The National Gallery is right at the foot of Sixth Street, just a few blocks from the second precinct, but hardly would its shabby citizens venture into those pretentious marble halls. Yet this museum is stuffed with surplus paintings that are considered minor works of the great masters whose masterpieces are on exhibit. How easy it would be to bring good art to the people up the street-to hang in the branch libraries just half a dozen pieces of good art, to keep changing them on a rotating basis to let these people who have never been touched by beauty realize that there is something beyond the Sunday supplement and the dirty sketches scrawled on the walls of tenement hallways. A large number of the citizens of the second precinct readily enjoy music. Yet they would not be the ones to sit on the free steps of the Watergate or listen in crowded silence to the band concerts on the Capitol Plaza. Again, it would have to be the community that shows them that it cares by bringing the chance for community music to them. Just as with the Welsh Miners, the German Turners and many other groups of no high pretentions, such as our own Barber Shop Quartet Singers, the people of the second precinct could be guided to make their own music, to do their own singing, and playing, to find beauty and relaxation and an emotional outlet in something they themselves create. Finally, there is a terrible spiritual void in the lives of these people who have drifted away from the large denominations in whose stately churches and dressedup Sunday crowds they felt unwanted and out of place. The many store-front churches and the gaudy House of Worship for all the people of Sweet Daddy Grace in the heart of the second precinct, all testify to the groping spiritual need of the people in this area. They would seem to be more than ready for homemissionary work by the large denominational churches which, in addition to bringing these people a message of hope and a moral yardstick for their daily lives, would thereby offer concrete proof that the community cares. I include as part of my remarks a speech on the arts which was delivered to the 36th annual meeting of the National Association of Schools of Music at the Palmer House, Chicago, Ill., on November 26, 1960. Í also include a study by the Library of Congress of support for the arts by some 50 cities in the United States, and several items from the Congressional Record on the arts. (The matter referred to follows:) [From the Congressional Record Appendix, Sept. 14, 1959] THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Washington, D.C., July 30, 1959. To: Hon. HARRIS B. MCDOWELL (attention Mr. Frain.) This is in reply to your request of June 23, 1959, for information concerning municipal support of artistic endeavors and cultural activities and to describe the mechanics of this type of support. Your request also states that you are especially interested in determining what cities, if any, earmark a certain portion of their taxes for use in supporting artistic and cultural endeavors and how the amounts set aside by the larger cities compare with the $16,000 for cultural and art purposes in the D.C. Recreation Department budget. The following table represents a brief summary of answers to letters, which we recently sent to chief finance officers in selected U.S. cities, requesting certain information about municipal financial support of artistic and cultural activities. The 56 cities selected to receive copies of our letter were chosen on the basis of their population size (as indicated in the 1950 Bureau of the Census report) or because they were known to give municipal financial support to certain artistic or cultural activities. Number of letters sent_. 56 Number of replies to date (July 30, 1959) – 38 Number of cities which indicated current support of artistic and cultural activities__ 34 4 Number of cities which indicated the lack of any current support of this type_ Number of cities which indicated that a certain portion of taxes are set aside for such support (Evansville, Ind., and St. Louis, Mo.). 2 For the most part, letters received from the cities deal with: (1) sources of funds (i.e., general revenues, taxes earmarked for such purposes, etc.); (2) the artistic and cultural activities, organizations, institutions, buildings, etc., which receive municipal funds; (3) the amount of municipal funds expended for such purposes; and (4) how such funds are allocated to the various municipally supported fine arts and other cultural programs. With respect to your inquiry concerning Washington, D.C.'s $16,000 recreation budget appropriation for cultural and art purposes, the enclosed chart indicates considerably higher appropriations by most other large cities. In preparing the enclosed chart we have attempted to limit the facts and figures included to those which seem most pertinent to the nature of your request. Information contained in the responses from the cities has been presented as we received it. Due to the lack of uniformity of methods of answering our questions, no attempt has been made to interpret the facts contained in the letters. Furthermore, since a definition of the phrase "cultural activities" was not included in our letter to the cities, some of the information received and also listed on the enclosed chart may be extraneous to your purposes, depending on how one defines "cultural activities." In general, we have omitted the following types of activity from inclusion in this chart: Libraries and certain library fine arts programs (unless the latter were specifically mentioned), historical societies, academies of sciences, institutes (unless specifically called "art institute"), certain arts and crafts programs of recreation departments, planetariums, aquariums, zoological parks, botanical gardens, etc., societies of natural sciences, spring fiestas, and certain types of indirect assistance given by city, such as use of staff, office space, etc. (unless specifically mentioned in letters). We hope that this information and the accompanying chart will be helpful. HELEN A. MILLER, |