Privatizing the Arts

Describing the drastic slashing of government arts funding as a trend toward privatization of the arts is surely a miracle of market thinking, akin to describing the homeless situation as a trend away from house ownership or the health-care crisis as a trend toward independence from insurance (“The Word in Arts Funding--Privatize,” Jan. 21).

It requires some aesthetic knowledge and intelligence, however, to ascend the next evolutionary rung of thought, to gradually wake to the realization that perhaps the arts are not like business in every respect.

These catastrophic cuts in a state that already enjoys a pathetically meager level of arts funding and education, in a country that provides about 1/400th the level of arts funding in Germany, will effectively strip accessibility to the arts for the next generation.

FRANK COX

San Diego