Barack Obama used to call political campaigns “silly season,” and, boy, if only we were back in that era of silliness. Today, our public discourse feels wholly performative. In is the Tik-Tok viral video, meant to disseminate a vibe. Out is policy, meant to problem-solve in your life.
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The result? Campaigns, like our own recent congressional one, that debate the war in Gaza or rekindle old, and long-settled, arguments about socialism — in the shallowest of ways — instead of tackling the thornier issue of, say, boosting shared prosperity here at home. All those public forums we’ve had these last five years for offices like mayor, congress, City Council, state rep or senate, governor? How much have we tested candidates’ thoughtfulness around growing jobs? More to the point: How often have we inquired about the connection between investing in the arts and growing jobs?
Shame on us. While the debates about Gaza and socialism rage — and I’ve participated in them and will again — a new disturbing report ought to wake Philly up to just how we continue to miss opportunity. A recent study by Southern Methodist University’s DataArts research center of 10 U.S. cities since 2019 finds that those that invested even a modicum of public dollars in arts and culture have grown faster post-Covid than those that didn’t. And guess what city performs the worst on this score? That’s right, the one that just passed a $7.1 billion budget, the culmination (so far) of an 86 percent spending surge since 2015.
The report finds that Atlanta, Cleveland, Phoenix and Sacramento, which boosted their investments in culture, grew their arts sectors as they emerged from the pandemic — while Philadelphia is singled out for vastly underperforming.
“Philadelphia experienced the greatest contraction of all of the cities that we were looking at,” Jen Benoit-Bryan, the executive director of SMU DataArts told The Art Newspaper. “It has gone from 7 percent of local government coverage of expenses in 2019 down to 1 percent in 2024. Its grants to cultural organizations per capita was at 10 cents in 2019 and went down to 1 cent in 2024.”
Helping to fund the arts is not a giveaway to the privileged class. It’s a comparatively small investment in all of us, and it says that government ought to be in the business of provoking a sense of awe and wonder
According to Benoit-Bryan, that drop-off had “huge ramifications across the sector. Philadelphia cultural organizations are more likely to be running deficits now than they were in the past, and they have had the steepest cuts in their staffing.”
During the time of DataArts’ research — 2021 through 2024 — the City’s overall budget grew from $4.7 billion to $6.2 billion, “outpacing inflation in its rate of growth,” Benoit-Bryan said. “That indicates to me that other investment areas have been prioritized over the arts rather than a general contraction affecting the arts and other areas equally.”
How bad did Philly perform? Well, we not only posted the steepest decline in local arts funding, our arts organizations (not surprisingly) also made the deepest cuts of any arts groups anywhere, slashing staff by 47 percent. No other city comes close to our near decimation of such a vital economic sector.
Arts grows jobs and quality of life
To be clear: When it comes to arts and culture vitality, the buck doesn’t necessarily stop at City Hall. There are many factors at play, including our shrinking and stretched philanthropic class. But local government can be a stopgap and set a tone, as has been the case in some of the other cities studied. Why, you might ask, does this even matter? Especially when we’re the second poorest big city in America, with the nation’s worst economic mobility scores? Precisely because of all that. Funding arts and culture is not a handout; it’s an investment in growing jobs and quality of life. It also gets to the heart of who we are and what binds us.
“Art is the great democrat,” John F. Kennedy said in 1962, “calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color.”
I know, I know. I got yer Camelot right here. Different time, and all that. But some principles are timeless, or ought to be. What Kennedy was getting at — what he led America to think of itself — was the power of the communitarian ideal: That literally coming together — Black, White, old, young, rich, poor, man, woman, native, immigrant and all others — in shared cultural curiosity was not only a great unifier, but our greatest differentiator. The country’s secret sauce, as it were.
It’s hard to imagine now, but the White House from Kennedy till about a decade ago served as proof positive for the nation that art, democracy and prosperity all went hand-in-hand. In the post-World War II 20th Century, America built the greatest economic engine in the history of civilization in no small measure because writers, painters, musicians and architects were as central to the public life of the nation as elected leaders, lawyers, captains of industry and, uh, whatever the equivalent of reality TV stars would have been back then.
Just what is the return on investment when it comes to the arts? According to the Americans for the Arts Arts Action Fund, arts and culture is a $1.2 trillion industry that supports 5.4 million jobs. That amounts to 4.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product — larger than sectors like transportation and agriculture. In Pennsylvania, arts and culture is the Commonwealth’s fourth highest driver of economic activity, ahead of education and utilities and just behind transportation. And that statewide number would have been significantly higher were it not for us, folks.
Other cities have learned the degree to which public subsidy of arts and culture pays off. Here, political claims have long embedded themselves into our budgeting process. Say what you will about the push for a privately funded Sixers arena a couple of years ago; Mayor Parker at least deserved credit for advocating an ambitious economic development deal. That (ultimately aborted) deal also had the support of the Building Trades and the African American Chamber of Commerce. There are no such uber-connected entities pressuring elected officials to support the arts.
No other city comes close to our near decimation of such a vital economic sector.
“When I talk with artists in New York, I often wonder how many people regularly travel south from there to see things here — it’s not yet a habit, despite the fertile arts and culture scene here,” says Tim Griffin, curator and former editor of Artforum magazine and a transplant from New York and Los Angeles who evangelizes for our art scene. “But if there was a clearer sense of a Philly narrative around all that Philly has to offer, it would become a habit. And then you’d be talking about a cultural sector — which is already starting to grow — with an influx of funds around tourism to match.”
In effect, Griffin is making a demand-based argument. In a city where, historically, investing in the things that can stir the human spirit or just invite us to come together and think have tended to get short shrift for political reasons, the pressure for change has to come from us.
It’s going to get really interesting when Jeffrey Lurie comes calling for public investment in a new Eagles stadium. There is no greater Birds fanatic than yours truly; I was in the 700 level of Veterans Stadium when, decades ago, then-coach Mike McCormack publicly called his team “a bunch of dogs” and the fans all chanted “Alpo! Alpo!” So I’ve got my bona fides. But numerous studies show that dollars invested in sports venues fare far worse than those spent on arts and culture. What are you going to do when Lurie has his hand out, pols?
Democrats like to say that budgets are moral documents. Well, The Citizen and Committee of 70 partnered with Nick Hand to graphically break down Mayor Parker’s fiscal ’27 budget, and it’s not pretty. It cuts arts and culture spending by nearly 30 percent due to cuts to the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. Helping to fund the arts is not a giveaway to the privileged class. It’s a comparatively small investment in all of us, and it says that government ought to be in the business of provoking a sense of awe and wonder in the row home dweller, the student renter, and the Rittenhouse Square doyenne alike. Fund that, like Atlanta and Phoenix are doing, and then talk to me about moral documents.
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