Funding Mozart cover bands just isn’t right

Photograph of crowd at Gallery 4A

If art is about creativity, then why does most of the government funding go to a few relics from the past?

Last night’s exhibition launch at Gallery 4A included reminders that contemporary art galleries struggle to survive: a begging bowl on the bar, and speeches studded with polite requests to become a member or make a donation, and genuinely thankful thank-yous to the private patrons.

Yet as Marcus Westbury writes in the Sydney Morning Herald today, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra gets nearly $9M funding annually — more than all of Australia’s visual arts artists put together. Or all writers and publishers. Or all the dancers.

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