Oh you mean when the governments like the CCP and Soviets destroyed those damn bourgeois arts lol
Imagine how much more culture could be preserved if the gov didn’t get involved. I would encourage gain to study a bit more art history.
I’ve seen gov’t grants being awarded to absolute shite (subjective view on my part) and I’ve seen awesome talent get exposure from gov’t sponsored programs.
If you leave it up to the people with money, solely, to decide access to art you’d be exposing yourself to absolute tackiness and missing true renegades.
This is why the government should just stay of culture. Don’t support it, don’t destroy it, just STFU.
Most art movements thrived because of the growing merchant class or modern day middle class. Not the elite. Unless you count forced soviet art that was good for the wrong reason, all that artistic suppression clashed and made good art. And it sold like wild fire once they actually allowed patrons to create demand vs state sponsored after the collapse. Middle class is the biggest consumer of culture.
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I trust rich people to have better taste in art than government bureaucrats, that’s for sure.
100 years ago when you would sell a painting for coffee and a croissant.
I’ve sold art to rich people. They will buy anything shiny.
They’ve also been patrons to some of the greatest artists who ever lived. Have bureaucrats?
100 year ago they didn’t have access to the internet. I follow artists and photographers on instagram, video content makers on youtube etc. Artists have way more access to patrons.
The church.
And big. It needs to be big.
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And then it created new art movements rebelling from religious arts in favor of the rich patrons demands. Basically the entire Renaissance happened. If you sold art, you should know this.
I agree. I don’t know how that jibes with my support of gov’t programs but, I still think they are needed.
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Sure, I don’t disagree. Things like art programs in school are important. But it’s not crazy to be uneasy about how the gov gets involved.
Money builds for dollars/ping. Cultural ministries preserve for appreciation of heritage, hopefully. Like Gain said, destroying old Japanese buildings in place of boring sameness might have killed some of the charm in Taiwan.
I think the word “Art” , itself is so wide-ranging . Could never understand, in my youth , why my Grandfather was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, when he had no interest or ability in Art . These Institutions sometimes stray off the “Art” , as we understand it to be , theme.
The FRSA, as I have a feeling you already know, goes beyond what people generally consider to be art. Stephen Hawking didn’t knock up any pictures of sunflowers.
I know now, but did not , then.
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Or an Alvin & Heidi Toffler book. You can’t stop the third wave, King Cnut.
And as for how many countries have one, this probably isn’t an exhaustive list but gives you a general idea:
Does your definition of culture involve physical recreation i.e. sports? Great, bye bye Olympics.
Maybe that was too subtle. 
Let’s simplify it:
What do you think of an island that needs (overseas) government support to survive? 
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Hollywood productions also bomb, and Chinese productions also succeed.
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Mainstream productions in western countries are also state funded, to varying degrees. You know what “refundable” tax credits are, right?
Before governments got involved? They’ve been involved in the arts for millennia. Who built the pyramids, the Forbidden City, Angkor Wat, the Sistine Chapel and so on? The private sector?
Yes, it’s also a question of preservation. You are a government. You have a large art collection. You’re “not supposed to be involved in culture” because it’s “Orwellian”! 
So bye bye museums, bye bye archives (except for government documents), bye bye any way to ensure the preservation of your national heritage. Private collectors can do what they like, use canvas as toilet paper, whatever. Anything goes. 
Some works will be preserved, but the public has no say. Even if people want to vote with their wallets for the preservation of this or that work, the collectors are under no obligation to listen.
Or you do have a culture ministry (under one name or another), and you do preserve art. If you staff it with morons, you will get moronic results, but if your collection is under state control it’s subject to laws and regulations, and the public can vote for a less moronic government to appoint less moronic staff. Democracy is messy, but it exists for a reason.
Once you have a culture ministry, in addition to preserving old art and funding new art, you can also build your collection through plain old purchasing and sell bits of it when they’ve increased in value. In this case, art is a commodity like any other. If governments shouldn’t speculate, then okay, no purchases. But then bye bye sovereign wealth funds too, to be consistent.
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