With the departure of Jane Alexander from the chairmanship of the National Endowment for the Arts, the country is no doubt in for yet another noisy round of acrimonious debate and media muddle over the purposes and practices of the Federal government’s role in funding the arts and the institutions that serve them. It would be nice, of course, to think that this unfortunate replay of the old exhausted arguments could be avoided—that the appointment of Ms. Alexander’s successor at the NEA might even be used as an occasion for shedding some fresh light on the divisive controversies that have plagued this hapless agency for some years now. But we very much doubt that this will happen.

For the terms in which the problems of the NEA are now debated by both its champions and its critics no longer have much to do with advancing the cause of high achievement in the arts. To the nation’s great misfortune, high achievement in the arts has c ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase