I have just been informed, via the Executive Director of the Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Association, that The House Appropriations Committee has voted to eliminate the budget for the Georgia Council for the Arts in FY 2011. When GCA is eradicated this will mean that Georgia will be the only state and territory that will have no state arts agency.
With no arts council, the state of Georgia loses federal arts funds and over 1 million dollars in Federal funds for the arts.
Support from GCA has served thousands of local organizations, artists and individuals and by doing so, has served our communities. With schools, increasingly, sacrificing crucial arts programs, this comes as a devastating blow. The arts are an integral element of education and social well-being and to eviscerate all programs is to wrench the very soul from society.
Wendy Wasserstein: "The arts reflect profoundly the most democratic credo, the belief in an individual vision or voice.”
Robert Schumann: "The artist's vocation is to send light into the human heart."
Henry Miller: "Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life."
Albert Einstein: “True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”
Henry James: “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”
Leo Tolstoy: “Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man-we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling. The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means-by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.-should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside. And it is only art that can accomplish this.”
Please, write to our representatives (click on the link below to find your House and Senate leaders). Protest this tragic assault upon the collective spirit.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/statedir.tt?state=GA&lvl=state
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Obscenity is never helpful - nor is slander.