Despite hard times, US will spend $1 million to send 15 visual artists abroad
Monday, November 8, 2010 at 12:31PM 
The public may be concerned about spending but the federal government apparently is missing the message. The US Dept. of State has announced the smARTpower program, funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. An announcement at the State Dept. said, “The smARTpower program sends visual artists from across the United States to work with communities around the world to create new works of art.”
The NY Times said the program has $1 million in funding.
The Dept. of State said, “U.S. artists will collaborate with local artists and youth in creating original community-based works of art in China, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, India, Kosovo, Lebanon, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Venezuela. These projects will focus on direct community engagement that encourage dialogue, experimentation and creativity, and will be designed to stimulate discourse around local or global social issues like the environment, education, health, girls’ or women’s issues and freedom of expression.”
The program will be administered by the Bronx Museum of the Arts. A panel selected by the museum will select 15 artists who will reap the rewards of the taxpayer funds.
Until smARTpower the department focused on sending performing artists to spread US culture with the culture determined by the individual artist.
NYT said in 2001 the budget for cultural diplomacy programs was $1.6 million. In 2010 under the Democrat Congress and the Obama administration the budget is $11.75 million. Between 2009 and 2010 NYT said the budget increased 40 percent.
The museum’s director suggested to NYT one artist who might apply. A female artist created a project in Mexico, NYT said, “in which she created special sneakers and distributed them to people in Tijuana who were planning to cross the border into the United States. Each pair was equipped with a compass, flashlight, painkillers and insoles printed with maps of the border area.”
Such spending has little in common with limitations on the central government as specified in the US Constitution.
Americans concerned about wasting taxpayer dollars as Democrats push for a tax increase will probably not be pleased to know the government is spending $1 million on 15 artists to create art in other countries. There’s no way to gauge the quality of the art—it’s subjective.
(Commentary by Kay B. Day/Nov. 8, 2010)