I read an article recently called A Day Without Art. Stephanie Milling suggests scenarios in which the arts hypothetically disappear for a day. But hypothetical threats are terrible tools of advocacy.

We can’t not have art. Look at your coffee cup, even if it’s paper. It has form, function, and looky there, art on it.

Here’s the ant at this particular picnic:

If art is ubiquitous, does it have value?  Why pay for it?

Rather than forecasting the impossible – a day without art – could we better spend our energies measuring our specific organization’s specific outcomes and advocate by trumpeting those to the world?

No one responds well to this particular game of chicken.  It’s akin to the idea of eating your kids – it may solve the messy bathroom problem, but it’s neither realistic nor sustainable.