Private philanthropic giving constitutes the bulk of the budgets of arts and cultural institutions in the U.S. The arts and humanities received $23.5 billion in such funding in 2021, according to Giving USA 2022; by comparison, the National Endowment of the Arts’ annual budget for 2021 was a mere $167.5 million. There’s a useful debate to be had about the role of federal versus private giving to the arts, but an even more urgent question is whether charitable giving, public or private, is effective in its current shape. Sadly, it is not: the bulk of arts spending doesn’t seem to get to the artists it was intended to help.
