America's Commitment to Culture: Government and the Arts by Kevin V Mulcahy

Author:Kevin V Mulcahy [Mulcahy, Kevin V]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429718564
Google: Kg08EAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 58734782
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Kennedy Administration was only the beginning in the efforts to encourage the national government to give greater assistance to the arts. Little that was firm or institutionalized was completed by 1963. Yet many of the seeds of future federal government policy towards the arts were planted during the three brief years of the Kennedy Administration: the idea Of one or more White House staff members with an explicit interest in the arts; the idea of a National Foundation on the Arts, now given concrete expression through the National Endowment; the idea of a broad definition of the arts, including architecture, now reflected in many of the government's arts policies; and the idea that a mixed arts support system of patronage would be most appropriate to help support the arts in the United States -- relying heavily on business corporations, individual donors, private foundations, and the states and localities, as well as on the federal government. These have been key elements of the system that have developed substantially since 1963.

These concepts -- and their successful launching -- were solid accomplishments. But Kennedy had an impact on the nation's arts policy in another way -- even though it was a way that he himself professed to consider of secondary importance. The American presidency is both a highly visible theater from which to dramatize new ideas, and a bully pulpit. During his three years in office, Kennedy articulated a vision of an expanded relationship between government and the arts in a way that few American presidents before him had ever done. And the voicing of that vision set in motion forces which would change a nation's cultural policy. As Kennedy once said in words that now stand on the wall of the Center for the Performing Arts that bears his name:

There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a new frontier for American art.

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