Municipal financial support of certain artistic and cultural activities in selected U.S. cities, a compilation of answers to a questionnaire-Con.

General revenues (budgeted annually according Recreation Bureau (sponsors orchestra, Nature to estimated needs).

Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that two letters to the editor, which appeared in the Washington Evening Star of Deceniber 23, 1959, and which deal with this subject, be printed at this point in the Record.

(There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:)

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SHORTCHANGING ITSELF ON CULTURE

I want to commend the Star for the excellent article about the Corcoran Gallery of Art by John McKelway on Sunday, December 13. It is good to have the Star assure us that the Corcoran is vigorously alive on its 100th birthday and looking forward to its second century of service in art and the associated field of education.

But, naturally, along with many other people, it is Mr. McKelway's discussion of what will be needed during these coming years that holds my deepest concern. To begin with, one point should be fully understood. It is useless and, indeed, misleading to compare the income of the National Gallery of Art with that of the Corcoran. These two great galleries represent two quite different setups. The National Gallery is federally owned and largely federally supported; the Corcoran is not and never has been, nor did William Wilson Corcoran intend that the gallery which bears his name would be a Federal Government institution.

The comparison, rather, should be between the Corcoran and, say, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and with other municipal museums throughout the country. These museums are greatly assisted by municipal tax funds and couldn't continue to remain open without such financial assistance.

According to recent study made by the Library of Congress for Representative Harris B. McDowell, Jr., Democrat, of Delaware, included in the Congressional Record, September 14, 1959, this city spends far less on cultural activities than any of the other 38 cities surveyed. Our budget for the fine arts is only $16,000, as compared with New York's $2,600,000, Philadelphia's $824,000, and Baltimore's $448,500.

Why, Hagerstown, Md., gives its Museum of Fine Arts $12,500, which is provided out of its regular annual budget, only $3,500 less than the entire amount the Nation's Capital spends out of its more than $200 million budget.

The Star says the Corcoran Gallery needs a little outside help. No, what it needs is inside help, and judging from Mr. McKelway's remarks about lack of heat, of air conditioning, and of peeling walls and canceled exhibitions, more than a little help is needed.

Representative McDowell has introduced a bill to provide 1 mill out of each tax dollar for art and music programs. The bill is cosponsored on a bipartisan basis by Representative Carroll D. Kearns, Republican, of Pennsylvania; Representative John R. Foley, Democrate, of Maryland; and Senator James E. Murray, Democrat, of Montana. Also, the intent of this bill has the support of a wide range of groups including the American Federation of Musicians, the AFLCIO, and even the Washington Board of Trade.

The plan suggested in this bill is one currently in use in scores of cities where their appreciation of the value of their art galleries, museums, and symphony orchestras produces significant civic support and action. Why should not such help be sought, and given, by Washington, D.C.?

We need not try to compete with the ancient capitals of Euroue and Russia. We are still in the process of making our world. But let us compete with our fellow American cities so we can take our proper place in the growing cultural life of these United States.

HORTENSE AMRAM.

The Star's Sunday feature article, "The Corcoran, at 100, Is Still Looking Ahead," is commendable, but the Corcoran Gallery should have been compared, not with the National Gallery of Art, but with the Nation's local, city-aided museums and galleries.

The Star points out that the National Gallery receives a yearly grant from the Federal Government of $1,853,000. This is true, but information on the amount of financial support given local museums by U.S. cities would have been more apropos and significant-and helpful.

Baltimore contributes $303,000 to the Walters Art Gallery; Buffalo gives $73,430 to the Albright Art Gallery; hicago gives the Art Institute of Chicago $232,405; Dallas gives its Fine Arts Museum $80,000; Houston its Museum of

Fine Arts $20,000; Kansas City its Nelson Art Gallery $21,211; Newark (N.J.) gives the Newark Museum $525,426; New Orleans gives its Delgado Museum of Art $40,000; New York gives the Metropolitan Museum of Art the magnificent sum of $1,849,514; Norfolk gives its Museum of Art $69,083. Philadelphia gives the Philadelphia Art Museum $624,760; Pittsburugh gives its Arts and Crafts Center $25,000; St. Louis gives its Art Museum $320,007; San Diego gives its Fine Arts Gallery $57,159. San Francisco, with a population of 775,000, gives its three city-aided art museums a grand total of $658,891.

Washington, D.C., with a population greater by 100,000 and one of the wealthiest cities in the United States per capita, doesn't give its splendid local art museums, such as the Corcoran Gallery, one red cent.

