The Public and the Arts

The tremendous growth in public involvement with the arts and public funding of the arts, which the United States witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s, took place during a unique period in American history. During that period the social values of the nation shifted radically. In the 1980s, we are again undergoing fundamental change in our social, economic, and political environment. A more restrictive economy is causing the American people to rethink many of the assumptions that engendered the social-values revolution of the last two decades. The watchword of the 1980s can best be described as adaptation, as the nation seeks to blend social and economic goals. In this climate almost all assumptions are being reexamined, including those about the arts and funding of the arts. This article reviews the social and political climate of the 1960s and 1970s, in which culture and the arts exploded, and the changes that have taken place in the 1980s; it then analyzes current public attitudes toward funding of the arts; finally, it identifies some key social and public-policy trends that are emerging in the eighties and are likely to influence the future of funding of the arts.