Subsidization of Art as Social Policy

The arts have always been integrated into their larger culture, responding to shifts in taste and fashion and to changes in the social uses to which they have been put, as much as they have promoted those same changes. Even their alienation reflects a social influence. When this relation between society and the arts is recognized and affirmed, it can enhance both by rediscovering the human locus of perceptual meaning and by encouraging fuller social consciousness. An enlightened and imaginative program of subsidies would promote cultural evolution. And an inclusive conception of art and its social role can lead to their distinctive contribution to the physical and social shape of our environment