The District of Columbia Commissioners have requested $10,000 for the Watergate Concerts for the past 2 years and Congress has gladly appropriated this sum. There is every reason for believing that if the Commissioners requested an equal or greater sum for the Corcoran Gallery from local tax revenues Congress would gladly appropriate this also.

It is high time the Commissioners displayed a concern for cultural matters at least equal to that of other U.S. city governing groups.

WILLIAM A. Grant,
National Committeeman,

Young Democratic Club of the District of Columbia.

The VICE PRESIDENT. The bill will be received and appropriately referred. The bill (S. 2796) to provide for the adoption in the Nation's Capital of the practice common to many other cities in the United States with regard to cultural activities by depositing in a special fund 1 mill out of each $1 of tax revenue of the government of the District of Columbia to be used for the National Symphony Orchestra, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and other nonprofit art programs of the District of Columbia, and for other purposes, by amending the act of April 29, 1942, introduced by Mr. Humphrey, was received, read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia.

Mr. THOMPSON. American artists, as citizens of a relatively youthful nation, have long carried on their activities under a considerable handicap. Many of their fellow citizens belittled the significance of the arts, and a good number of those who did view artistic creativity with respect looked across the ocean to Europe as the true home of western culture.

Now, however, there are indications that we are moving into an era in which the American arts will be encouraged to flower in their own land.

I believe that artists play a vital role in showing us the deeper meanings of our world and I approve of governmental acts which indicate the concern of the Nation for the artist and his work.

A number of actions taken already by the Kennedy administration indicate that a view similar to mine is held by the President. The President invited Robert Frost to read at the inauguration ceremonies. (As Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall noted in an article in the New York Times magazine, Mr. Frost is the closest this country has to a poet laureate.) The President subsequently invited 150 distinguished representatives of the arts to attend the inauguration as his personal guests. Then, earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger called for the establishment of a White House prize for distinguished achievement in music and the arts. I, for one, heard this proposal with considerable enthusiasm and am awaiting with interest the report from the committee which is to study the matter.

There are many ways in which the U.S. Government might underscore its support of the arts.

Artists' professional groups have long called for modification of the unfair tax laws, but so far nothing has come of it. Present law, for instance, forbids a writer from spreading the income earned on a commercially successful work over more than 3 years even if it is his only success and he has worked a lifetime on it. Oddly enough, the Internal Revenue Service has, in the past allowed the income from a book to be declared a capital gain (maximum tax of 25 percent) if the author shows he is not a professional writer. The proceeds of former President Eisenhower's enormously successful memoirs "Crusade in Europe," for instance, were taxed in this manner.

I have this year reintroduced my bill to create a Federal Advisory Council on the Arts. It is my feeling that this group could come up with some stimulating answers to the hard question of how government can best move to stimulate and support artistic endeavor.

As government patronage of the arts come into being, we will be wise to bear constantly in mind the aims we are seeking to achieve lest we be detoured away from our objectives. I am a little worried that the National Cultural Center, the enabling legislation for which was enacted under my sponsorship in the House of Representatives, may now be heading for such a detour. When I backed the proposal I had in mind the construction of a comparatively modest multipurpose auditorium here in Washington which could serve as a showplace for the performing arts, related traveling painting and sculpture exhibitions, and so on. But recent newspaper reports indicate that the committee appointed by President Eisenhower to bring the Center into being is contemplating something for more grandiose. The Center, under present plans, is far larger than the population of the metropolitan area of the Nation's Capital can reasonably or realistically be expected to use. It will, in addition, require the destruction of worthwhile existing buildings. The Congress gave the Center a site almost as large as that of the Lincoln Center in New York City on which 6 major buildings will be located. I do not believe the additional land called for in two Republican-sponsored bills before the Congress is needed, or that the powers of the Congress should be exerted to obtain it. Especially is this true when perfectly suitable theaters are being torn down in Washington to provide parking lots. Furthermore, the purpose and function of the Center, as set forth in the present plan, is no longer entirely clear.

I include at this point a number of items on the fine arts which will illustrate the ongoing programs of the Federal Government in the arts, and help document the need for further assistance to and support of the arts as provided in the bills under consideration today. (The items referred to follow :)

[From the Congressional Record, Sept. 20, 1960]

NATIONAL CULTURAL CENTER-PROGRESS REPORTS BY THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF MUSIC CLUBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, AND THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Extension of remarks or Hon. Frank Thompson, Jr., of New Jersey, in the House of Representatives, Thursday, September 1, 1960

Mr. THOMPSON of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, 2 years have elapsed since the 85th Congress, on August 22, 1958, enacted into law the National Cultural Center Act.