Hey.

So, for those of us interested in stopping trump, the arts are obviously an essential terrain of struggle.

2. Trump obviously sees the arts as a tool for advancing fascism. He has seized control of arts organizations (like the Kennedy center), dismantled museums, issued directives concerning the style of art in government buildings, and announced plans for an ambitious program of patriotic sculpture.

While all of this is artistic — the goals of these programs are not exactly to create good art. Rather, all arts funding has a political agenda.

Arts funding has been directed to promote social cohesion, to drive urban revitalization/gentrification, to attract tourists, and to advance a range of governmental priorities from combating opioid abuse to supporting recovery from hurricane Katrina.

www.inquirer.com/philly/livin...

So, two thoughts:
1. Arts funding has never been simply about art. This has been explicit in arts programming since at least the 1980s, when, in response to the tilted arc controversy, the NEA began evaluating proposals for their social impacts as well as artistic merit.