Patronizing the Arts

The title of Garber's erudite, incisive study contains the crux of her persuasive proposal: though financially supported by foundations, corporations and wealthy individuals, the arts are also deemed “nonessential.” These two types of patronizing, Garber argues with wit and aplomb, have led to art's simultaneous devaluation (as “recreational”) and overvaluation (as transcendent). This paradox is not a problem requiring a solution, she says, but rather, an inevitable dialectic. Harvard English professor Garber (Vested Interests: Crossdressing and Cultural Anxiety ), begins by uncovering the contradictions inherent in patronage: the word's very origin is the Latin pater , “father,” and its connections to patriarchy, she says, are not coincidental. Garber traces the patron/artist relationship through the centuries and considers the new class of “American Medicis” in the private, government and corporate sectors. She counterbalances the paradox of patronage with the “paradox of the artist,” whose work's usefulness lies in its “apparent uselessness.” Garber concludes with a call for increased arts patronage by colleges and universities. Her stimulating analyses, both highly informed and refreshingly unpedantic, will be of great interest to the scholar and general reader who appreciates a salient cultural critique. (Sept.)