funding the arts is good, actually

a response to mayor gloria's proposed FY27 budget for the city of san diego

Apr 20, 2026

*Modern Rome,* Giovanni Paolo Panini (c. 1757)

I am an employee of an arts institution in Balboa Park, San Diego; the views expressed here are my own as a museum worker, fundraiser, arts patron, and resident of District 9.

the reality of the arts in san diego

Picture this: you live in the United States, where arts and culture is understood not primarily as a public good, but as an economic engine growing at twice the rate of the overall economy. The President, a man who has explicitly promoted his ideological view of culture and artistic expression, has twice pursued the full elimination of the IMLS, NEA, and NEH. The trickle-down effects are massive—one of the two agencies in your state responsible for moving funds from those federal agencies into the bank accounts of actual artists and arts organizations, California Humanities, immediately loses over 90% of their funding.1 Institutional funding opportunities contract as the economy becomes more volatile; private philanthropy shifts on personal whims; intentions of likely patrons to travel to the United States diminish. Admission revenues never returned to 2019 levels, the cost of doing business continues to skyrocket, and the building you work in feels like it’s crumbling around you.

The City of San Diego, where you live and work, is once again facing the reality of a structural budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year. For the last two years, in recognition of the budget realities, we’ve asked for funding to remain flat. Sure, you and your peer institutions were promised 10% of discretionary TOT funding for arts and culture in 2012, and that promise has never materialized, but you were slowly making progress.

The Mayor, the City, and the County of San Diego alike continue to tout the pursuit of public-private partnerships and private philanthropy. Arts and culture is the ultimate public-private partnership, and it already works, so surely we can expect some funding to remain in place. Right?

….

Right?

The proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 in the City of San Diego, with a total budget over $6.4 billion and a projected deficit of $128 million, cuts funds for arts and culture by over $11.8 million. That amounts to an 85% cut to save 0.18% of the budget and close 9% of the budget gap.

Arts and culture organizations in Balboa Park are in double jeopardy—cuts to some of the most consistent, dependable annual funding we receive, combined with depressed earned revenue because of the implementation of paid parking in Balboa Park. Triple jeopardy—arts organizations with physical spaces, like in Balboa Park, are massively intertwined with a network of roving art groups, so every cent in lost funding is likely to impact multiple organizations. Film festivals, ballet companies, choirs, youth ensembles—so many nonprofits, receiving reliable city funding, being hosted at nonprofit arts venues who also received city funding. Non bis in idem, the culture workers scream.

So. We’re short money and something has to give. Hear me on this!

If a budget is a moral document, and the budget is legally required to be passed balanced, plus the adopted budget is never the actual budget, then increasing budgeted funding for things like police overtime2 is a short-sighted tactical misstep that is also structurally unnecessary.

And, you know what, just from a strategic decision-making perspective? The community of artists, cultural practitioners, and nonprofit workers affected by this proposal are, on balance, familiar with the prospect of dwindling funds and making ends meet— I genuinely believe that as much as a 35% cut would not have resulted in backlash with any sort of meaningful momentum.

“But it’s a deficit! The arts are a luxury, and jobs are on the line!”

There are people within the city limits who are currently employed and will not be come fiscal year 2027—that is a fact. Constant discourse around the explosion in hiring middle managers, pay raises, and pensions mean the city will reckon with layoffs somewhere. The outstanding question is from where they will be cut. I love municipal government; in fact, I love bureaucracy! I don’t want city workers to lose their jobs. But I really don’t want the emerging professionals, the arts educators, and the frontline fixtures of the institutions that make this city a great place to live to lose their jobs. That is the weight of the question on the table. Considering that the city will be paying off pension debt3 until it’s been underwater for one hundred years, there is a strong fiscal argument4in support of cutting city staff, rather than the already underpaid nonprofit professionals who facilitate artistic inquiry and expression.

Some will go further and ask why the city should allocate any funding for art. It’s a fair question! People who care more about the economy than I do have well addressed the utility argument that the arts and culture sector is an economic engine, yielding positive externalities with a high enough return on investment that it is worth tossing some money towards it. This is true! But art also matters as an end in itself, and people deserve an explanation for why. Artists and the art-adjacent, myself included, have a tendency to state that art does all sorts of things, that any individual should just understand the intrinsic value of the arts. So!

Art is good because:

Art is the ultimate expression of freedom—to imagine and create requires it.5
The fact of art reifies existence. Emotional or ideological reactions aside—seeing it, hearing it, moving through it, proves that we exist.6

And, arts organizations matter because:

Great art needs more than talent—it always has. Artists need spaces in which to create, and places to perform; artists are kids who become creative adults because of their youth theater, ballet, and orchestra, or see a museum for the first time on a field trip; artists need confidence, and a place to stay
Being surrounded by arts organizations enriches the quality of a person’s life, even if they never become a patron or artist themselves. 7

Public funding for the arts is good because:

I’m actually not going to do a list this time, I’m going to do a Summa Theologica-style argument à la St. Thomas Aquinas, because that’s a good intellectual exercise.

