Film: In the Rough

Though Lynne Munson, who once worked at the National Endowment for the Humanities under Lynne Cheney and is now a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, appears to be conservative in her sympathies, her new book seeks a middle ground that would preserve the agency while purging it of its rabid excesses and its overt politicizing of art.

Munson is an unabashed champion of serious culture; not every conservative could say as much. But her conservatism takes the form of praising an older generation’s culture, the sort that was fostered during the early years of the NEA. Since then, much has happened to dismay her, and the name of this sweeping change of taste is postmodernism. As Munson explains, she “does not attempt to document the breadth of postmodernism’s impact but rather to offer a few important examples of how deeply its intolerance has been felt.” To this end she has examined not only visual artifacts but museums that have caved in to the lowest common denominator, academies that promote ideology over connoisseurship, and the NEA, which has often rewarded subversiveness over traditional artistic competence.

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John Simon

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Though Lynne Munson, who once worked at the National Endowment for the Humanities under Lynne Cheney and is now a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, appears to be conservative in her sympathies, her new book seeks a middle ground that would preserve the agency while purging it of its rabid excesses and its overt politicizing of art.

Munson is an unabashed champion of serious culture; not every conservative could say as much. But her conservatism takes the form of praising an older generation’s culture, the sort that was fostered during the early years of the NEA. Since then, much has happened to dismay her, and the name of this sweeping change of taste is postmodernism. As Munson explains, she “does not attempt to document the breadth of postmodernism’s impact but rather to offer a few important examples of how deeply its intolerance has been felt.” To this end she has examined not only visual artifacts but museums that have caved in to the lowest common denominator, academies that promote ideology over connoisseurship, and the NEA, which has often rewarded subversiveness over traditional artistic competence.