A Red State's Arts Blues
South Dakota, a largely rural, politically red state that voted decisively for Donald J. Trump in November, is also a prime recipient of money from the very arts endowment that the president wants to eliminate. If any state knows the value of publicly financed art, it may be South Dakota: One of its biggest tourist attractions, Mount Rushmore, is, among other things, a colossal federally funded sculpture.
People here have already grappled with the question of taxpayer support for the arts when South Dakota’s Republican-controlled state government considered eliminating the state arts council in 2009 during the recession. The council supports local artists and institutions with a mixture of state funds and money from the national endowment. But after a public outcry, Republican officials decided to preserve the spending — by raising a tourism tax.
Mostly rural states like South Dakota could have outsize importance in deciding the fate of the endowment — and of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the president has also marked for elimination. South Dakota, which has fewer than a million people, received the fifth-highest amount of federal arts money per person in the nation last year, and the endowment’s generally small grants can have a bigger impact here than they would at the Metropolitan Operas of the world. The endowment sent the state $966,600 last year, most of which went to South Dakota’s arts council, which gets roughly half the money it disperses here from Washington. (Members of the state’s small congressional delegation did not respond to emails or calls seeking their position on the programs.)
All told, Ms. Young said, the Matthews Opera House received around $30,000 through state arts grants last year. The money made up a sizable chunk of the roughly $350,000 annual budget for the theater, which is about 50 miles northwest of Rapid City.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/arts/trump-budget-arts-endowment.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170426&nlid=73531149&tntemail0=y&_r=0
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A pox on all Trump voters.....