The Great American Arts Debate

For the past year the Chief Executive of the United States of America has considered policy and signed bills to the strains of Wagner, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Amy Carter’s violin, and to the cerebral hum of the country’s First Family as it gravely consumes the works of Tolstoy and Dylan Thomas. According to White House aides, the President listens to classical recordings eight to ten hours a day; according to Mr. Carter, he and his family have for years been in the habit of analyzing a poem a week. (“A poem a day keeps Republicans away.”) The Capital is the seat of the American Renaissance; if Sinclair Lewis were alive today, his livelihood would hang on the safe passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins bill. At long last, Pennsylvania Avenue aspires to rise above Main Street.

The general effect of this cultural grease upon the workings of government is problematical: would one be comforted or further discouraged to learn that President Carter signed the Panama Canal treaties a quarter of an hour after listening to the Immolation Scene from Gotterddmmerung? No matter, really; the fact remains that the President wishes the nation to know that his spinning LPs are the flywheels of the mechanism he is building to power the arts in America. “Cultural affairs are receiving more responsible attention in the Carter White House than at any time since Thomas Jefferson,” Barry Jagoda, the White House spokesman for the Administration’s arts and humanities policies, told the press last August. “I am surprised that those citizens concerned with cultural affairs have not recognized that leap forward in attention from the White House.” What those interested citizens cannot possibly have missed is that the federal budget for 1979 proposes an increase of $51 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities—the biggest annual increase in the history of the two federal agencies.

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

For the past year the Chief Executive of the United States of America has considered policy and signed bills to the strains of Wagner, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Amy Carter’s violin, and to the cerebral hum of the country’s First Family as it gravely consumes the works of Tolstoy and Dylan Thomas. According to White House aides, the President listens to classical recordings eight to ten hours a day; according to Mr. Carter, he and his family have for years been in the habit of analyzing a poem a week. (“A poem a day keeps Republicans away.”) The Capital is the seat of the American Renaissance; if Sinclair Lewis were alive today, his livelihood would hang on the safe passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins bill. At long last, Pennsylvania Avenue aspires to rise above Main Street.

The general effect of this cultural grease upon the workings of government is problematical: would one be comforted or further discouraged to learn that President Carter signed the Panama Canal treaties a quarter of an hour after listening to the Immolation Scene from Gotterddmmerung? No matter, really; the fact remains that the President wishes the nation to know that his spinning LPs are the flywheels of the mechanism he is building to power the arts in America. “Cultural affairs are receiving more responsible attention in the Carter White House than at any time since Thomas Jefferson,” Barry Jagoda, the White House spokesman for the Administration’s arts and humanities policies, told the press last August. “I am surprised that those citizens concerned with cultural affairs have not recognized that leap forward in attention from the White House.” What those interested citizens cannot possibly have missed is that the federal budget for 1979 proposes an increase of $51 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities—the biggest annual increase in the history of the two federal agencies.