Chapter 6 - Budget Wars

Summary

In May 2015, at Christie’s in New York, nearly $1 billion in art was auctioned, $706 million on a single night.¹ The US alone accounted for $27.5 billion in art sales in 2015.² On November 15, 2017, one painting alone, the much-disputed Leonardo da Vinci Salvator Mundi, sold for over $400 million.³ In February 2017, Republican majority lawmakers and administration officials planned to eliminate the National Endowments of the Humanities and Arts and their total annual budgets of $300 million (less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total Federal budget FY 2017 of $3.85 trillion). The Trump administration later reiterated this call. A simple 1 percent transaction tax on annual US art auctions could generate enough funds to support both endowments’ annual budgets. Why then is public support for the arts and humanities a special target of the right wing? The numbers make it clear that this is not a budget issue. Yet, eliminating these popular programs remains high on the right-wing’s agenda because the endowments underscore a public commitment to authority, separateness, and innovation in the liberal and performing arts. The NEH and NEA support and lend authority to a culture class outside the control and private patronage of a smaller and smaller group of corporate oligarchs.