Searching for a National Policy on the Arts

There have always been United States policies on the arts. Some of the nation's founding fathers envisioned federal support for the arts. Congress maintained the Constitution did not empower it to “encourage” the arts, but enacted legislation addressing acknowledged national concerns that also regulated the arts, employed artists, acquired artworks, and created cultural institutions. These uncoordinated de facto arts policies provided models for future action on arts‐related matters. The federal government's failure to address the arts more directly produced a contentious environment for the nation's artists, leaving them to feel disenfranchised. Advocates’ attempting to gain parity for artists and the arts gave rise to a national movement in the 1930s that continued into the 1960s, and constituted the pregovernmental agenda for the National Foundations on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965.