Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.
Worries about the harmful effects of government funding of the arts on their integrity are legitimate. Government funding with specific formula determining which kind of arts deserve supports can be a restriction on the free development of the arts. But the arts do have need of financing supports for their flourishing. Government fund for the arts will be helpful if it is administered with general qualification for application, broad benefit coverage and focus on basic needs.
On one hand, there really is risk that government funding does a disservice to the arts. In the field of the arts, diversity is great, with art works differ in form, theme, genre, and so on. The limited government funding can’t promote all kinds of arts at the same time. Yet it is difficult to determine which kinds have more priority in receiving the funding. As long as government formulate a specific standard for what kind of arts should get funding, there will be restriction on the development of the arts limiting it toward certain direction; hence do harm to the healthy development of the arts.
But on the flip side, economic difficulties are always disturbing factors to artists pursuing lofty artistic goals. Suitable financial support can be very helpful to them and to the arts. We have heard a lot of stories about artists whose valuable art works hadn’t been appreciated during their lifetime and lived in straitened circumstances imposed by financial pressures. If these artists got government funding, they could be released