The Arts Are Undervalued in Our Culture.

That's what the owners tell you when they're trying to get their hands on your money, anyway. There's just one problem- it isn't true.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/

In every case, the conclusions are the same. A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment. No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues. Regardless of whether the unit of analysis is a local neighborhood, a city, or an entire metropolitan area, the economic benefits of sports facilities are de minimus.

 

I haven't read any of those studies, but I'm skeptical. Partly because they assume that the entertainment budget of patrons is a static thing and so sporting events compete against concerts, movies, dinner, etc. And partly because 10-15 years ago economists were saying exactly the opposite. Common sense tells you that billions can't change hands without leaving a portion sprinkled through the neighborhood. And I'm cynical enough to believe that if you don't like what an economist is telling you, just get another economist.

But I do like that governments are starting to be skeptical as well, and with these studies they can bargain from a position of strength. Its gratifying when a multi-billionare owner threatens to leave a city, and people are quick to show him the door. Earn your keep or leave. Very simple concept that should apply to everyone; Athletes, artists, rich guys, us.

 

I agree art is undervalued, at least in the US, judging largely by the declining priority the arts are given in most public schools. In ancient times, a formal education usually consisted of music and mathematics (until rhetoric became popular, and lucrative).

Also, I was surprised to learn that the Olympics began as a poetry and song competition. Athletics were added later. In modern times, the poetry and song contests were dropped.

In modern money systems, a unit of money, e.g. a dollar, is a unit of measure—an abstraction just like an inch, or a litre, or an ounce—that facilitates purchases. Without a "liquid" unit of exchange, trade would be most inconvenient.

A paper dollar bill is a work of art itself! But it's only a representation of the abstract unit of measure called a "dollar."

 

The Arts, film, visual,sports and indigenous arts are way over -funded here in Australia. Music does not get much funding, sports are way over funded even for underperforming athletes at Olympic levels ( see female rowers in Seoul),we seem to have excelled in the past as swimmers, not so now. Even schools are far too highly funded IMHO.
Sports such as Football, Tennis and Cricket fund themselves., Surfing also.
Mathematics, Engineering and the Sciences lag behind.Trades and trade colleges are not funded. Most Aussie kids couldn't use a hammer . No, the Arts are NOT lacking in funding in the last 30 years.JMHO

 

Imagine Paris, Rome, London or even Washington DC without the galleries, the architecture, the music, the theatre, the cinemas... the catalogue of human artistic expression they contain. That is not a a city I’d want to go near. It would be concrete, uniform utilitarian tower blocks. No one else would visit too. They would be economically dead.

Civilisation is only made whole and cemented by its art.

Athletics, unless participating, is also a ‘display’ and celebration of humanity to a paying audience in a real world or TV theatre. Sport has no other value to life except how it makes us feel. So of course it’s an art form, the human body the subject. If you did not want spectacle or entertainment from others you’d not follow sport. It’s just theatre.

If we take art in all its forms out of civilisation or life itself, you have no civilisation - only a depressing hive devoid of anything of true value. It would be inhuman and unbearably boring to do nothing except produce and consume identical things from birth to death.

Investment in art and creativity is investment in what makes a culture work. You can’t measure it like consumables and products in the consumption economy. Take the aesthetics and design out of products, houses, cars, etc. and there is no wider economy or market as there is little left for products compete on. The shallowly argued political commentary here is revealing of an immense naivety about the links between arts, creativity and economic growth in communities of humans.

 

This isn't true at all: the vast majority of college athletic programs lose money:

https://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Are-a-Cash-Cow2.aspx

Just to be clear, my argument is that sports are overvalued because they depend on hidden subsidies--exemptions from antitrust law, to prevent competition and support monopoly; taxpayer subsidized infrastructure (stadiums, transit) that doesn't return economic value to taxpayers, and a labor structure that includes restrictions of freedom to move to another employer as well as an extensive "farm system" of nearly free labor, often itself heavily funded by taxpayers at state universities.

You could argue all day that people prefer sports to art--ok, sure, people prefer "Old town road" to Hank Williams senior; people prefer taylor swift to the blues, whatevs.

My argument is that sports are overvalued because they are propped up by a system of taxpayer subsidies that are largely hidden. You can continue to like to watch sports all you want, of course, but if we are engaged in an argument about "overvaluing" we ought to have a sense of how the value of professional sports is derived.

 

Funny, lots of people complaining about how money is lost in the sports, taxpayer money, blablablah.
Really, how many human hours are spent watching sports?
This is the BIGGEST feel good activity in the world. Entertain the most people in the world. I don’t think money is wasted in sports.
And this coming from a guy who doesn’t watch professional sports.
Sports, exactly like art is a feel good “activity”.
Go to the museum Saturday afternoon instead of watching the game and see where the money goes.
I like the way both help grow food, advance technology, make new discovery in medicine, etc.....

