Subscribe
The Daily Grind Video
CLOSE

I am stunned by Governor Paterson’s recent proposal to cut the New York State Council on the Arts’ budget by 40%. It seems like an abandonment of his values and his lifelong stance about the importance of the arts in community, economic, and human development. I understand what a difficult position the Governor is in and how dire the economic realities of the State are. However, to unleash such disproportionate cuts to an agency whose activity delivers over $25 billion in economic impact to our State and employs over 200,000 workers will only set us back in terms of recovery. New York City and State’s status as a center of creativity and innovation has already begun to erode. In fact, recently, musician and author Patti Smith had some advice for struggling artists thinking of moving to New York: don’t.

At a discussion with writer Jonathan Lethem at Cooper Union on Saturday, Smith was asked if it was possible for young artists to come to New York City and find the success she did. In response, Smith told the crowd, ‘New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling….so my advice is: Find a new city.’ If we don’t work to reverse this erosion, we also lose our competitive edge in the global market place. This will not only cause us to become more financially bankrupt as a City and State, but it will also cause us to lose one of the most important vehicles we have to discover truth, harmony and meaning in our individual communities and in the state as a whole.

[pagebreak]

Governor Paterson’s proposed cuts to the New York Council on the Arts are made even more devastating by Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement yesterday that he plans to cut arts funding as well. Without an organized union structure to fight for individual artists and arts organizations, arts funding seems to be an easy target.

Please join me in giving voice to this important issue by urging Governor Paterson to reconsider his proposal to cut funding to the New York State Council on the Arts by 40%.

– Danny Simmons, Chair, New York State Council on the Arts