Visionaries and Outcasts

A former New York Times art critic's argument for a radical new perspective on government funding for visual artists. Where Renaissance Italy had patrons, America in the early 1960s embraced the revolutionary idea of government-sponsored art with no strings attached. Through the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts, founded in 1965, this country embarked on a daring experiment in laissez-faire artistic funding, providing financial support for visual artists without exerting any of the controls that patrons usually require. Thirty years later, the experiment ground to a bitter, embattled halt. Though congressmen had expounded eloquently a quarter-century earlier about the nation's need for artists, nary a person in a position of political or cultural power came to their defense as funding was cut. What happened in these critical years to change the government's relationship with art and artists, and why? In Visionaries and Outcasts, Michael Brenson, former art critic for the New York Times, reconstructs the full story of the fellowship program for visual artists during the "NEA years." He examines the values embedded in the program, its impact on so many artists' lives, the peer-panel evaluation process at its heart, and the continuing vulnerability of visual artists in contemporary American society. In a book essential to the discussion of the place of the artist in America, Brenson also lays out the argument for a new national arts-funding program.

Michael Brenson is an associate professor in the curatorial studies program at Bard College.