Friedrich Calls For Government To Provide Subsidies For Arts

The federal government should supply funds to the states to subsidize the arts, Carl J. Friedrich, Eaton professor of the Science of Government, told the Hillel Round Table of World Affairs yesterday.

"In any society, art requires the support of those with power and money," Friedrich explained, but added a warning against having the aid controlled directly from washington. "If you have art administered by a centralizing bureaucracy," he said, it is the opposite of stimulus. It kills.

"We could have a Dr. Zhivago written here," Friedrich continued. "We could even have Democratic and Republican schools of art."

Excellence in the arts, he explained, is primarily the result of competition. while a totalitarian state "usually has a deleterious effect on art," a world of totalitarian states having the same concept of beauty, might produce a great artistic revival, he maintained. Friedrich added, "the would be particularly true if there had been more or less of an agreement that other forms of competition, such as war, were undesirable."

In Germany, Friedrich said, every town of any size has a government-subsidized opera house, and the ministers of education of the various states compete fiercely for the most outstanding performers.