“Such is the nasty siren song of socialism and fascism. “
I don’t know, I think the siren call is “safety.”
If it’s someone else’s money, there’s so much less risk, thus, less chances are taken. The arts become far less interesting and much “safer” and I don’t mean “less pornographic,” I just mean more predictable and playing to please a board of directors which gives grants.
If you have a patron, you’re trying to please the patron. If the patron rewards excellence (they all don’t), then, we all benefit. Great art is produced.
If you’re on your own, you either “sell out” for commercial success (which sometimes produces great art) or keep your artistic integrity and remain true to your vision. So great art was often produced, but, I guess, not any more, we have to keep it safe and steal from taxpayers in order to subsidize it.
Actually taxpayer subsidies don’t tend to make ‘safe’ art. It leads to nonprofit institutions with a mission, whether implied or eaxpressed, to produce work that otherwise wouldn’t be done. That is, to produce the manifestly unpopular.
I don’t know the specifics of the Les Miz/RSC deal, but usually when nonprofits stage productions for commercial producers they not only take in ‘enhancement funding’ from the producers to cover the costs of developing the piece, but often they take in a stronger box office, because the work is a musical that appeals to the public.
Purists complain the the nonprofits are selling out or straying from their mission, but they are actually staging what the public (taxpayers) want to see.
It’s a perverse system and the answer probably is to take nonprofit status away from cultural organizations.