Real culture is self supporting by provate sales and private donors.
Anything that is subsidized by goverment is not culture. It’s
You are right if you are talking about the U.S., but incorrect if you are talking about Europe - we don’t have a national culture - we barely even have any history - but the French - and all Europeans - do. Most of the great works of Western culture - painting, theater, music and ballet - was sponsored and funded by government or the church. That would be, to list a few: the works of Michaelangelo, Velázquez, Mozart, Shakespeare, the Russian ballets of the 19th century...In short, the masterpieces that are the foundation from which all the rest of the Western canon are derived.
Here in the U.S., if you were to stop ten native-born Americans at random on the street and ask them who is on the ten dollar bill, six of them won’t even know, seven of them, if told his name, won’t be able tell you what he did.