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Yes, most of the world's great art was supported by patrons: kings, aristocrats, and the Church. Visit Italy, and virtually all the great art of the middle ages and the Renaissance was supported by people like Lorenzo di Medici or Pope Alexander VI, or was painted by monks and anonymous stoneworkers, who labored for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

BUT, something went wrong in the modern age. I'd trust the Medicis to know great art when they saw it, but does anyone really believe that the NEA has the slightest idea which artists to support? It would be better to give the money to the Mafia and let the Godfather choose.

There are a couple of crucial distinctions between Lorenzo di Medici and the NEA: The NEA's ONLY purpose is to spend money, and they can only spend it on 'art'. They also, by and large, don't have to look at it. The Medicis and other similar patrons, in contrast, had many other things that they could use their money for. They also were the ones stuck with looking at the art they commissioned. Do you honestly believe that the people of the NEA would spend their OWN mony to pay for some woman drooling in a corner of their living room? While the idiocy of the 'intelligencia' can often times astound, I doubt it.

but does anyone really believe that the NEA has the slightest idea which artists to support? It would be better to give the money to the Mafia and let the Godfather choose.

That's what I was alluding to when I mentioned the peer review system not always working. In reality, artists' peers are their own worst critics. I served on a State Grant Panel, and we actually visited grant applicants to determine two things: 1.) The effectiveness of the organization (i.e. budget controls, effective staffing and board, marketing effectiveness, etc..) and 2.) Artistic Quality--and we did get into involved discussions regarding what constituted a work of high enough quality to merit state funding.

The system, as I see it, has two weak links:
1.) It relies heavily on the quality of the panelists selected.
2.) The depth to which an organization can be evaluated is inversely proportional to the number of applications that need to be processed.