After suffering years of state funding cuts, Michigan’s arts and culture sector is rallying for a comeback.
ArtServe Michigan, the state’s leading arts advocacy voice, is hailing a new ticket tax bill introduced in the State House last month by Rep. George Cushingberry, chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
Cush’s bill would create a 2 percent tax on admissions to zoos, live theater, opera, museums, and professional and college sporting events. The revenues would provide a sustainable funding stream for arts and culture grants across the state. Such grants have been cut from about $50 million in the 1980s to near zero today — in seeming contradiction to the conventional wisdom that Michigan must invest in highly attractive “placemaking” to attract and retain entrepreneurial talent and companies.
At the same time, a statewide “cultural data project” in 2010 will show the Michigan arts and culture industry’s “economic impact and… the collective financial health of the sector and trends over time,” Nevill Vakharia, a project director at the Pew Charitable Trusts, told Crain’s Detroit Business last month.
“I think sometimes people view the arts as fluff, but… the arts community has real jobs across the state,” Melonie Colaianne, president of the Masco Corp. Foundation and an ArtServe board member, told Crain’s. “It’s important to the entire state to understand the arts serve as an economic engine, and that doesn’t seem to be recognized.”
5 Comments
Those that consider Art as “fluff” are wrong.
Life imitates art, art imitates life. Without the reflective power of the arts we would still be living in caves as participants in Plato’s Allegory.
We need more than shadows – art energizes the creative mind. We need creativity and innovation in this state, not many different shades of grey.
Please encourage the Creative minds, they are the ones that look outside the box.
The ones that dare to try things others shy away from.
The creatives don’t let what is happening now influence where we can be or what we can do.
The artistic take risks and go places regardless of acceptance.
If the arts are important, why should we raise the tax on live performances, operas, and museums? To tax something is to discourage it.
Why isn’t the 2% tax on art exhibits shows and art work sales? Why are only the performing arts taxed? Support themselves and not on the backs of others. Anything that requires a tax, subsidy, grant, bail-out, public funding etc can’t support itself for the supposed value it has. Why? If it is so important, noble and necessary then it should be a success. Since the Arts community will never define art, it is to vague and unsustainable. To tax entertainment activities to support a different activity makes my point. The “Arts” want a tax on something successful to support and prop up something that isn’t successful. Perhaps a more equitable method of this taxation would be on musical instruments and supplies, clay for molding and the equipment, paints, canvas and brushes etc, along with costumes, sculpting apparatus and supplies in addition to film and cameras etc. Now that shows support from within for those who are possessed with it. The truth is all this wouldn’t generate enough revenue to pay for the administration of it. Why is it that any/all forms of art require taxation, grants and subsidies? If one goes into these endevours one goes in with eyes wide open. I love woodworking at my elaborate home shop. I can’t make a living at it however. Can I tax artwork to support home woodworking because it is “my” thing? What I do is real important also, or maybe not so much.
One in 10 jobs in Michigan are in the nonprofit sector, of which arts and culture are part.