I'm sure this will get down voted but why, in the last 30 years, have we needed the National Endowment for the Arts at all?<p>Art is massively funded. The Motion Picture Arts, The Musical Arts, The Art of Literature, The Art of Architecture, The Popular Arts (as San Diego calls comics and graphic novels), The Video Game Arts<p>Kickstarter will help fund more art. That's great. I doubt it will get rid of NEA. The NEA is about funding things nobody wants. If people wanted them they'd already fund them directly.
I will make a slightly more controversial claim: With Kickstarter, who needs government granted monopolies for the arts? (ie., copyright)<p>One should realize that most of the greatest artworks in history were created without the "benefits" of copyright (and in many cases would have required infringing on copyright, writers and painters have borrowed from each others works all through history).
The NEA is a grant-maker. Kickstarter is a platform for a capital campaign. These are two incredibly different types of "unearned income."<p>I have never seen an organization have a successful annual campaign through something like Kickstarter. Kickstarter itself makes it very clear it is to be used for capital campaigns with very specific purposes.<p>Take a look at the 2012 NEA grants and think about how many of them would thrive on Kickstarter. The BSO for example, the Tanglewood grant miiiight be able to be funded but the general grant almost certainly would not. These arts organizations are modeled around an in person annual campaign through their development offices, and large-scale grants from charitable foundations (or the NEA). The entire model would break down if all funding came direct from patrons.<p>Whether or not that model should be broken down and disrupted is a different story, but almost none of the arts organizations that are receiving MAJOR grants from the NEA are set (or may ever be set) to deal with it.
The only problem I have with the NEA is I'm being forced to pay for something I don't want. I don't care if you make a painting of the Virgin Mary out of elephant poo or put Jesus in a jar of your own piss but I do care if I'm forced upon pain of imprisonment to pay for it. I will never understand the "Greater Good" argument and the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument is just stupid in this case.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ofili" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ofili</a><p>EDIT:
The Virgin Mary painting was not, according to wiki, paid for by the NEA.
National funding is for things that can't get done by themselves. If kickstarter works for you, you don't need NEA there are plenty of valuable art undertakings that do not have public appeal. that is what the NEA should be doing.