Honestly, I support the government funding unpopular art. It is a good message to say “yeah, we do have the freedom to create.” As a vaguely abstract mediocre artist, if the CIA wants to fly me to Czechoslovakia to put on an exhibit, I need the greenbacks.

I think so much of the discussion around modern art gets lost in how we often encounter the image. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing has a really good bit (in the first episode?) about how often we encounter the Mona Lisa completely decontexualized, how seeing a small picture in a book doesn’t match the experience of seeing an art work in the context of the museum. (Although tbh, if you do get to see the Mona Lisa you’ll be looking at it from across the room)

I like modern art. If I ever have money my lifelong dream has been to see The Bride Stripped Bare. I was delighted to get to see a replica of Fountain and Winerack. The full breadth of Rothko seems spiritual to me. A local free place even as a few Rauschenberg’s I could spend hours looking at. So much of the conversation around modern art seems to just assume that everyone who says they like it is faking.

I like this article better on the CIA/modern art science connection than the earlier commentor’s. Keep in mind on the other side of the world, Soviet Realism was pretty much mandatory and was also state sponsored.