Friedrich --

A reader from rural Arkansas responds to a comment I made a while back about how much I'd like to see the National Endowment for the Arts terminated:

Yes, the NEA funds some crappy art, and down in the Never-Never-Land of the Village that's probably what it's best known for. But there are a lot of rural areas that would never encounter the arts (save through TV), were it not for the NEA and other publicly funded organizations of that ilk.

I'm forever grateful to the NEA and its Arkansas equivalent for financing the ArtMobile, an art museum the size of a Winnebago which rolled into my high school when I was in ninth grade (and never returned, by the way). That was the first time I ever saw a Rembrandt in person. Granted, it was a very small Rembrandt, and a pencil sketch at that, but it still beat the hell out of those grainy slides from art class. A private company would never have done anything like that, because there was no money or publicity in it.

Best,

Michael