Reseña

In 1983 a small bombshell went off in the field of cultural policy when the Twentieth Century Fund published Patrons Despite Themselves. The book can quite properly be taken as a full-scale assault on the manner by which tax benefits are accorded to nonprofit arts organizations. Its title, I believe, means that because the actual patrons of arts groups pay less in taxes on account of the tax breaks their contributions to these organizations receive, other taxpayers have to pay more (to make up the difference in government revenue) and so become patrons of the arts despite themselves. It is an old idea but one which has never before been elaborated to book length.The villains are the rich, because of the supposedly enhanced control they exercise over the arts under this tax system. (The) review has only briefly touched the main points of a book rich with much else, including the impact of the tax system on artists, much statistical analysis on who benefits and who pays for the arts, and a comprehensive survey of a good deal of the recent literature. Certainly of great interest to those studyng the theory of tax expenditures as it applies to arts, Patrons Despite Themselves unfortunately does not leave much room for the possibility that this theory may not apply to all.