That kind of language used to exist in the United States about 20 years ago.

Interviewee: Grant Kester

Kester: It is really interesting what you said about Germany and Austria in terms of a form of public policy in which the art that receives state support should be art that can’t find support in the market. That’s an open acknowledgment that the market system cannot solve all our problems. And that’s precisely the same kind of language that used to exist in the United States until about twenty years ago, in the rationales for public funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and state arts councils. Unfortunately the neoliberal imperative has moved so much more rapidly in the US that this concept is almost entirely alien here. It’s always refreshing for me to realize that there are still some countries that are willing to provide formal support for a public sphere that operates outside the logic of the market.