Government Pays $99,500,000 per Year for ‘‘Artistic’’ Feces

I'm sure you've heard the story. A Federal Judge recently (Nov 1, 1999) ordered New York City to restore the $7.2 million yearly funding for the Brooklyn Museum of Art that New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to withhold because of an ‘‘Art Exhibit’’ displaying a portrait of the Virgin Mary decorated with feces and surrounded by photographs of buttocks. Other exhibits included dead animals in formaldehyde, live maggots, and a translucent bust filled with the artist's blood.

The $7,200,000 for the Brooklyn Museum of Art is only a tiny portion of the total $99,500,000 that you and I have been forced to give to the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) this past year. This latest blasphemous exhibit is only a small sample of ‘‘art’’ the government thinks is worthy of your hard earned tax dollars. The N.E.A.-supported Whitney Museum, is currently displaying Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ", and I recall other ‘‘artists’’ (whose names I forget) who do things like fill water balloons with paint instead of water and throw them at the canvas, etc.

If someone is so filthy rich that he or she can afford to pay millions of dollars for a painting or a sculpture, I have no problem with them spending their own money, even if I think they're a fool. What I do object to is that people, some barely above the poverty line, are forced to subsidize things only cultural elitists claim to appreciate. If these elitists want to look down their noses at me because I don't appreciate their ‘‘art’’ (live maggots and all), I prefer they do it with their own money.

This latest fiasco is just another example of what happens when some one else (the government) gets to spend your money. Remember this episode the next time the government says it needs to raise your taxes.

For more information on wasteful government spending, please visit the Heritage Foundation