy afterwards a long period of under-funding. Co-ordinate to the National Associates of State Arts Agencies, California now invests 0.66 cents per person in the arts, which places information technology 26th out of l states in per capita spending. (Since you lot're curious, Minnesota is number ane at $7 per person; Hawaii, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Wyoming, New Bailiwick of jersey, Rhode Isle and Ohio round out the acme 10.)

"Information technology is clear that as the creative economy represents 7.1 percent of California'southward gross state product, alee of agriculture and transportation, an investment in the arts is a smart investment," says Californians for the Arts executive director Julie Bakery. California's vast creative economy includes the picture, TV, music and video game industries, areas in which it is a world leader.

While the recent increase in funding from Sacramento is skillful news for the arts in California, the U.S. still lags far behind other countries in government funding for the arts.Just that doesn't mean that the arts wither here. Allow'southward look more closely at how the U.Southward. approach to arts funding contrasts with other nations'.

The Great Recession led to a abrupt subtract in cultural funding nationally. In 2011, the number reached a record depression of 0.28 percentage of the authorities's non-military budget. Local government spending on the arts dropped 21 per centum from 2008 to 2013; private funding declined by almost ix percentage. Those numbers oasis't bounced back significantly. In the 2019 budget, $155 million was allocated to the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities. The population of the U.S. is most 327 one thousand thousand, and then that's near 47.four cents per person, simply part of which goes to the NEA.

Stacking Up Confronting The World

So how exercise other countries fare in public funding for the arts?

Germany spent $ii billion (1.viii billion euros) on the arts in 2018. On average, the country spends $20 per person on culture. Function of its budget goes toward purchasing contemporary art from living artists.

Northern Republic of ireland, a country of one.viii million people, spent $21 million on the arts in 2014, or $11.67 per person, according to a report in the . The Arts Council is funded in office by National Lottery funds.

France has a huge cultural heritage to maintain – its museums alone draw more than 20 million people per year. The French Ministry of Culture had a budget of $3.two billion (2.9 billion euros) in 2016 – nigh 1 percent of the national upkeep. Civilisation is linked to the land'southward strong tourism industry, which represents 7 percent of France'southward Gross domestic product.

Sweden'south culture budget includes money for rock bands as well as the more than traditional arts. Information technology regularly spends about two.vi pct of its overall budget on the arts.

Commonwealth of australia'southward 2019-twenty arts budget includes $31 meg to support Australian popular music, and about half a billion dollars to expand the Commonwealth of australia State of war Memorial – an extraordinary expense for a country of less than 25 1000000. Arts spending averages well over $300 per citizen.

Finland, which uses lottery gain to fund part of its arts upkeep, allocated $523 meg for the arts in 2017. With a population of about 5.5 1000000, that's $95 per person.

England uses the National Lottery to help fund the arts through Arts Council England. Per capita spending on the arts varies depending on which office of the land you lot're in. Londoners benefit to the tune of $269 per person. The total allocation for the arts volition be $8.79 million (seven.13 million pound sterling) per year betwixt 2018 and 2022.

Government Spending Isn't the Whole Film

Of course, it's tricky to compare policies and practices in the U.S. with the rest of the world. In Europe, there'due south a centuries-long tradition of big-scale cultural patronage (it was common practice for purple courts to back up orchestras and ballet companies), and post-World War II European nations largely adopted culture equally ane of the pillars of the welfare country along with health, social welfare and educational activity.

In the U.Due south., on the other mitt, private philanthropy has always played an important role in the world of civilisation. "Earlier the establishment of the NEA (in 1965), arts and culture support remained the project of urban elites, business communities, and institutional philanthropy," writes Josephine Livingstone in The New Republic. "When the government did somewhen arbitrate, it supported artists through passive systems like revenue enhancement exemption for cultural organizations, and of course for the donations of their wealthy patrons."

Given these profound differences in funding sources, it's not off-white to conclude that Americans intendance less about the arts than people in other nations. Our funding practices but reverberate our unique attitude toward the office of government and the importance of private giving vs. public funding.

To a greater extent than anywhere else in the world, the arts in the U.South. depend on the largesse of individuals, corporations and foundations, as well as the not-for-profit status created for arts organizations by the federal government. Those sources reward cultural organizations that work diligently and inventively within that arrangement, and governments play the role of facilitators rather than sources of coin. Information technology's more Darwinian than other kinds of cultural funding – but it's also quintessentially American.

Paul Hodgins is the senior editor of Arts & Civilization at Vocalism of OC. He can be reached at phodgins@voiceofoc.org.