No Bailout for the Arts?
By Michael Kaiser
Monday, December 29, 2008; A15
While government bailouts are being offered or considered for financial institutions, the auto industry, homeowners, and so many other 
needy and worthy sectors, one group is quickly and rather quietly falling apart: our nation’s arts organizations. In the past few months, dozens of opera companies, theater companies, dance organizations, museums and symphonies have either closed or suffered major cash crises.
As someone who has made a career out of fixing troubled organizations, I know that the problems faced by arts groups are often related to poor management and governance. I also know that the difficulty in improving productivity in the arts is a central cause of our financial challenges: It takes as much time to play Beethoven‘s Fifth Symphony today as it did when the piece was composed, and the same number of actors are required for “Hamlet” as when Shakespeare wrote the play more than 400 years ago. Unlike other industries, the arts cannot cover the cost of inflation by improving worker productivity.