Art – Cheap Research Essays

Your assignment is to pick one of the following questions and write an argumentative essay that responds to that question. Your essay should employ a formal, academic writing style and must be a minimum of 1000 words in length.

While outside research is not mandatory for this assignment, it is recommended. Any outside sources that you use should be credited in a list of works cited at the end of your essay, and you must also employ an in-text citation system indicating which references are being used where. Most students choose to use MLA style, but you may use the format with which you are most comfortable.

For more information, be sure to read the “About Papers,” “Grading Papers,” “Tips on Writing Papers,” and “Plagiarism and Citations” sections of the course website.

Question #1:

For centuries, the performing arts in Europe were funded by “patronage”, a system in which the nobility, the church, and other cultural elites provided financial support to artists. In the 17th and 18th centuries, social revolutions replaced monarchies with new forms of government. These new states continued to subsidize the performing arts, believing them to be important symbols of national heritage, culture, and power. Today, the opera and ballet in Europe are still supported with state funding of groups like the Paris Opera Ballet, The Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, and so on.

In the United States, performing arts companies receive financial aid from state and local arts councils and the National Endowment for the Arts. However, support for the performing arts in the U.S. is substantially less than in other industrialized nations. Further, total government funding for the arts in America, when adjusted for inflation, has decreased by 31 percent since 1992.

Cutbacks in government support, in part a result of the recent global economic downturn, have led some performing arts organizations in the United States to downsize or close altogether. Many companies have become increasingly dependent on ticket sales and private donations to remain in business.

Some performing arts groups have turned to alternative ways of financing their projects. Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, for example, offers a modern, technology-driven form of arts patronage in which artists go directly to their audiences for fundraising. In 2012, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) had a total federal appropriation of $146 million. In that same year, Kickstarter helped to distribute over $150 million to creative projects.

Funding for the arts in the United States has long been a controversial issue. There are many who believe that government support for the arts is an unnecessary burden on taxpayers that should be reduced or eliminated. Others argue that the arts are important to the nation’s cultural health and are significant generators of revenue in other areas of the economy.

Keep in mind that, while the NEA provides direct funding in the form of grants, government subsidization of the performing arts can take other forms. Federal, state and local governments offer tax incentives to individuals for charitable donations to the arts. Some provide tax incentives to companies creating jobs in the performing arts industry. Governments can also fund organizations that more holistically support performing artists, as with the innovative New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic.

So, Question #1 is:

How should the performing arts be funded in the United States? Is it important for the American government to provide financial support for the performing arts?