 

To @Tonetele comment..

Of course but I do think the renaissance and enlightenment periods and a better, broader liberal education, led to so many of the advances in those areas. People began to look at the world differently. It’s hard to separate the art and science activity in the 18th and 19th C - the communities overlapped.

Many of the key visionaries in enlightenment science were also very involved with wider cultural bodies, science institutions and academies, etc. They knew the betterment of humankind was not one dimensional, profit or exploitability not the only measures. Successful scientist engineers in the past would often reinvest profits in the arts and culture to build better broader based societies. A happy thriving society grows and spends more, so its an investment. We have forgotten that today and soulless super corparations now simply look to society as a money source to be drained in every possible way. People seem to have been conditioned to actually believe in a trickle down economy that stems from this. It’s naive.

My point in the following paragraphs was that the basic survival solution - e.g. a hole in the ground to crap in, becomes an economic driver when people have choice and a market place develops around different styles of holes.. The creative, artistic input turns the most basic item into a range of desirable products people want to buy or upgrade to. That is really where the money is made and real businesses founded.

Arts and entertainment are what lift us from being animals simply subsisting at a minimal level.

Lose it and you will miss it. I guarantee.

 

Well said Guitarteach. We must value both.
BTW the most beautiful man made thing I've seen is Michelangelo's David.

 

This is what I was talking about earlier- "arts and entertainment" don't exclusively exist in fancy galleries, theaters and stadiums. The idea that if we wean the sports industry and the arts from the public teat that we'll lose them is ludicrous.

I travel for work, and am often in large cities and I never visit any publicly funded arts or sports spaces. It makes no difference to me if these things exist or not, and I absolutely wouldn't miss them if they didn't. See my example earlier about going to a Dublin pub where the locals were singing- they certainly wouldn't stop doing that just because the local ballet troop went under, and I enjoyed that evening much more than any play or art exhibit I've ever seen. "The Arts" are within all of us.

As for sports, my neighbor plays in a local football club- a bunch of guys get together on Saturdays and actually play sports, which is infinitely better for your health and well being than sitting on your butt drinking crap beer and stuffing your face with nachos while watching other people play sports, and the only public cost is park maintenance. It's your life, don't be spoon fed what others want to sell you.

 

"I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures." - Justice, Earl Warren

I think fine art, including visual arts, music, and writing, and its history, is also a record of the evolution of artists' accomplishments. How do you put a price on that?

 

Also beats the hell out of running on a tread mill. I'd much rather be chasing a ball, even if it has dimples on it.

 

Clearly I was wrong (again) about the impending “lock” on this thread.
There’s been lots of interesting takes.

 

I had a post in this thread deleted by mods just for talking about my not talking about politics... said it was political.

I paint. I don't even try to sell my painting, though I've given away quite a few pieces to people who really like them. I would never expect to be subsidized or compensated for my hobby, esp. since I don't really need the money. I do my hobbies for me. If others like it, too, that's even better.

I also belong to an abstract painting FB forum where people post and sell their stuff. I am transported to other worlds by some of it, and some of it I wouldn't hang in my garage. I don't critique others' works, because you never know if those artists might one day appear on the cover of TIME magazine. My thing is, it's good if you like it, but it's not necessarily bad if you don't.

 

This thread has made me realize how undervalued my own art is in this world. I think everyone should send me a hundred dollars and show the world how much you really value art. Don’t worry it is really good art. Interesting, introspective, and very thought provoking I promise. Any takers?

 

this thread has made me realize:

there is really no contemporary modern cash value to art, unless you can convince someone to pay for it. Hooray for the free market.

art can't do anything to make your life better in a consumer-oriented world. Hooray for the consumer-oriented world.

If you need to create, hopefully you will create. Hooray for creative people.

For some reason, the value of art - as made by celebrity artists, living and dead - keeps increasing at astronomical levels. Hooray for investment bankers and their ilk, who have so much money they just don't know what else to do with it. Hooray for rich people.

I wish I lived in a world where art was more of a normal thing, appreciated more widely and rewarded more freely without this absurd disparity. Too bad for me. Too bad for the artists among us. Too bad for the human race. Hooray for the human race.

I take comfort in knowing that this is all just temporary, and none of it means a thing in the real universe. Hooray for the universe.

 

There is the theory of infinite parallel universes. That means there is definitely one out there where the starving athlete cliche is a real thing. Now a universe where all the artists are fully appreciated in their time and are all millionaires? I’m talking science here not science fiction.