First, government will always impose bias onto any activity funded, because the decision to fund or not to fund must rely on ideology and oppression.

Second, private wealth is a better fit for arts and culture support than municipal funding.

Third, local government should only focus on core services, and art is not a core service.

So, public funding for the art can never be just.

Sed contra, President Roosevelt said “As in our democracy we enjoy the right to believe in different religious creeds or in none, so can American artists express themselves with complete freedom from the strictures of dead artistic tradition or political ideology. While American artists have discovered a new obligation to the society in which they live, they have no compulsion to be limited in method or manner of expression.”8

First, the U.S. Supreme Court established in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998) that the agency can develop create standards for the welfare of the general public which do not amount to viewpoint discrimination. This is further addressed in the next section, as San Diego’s funding model is particularly insulated from partisan influence over the development of culture.

Second, arts and culture is already massively reliant on private philanthropy, and it should not be exclusive with public funding. Private philanthropy does not necessarily have the good of a community in mind; public support does. Private philanthropy can become inextricable from the mission of the organization; when public support becomes inextricable from the mission, it is a successful public-private partnership. Private philanthropy can pull an institution’s reputation down as scandals break; public funding gives a stamp of approval, a vote of public confidence, to institutions without the gravitas to thrive through only private philanthropy.

Third, art is a core service. There will always be another pothole to fill, another parking ticket to write, another initiative to manage, and those things take money. Why even bother spending some of it to make this a place worth living in, right? But having a Museum to host the historic collection of Alica Keys and Swizz Beatz also takes money. Keeping Balboa Park and Chicano Park vibrant takes money. Having cultural assets to make a conference at the Convention Center engaging for all visitors takes money. Without culture, what makes a city distinct from an industrial park, or a dumping ground, or a wasteland of survivalism?

So, public funding for the arts is a good and just system. 9

Local public funding for the arts is particularly good, because:

Local agencies can allocate both funds and endorsement to lesser-known organizations and under-resourced neighborhoods. This is a super 21st century Republican Party point of view, for those keeping score at home. Local politics are often, in theory, more insulated from partisan politics—the San Diego City Council is elected in technically nonpartisan elections.
The City of San Diego’s funding model is particularly effective!
There are two in which the City of San Diego primarily disburses arts and culture funding - Operational Support Program (OSP) and Creative Communities San Diego (CCSD). These initiatives grant critical, largely unrestricted funds to 501(c)3 nonprofits per an independent panel of local and regional leaders in the sector. Unlike many grantors, year over year funding amounts are very stable. Funding received in year one doesn’t mean you can’t apply for another three years, like many institutional funders; the city actually intends to provide reliable and consistent general operating funds.

Do we want to live in a world with great art?

If you’re with me to this point—art is an intrinsic good, public funding for art is generally good, and local public funding is generally that much better—then the end of the story is about intentionality, vision, and promises made.

If a budget is, in addition to being a practical tool for management, a moral document that maps the values of a community, then the budget put forward today paints a bleak picture of how our leaders imagine the future of San Diego. The proposed budget does not reflect a politics of care, and investment, and responsible stewardship, nor does it meaningfully move the city towards fiscal strength. The budget before the city council is a budget premised on a politics of fear. Fear of danger, within and without the City’s purview; fear of risk, to reputation, safety, and distribution of power; fear of reprisal and critique; fear of and for the future. There is so much of which to be afraid, and pressure to regress and conserve from every angle, so I know why this is on the table; I also know that fulfilling futures, lives worth living, do not materialize without intention. 10

Call this a temporary cut all you want: it will be a harrowing climb to get back to where we were, if we ever do, and we will lose talent, public standing and institutional knowledge in the process. The Mayor has used the phrase “structural budget deficit” dozens of times in the last two years; if it is a structural deficit, and the city is explicitly pursuing structural solutions, then this is not a temporary cut, it is a structural one. As the City Council votes on the budget, they define the foundational structure of the City—without supporting the cultural infrastructure that makes life fulfilling, a city is just concrete and rebar.

“The actions that a state and its many operational entities take that affect the cultural life of its citizens, whether directly or indirectly, whether intentionally or unintentionally, together constitute the effective cultural policy of that state… The government’s responsibility is to provide equal opportunities for citizens to be culturally active on their own terms.” - Kevin V. Mulcahy, “Cultural Policy: Definitions and Theoretical Approaches,” 2006.

Thanks for reading Know Big Deal! This post is free-to-read and time-sensitive to the FY27 budget process; consider sharing with someone who thinks art is for coastal elites.

Fin. Tell me why I’m a liberal arts idiot who doesn’t understand the budget! Knock me down a peg.

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