The burning question in the cultural world today is not the creation of art, but its funding. In Washington, the Reagan administration’s halfhearted attempts to bring the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts into line have been opposed by a solid phalanx of advocates passionately convinced that more money means more beauty. The very health of our national soul, we are told, is a simple function of just how generously the federal government supports cultural activity.

Among the several states, the scurrying for the arts dollar goes on as well. Oregon now has a simple checkoff provision on its income tax returns, painless in its execution, which has been welcomed by Joan Mondale—America’s erstwhile “Joan of Art”—as a milestone in paying for culture. Massachusetts prides itself on an arts lottery, in which purchasers of inexpensive tickets can pursue fortune and the sustenance of art at one and the same time. State legislatures are almost everywhere appropriating more money for the arts, and cities too are increasing their own commitments to art.

Public appropriations for the arts, whether from cities, states, or the federal government, are of course fairly new in the United States. The backbone of cultural support now as before is the private patron, a category which has for many years included charitable foundations and which has now been widened to include corporations eager to improve their own images. The White House, eager to repair the damage caused by its widely advertised NEAbudget