Really? I'm trying to think of an example and coming up nearly blank. If I start listing great works of art, especially modern ones, I don't think of many that were state-sponsored. Admittedly I'm no art expert...

Mike: Ah, you need to use the "correct" (i.e., known only to oj) definitions of "nearly", "great", "art", and "government." Otherwise the statement stands up to scrutiny about as well as Obama's foreign policy pronouncements...

If you take "government" to mean "patrons in high places", then the statement fits better - think of Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks", the various Medici commissions, the Vatican art collection, etc. Even Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Company was sponsored by one of the kings for a time - James I, maybe? Heck, the Louvre also counts -except (maybe) for that stupid Plexiglas pyramid out front.

Does that mean the government must bankroll art? I would say no. But if you ask should the government bankroll GOOD art, I think I'd say yes.

...and a lot of bad art in the last half of the 20th century has been a product of government sponsorship.

John, yes to your first point: much great art of the past was patronized by religion, not government. (And no OJ, that's not always the same thing.) The Dutch Masters were largely patronized by businessmen. The Impressionists had no government support. (Though of course OJ, unlike nearly everyone else, doesn't consider Impressionism any good.) Pretty much all the great films were made by businesspeople. Jazz, rock, blues, country: the whole range of great American music has had little meaningful support from government.

One is hard-pressed to find any great art of the 20th century that was the result of government sponsorship, but lots of crud that was, as pchuck points out.

I think, PapayaSF, the point is there was NO great art produced during the 20th century. While I love jazz, it is a performance, not artwork, as is composition and orchestration. Was Fellini a Shakespeare? No. Was Stravinsky a Beethoven? No. Was Pollock a Michaelangelo? Must I even answer that?

I heard Yo Yo Ma express a fantastic observation the other day on state sponsored CBC. He said that he most compares himself with a waiter in a fine restaurant. It is his job to bring fabulous food prepared by a master chef to the audience and make the experience as good as the food.

Truly great art requires a patron or the only avenue of employment for a composer is to be a teacher (or something lucrative but poisonous, like film composing). This was why the truly great Felix Mendelssohn spent far too little of his time composing.

One thing to add:

Gutzon Borglum's Mount Rushmore is a truly great work of art -- yes, 20th century -- and an excellent example of what is possible with American state sponsorship. Though, I doubt anyone would be willing anymore to go through the hell he went through to finish the project.

WE take it, then, that there has happened something supremely paradoxical, but which was in truth most natural; from the very opening-out
of the world and of life for the average man, his soul has shut up within him. Well, then, I maintain that it is in this obliteration of the
average soul that the rebellion of the masses consists, and in this in its turn lies the gigantic problem set before humanity to-day.

Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the
average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas
must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no
acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are
the principles on which culture rests. I am not concerned with the form they take. What I affirm is that there is no culture where there are
no standards to which our fellow-men can have recourse. There is no culture where there are no principles of legality to which to appeal.
There is no culture where there is no acceptance of certain final intellectual positions to which a dispute may be referred. There is no
culture where economic relations are not subject to a regulating principle to protect interests involved. There is no culture where aesthetic
controversy does not recognise the necessity of justifying the work of art.

When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves,
this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveller who arrives in a barbarous country
knows that in that territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian
standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/967/

On the one hand you wish to claim that the great innovation of the American system was Separation, but on the other need to deny that Religion was government on this discrete point. A non-hunting dog.