Ars gratia publica

When I wrote a book years ago about migrant farm workers, I was able to find, and buy for $1 each, copies of Dorothea Lange’s touching photos of the field conditions I was writing about. They were products of one those programs, and the archives are available to the public at the Library of Congress. There are countless other examples of the work of those artists which we still treasure — Eudora Welty, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, James Agee, Walker Evans and many others.

The New Yorker book critic Caleb Crain remarks upon those unusual days in his review of Morris Dickstein’s book Dancing in the Dark, which describes that period. He quotes the author: “The arts bound people together in a collaborative effort by government to interpret and alleviate their plight.” Others have written about that admirable creative effort to translate hard times in artful and caring fashion. We should be rereading those books and recalling this lesson of those times.

Where are the proposals for bailouts of artists, who are always the first to suffer economic fallout? Where are the stimulus packages for our talented artists? Why do NEH and NEA have to fight for relative morsels when corporate failures are provided for so grandly? Come on, Obama-folks: It’s time for change — relatively small change would be an investment in our country’s legacy.

Visit www.RonaldGoldfarb.com.