The Arts are Fuel for the American Dream

The power to open hearts and minds is a much-needed, worthy investment

Growing up in a working-class small town in Texas during the 1960s, I could have been confined by low expectations at a young age, but, by chance, I was exposed to the arts in a way that broadened my horizons and expanded my perception of what was possible.  

As a result, my imagination stretched beyond the limits of Liberty County, and carried me to the University of Texas, to UT law school, and ultimately, to the presidency of the Ford Foundation.

We do a disservice to the aspirations of all Americans if we zero out the funding to the arts and humanities, as the White House has proposed in its budget, released last week.

I do not mean to short shrift the many other planned reductions that would have profound, negative effects on the lives of millions of families and individuals in Texas and across the United States.

And yet, when we talk about support for the NEA or the NEH, there is something far greater than public funding for the arts at stake. Eliminating these crucial, historic institutions is a repudiation of American culture as a whole and of the vital role it plays in our society.

The arts have the power to open our hearts and our minds, to help us imagine new possibilities for ourselves and our world. In a time of divisive political discourse—of competing, conflicting ideas about our future—the arts can build empathy and reconnect us with the human experience we all share.

Given this moment in our nation’s history, the arts and their power to inspire empathy have never been a more necessary and worthy investment. Yet, at a time when we find we need it the most, America’s cultural community is on the chopping block.

Ordinarily, we respond to criticism of government support for the arts by pointing to the return on investment. We can easily highlight the $730 billion the creative sector contributes to our GDP, the millions of American jobs it sustains, the trade surplus it generates.

While these facts are powerful, they fall short of the real reason we should unapologetically make the case for the arts. We know that the economic value the arts generate does not constitute their full value.

The arts and humanities address a kind of poverty that goes beyond money—a poverty of imagination—a hunger that lives not in our bodies, but in our souls. 

Consider how the wounded veterans at Walter Reed use art as a way to process their experiences and manage their rehabilitation. The arts open us up to the possibility of transcendence and give us a prism to view our own experience. There is no dollar amount or line item of a budget that can express that value.

Even some who see the value of the arts contend that government arts funding only benefits the elite few, but this argument comes from a place of ignorance. The truth is that most museums in New York City will survive without funding. In fact, it’s the projects throughout rural America that will lose integral support. 

The NEA alone supports creative and enterprising people in every Congressional district. It gives state arts agencies the means to invest in local communities.

Here in Houston, the NEA helps support the Alley Theater and Fotofest, which brought Degas to the Museum of Fine Arts and writers into the classroom—just to name a few. 

In ways big and small, this impact is replicated all across the country, in cities, and small towns, and suburbs alike. From Maize, Kansas, to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, the arts bring communities together around an idea bigger than any one individual.  

In short, these budget cuts make a determination—perhaps unwittingly—about who deserves the arts.

They fail to recognize that the arts are not a privilege. The arts are the beating heart of our humanity, and the soul of our civilization, a miracle to which we all deserve to bear witness. 

We know the unique strength of our nation resides in our creative spirit, our willingness to innovate and inspire. We cannot allow that resource to wither or weaken. It is the core of who we are, and the key to what we can achieve.

My hope is that we do not bring down the curtain on the dreams of the next generation of boys and girls, who deserve every opportunity to expand their imaginations. During this period of challenge and change, we owe it to ourselves not to retreat from our national commitment to our unique cultural inheritance, but to renew it for an America in transition, and in need of every ounce of our creative energy. 

This opinion piece was first published in The Houston Chronicle on March 26, 2017.