We've got some serious thread-creep here...but why not? People in folk arts should be especially wary of mediagenic abuses offered by race-to-the-bottom politicians to a public eager to be told their tax dollars (pounds, euros) are being squandered. In the US, the rationale that art has public value and should have public support is being eroded by "commonsensical" arguments that, if it's worth anything, the marketplace will take care of it (Wilde: "An American knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."). These pols get a lot of mileage out of publicizing deliberately offensive, zero-skill things like Serrano's "Piss Christ" as well as highly-skilled but offensive-to-the-mainstream things like Mapplethorpe's photos. What they do not say is that the majority of public funding for the arts goes to provide very limited assistance to small-scale endeavors with much broader appeal (but little potential for self-sustainability in an economy that depends on mass-marketing, copyright benefits and the profit-motive). I'm on a grants-panel with a measly couple hundred thou a year to give away, and we spend it all on people who practice and can teach others to stitch traditional designs in boots, make damascus steel knives, call square-dances, carve santos, things like that. When someone lays down a fiery factoid, it's good to ask yourself what the inference they're asking you to draw might be, and whether the generalization they're implying is valid.
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