It's not like there's a lot of it left, but the Obama proposal for a cut in the budget to make nice with the Republicans and keep government from coming to a halt includes a $16 million dollar cut out of the $40m budget for the Kennedy Arts Center and VSA. And the entire program's budget is on a proposal to be cut for next year. Obama is proposing a substitute $246m grant at the state level, though that is very unlikely to go unchallenged.
Source: [Link]
So what happens next? An impoverished landscape for the arts.
About 80,000 years ago, a volcano called Toba erupted in Africa. It was one of the biggest eruptions in millions of years. Eight feet of ashes fell, killing most plant and animal life. Man, too. Our numbers were reduced to around two-thousand individuals, and they survived by changing strategies to fit the new Wasteland. No longer able to hunt on the African Savannah, they retreated to the shores and learned to make canoes/rafts and turned to fishing to survive.
Artists must change strategies to meet the new economic wasteland.
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