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Originally Posted by Bend it like Bourgeois
Honestly, I appreciate the passionate defense of your position but I don't buy it, and your example just confirms my original thinking.
Whether it’s through check boxes, deductions, or just plain old giving or tickets, arts funding (and a million other things) should be voluntary. Some funding to preserve the assets makes sense, but the rest I don’t see.
There is nothing preventing smaller museums from getting anything they want, they simply have to find a way to fundraise on the front end or back end. If the exhibits are worth seeing people will pay to see them or travel to see them. And if no one will drive from a small centre to a large to see the stuff, or pay to see it in their own back yard, then the exhibit itself has little value. The stuff might, but not the production.
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There are very real monetary factors that prevent smaller museums from getting “anything they want” without government intervention. Fundraising works because donors get tax breaks, and as such, the government has stipulated what you can and cannot raise funds for. The costs associated with bringing in even a small or moderate sized exhibit can be very high. Conservation, packing, shipping, insurance etc. are all costs that are very high. These costs cannot be paid with donor dollars. This is where the government used to come in with subsidized services such as ETS. Funding that has been cut has been funding that allows museums to defray these costs. Even if you could fundraise for these things, most communities that are the home to smaller museums do not have the corporate backing that would be able to donate at such a high level. Even here in a large centre, at a large museum, exhibition title sponsor’s donations are quite small, not nearly large enough to mount an exhibition in its entirety. Additionally, all donors, whether they are private or corporate, are getting large tax incentives to do so. This amounts to government subsidization anyways. It is one thing to applaud the corporation who donates to a museum, but they are ultimately getting a tax break which comes from the government. Whether you like it or not, the government decision to no longer assist museums to transport objects properly results in a reduced access on the part of the citizens to their collections.
Funds taken in by the museum from admissions are another matter. There is not one museum that could afford to operate based on the money they generate from admissions. Again, I work in a large museum and over the years we have had some ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions. Even those did not pay for much. Admissions pay for a (very) small percentage of operating costs (electricity, heat, staff costs, etc.). You can also not fundraise for these kinds of things. Consider the example of museums in Great Britain; most of the National museums have no admission charges because government support is so strong. Why charge people to see their own collections when that money is a pittance anyway?
Governments have with museums a contractual duty of care responsibility. The citizens own the objects and the citizens trust their government to care for them. The governments give money to the museums to care for their objects in the trust of the citizens. When a government hamstrings the museums and their ability to do the best work possible with the collections, they are really failing their obligations to the people. This is your stuff. Do you want it cared for by the professionals who are trained to care for it? Is a school group in Lloydminster less deserving of seeing a quality educational exhibition than a group in Calgary? As was stated in a Globe and Mail article this morning, the Alberta government gives more money to the horse racing industry than it does to cultural endeavours such as museums. This is government money going to private industry to support horse racing. Is this more valuable to the culture of Alberta than museums, galleries, orchestras, etc.?