The public in the arts

In the past few weeks on the pages of Repubblica, a refined intellectual battle was initiated (by Alessandro Baricco). An impressive string of italian mandarin intelligence: Scalfari, Fo, Cerami, Muti, Baricco himself wrote twice, Rame, and even two ministers of state, Bondi and Brunetta. Apparently the argument hit a nerve. The argument: public funds in the cultural system of the country. Not bad.
The initial theory is that the cultural priority of a democratic state is to widen the privilege of culture to a larger number of citizens, the economic effort is made towards the nourishment and upkeep of the theater whose popularity fails miserably in the presence big brother. A monstrous economic effort of the whole community channels itself into that tiny slice of theater of/for the very few. Conclusion: let's get Riccardo Muti a show on tv and the theaters can pay their shows by the rules of the game.
If you exclude the detractors, convinced that culture for the few should be payed by all, most mandarins seem to agree on the matter: it is unthinkable that the worker under redundancy pay should pay for the gala evenings of a pseudo-cultured bourgeoisie.
The same can apply to the art world: enormous public resources for an extremely narrow (even meagre) public, professionally concentrated on a non influential self referenced culture exercises. I should mention that in art, and sometimes even in design, unthinkable deformities happen. I will mention three examples.

The first. Enormous public resources of the Italian museum system follows a very scrutable (sometimes even funny) logic. Here are a few examples: The Triennale of Milan (that sublets its spaces like a fair), Madre of Naples (in partnership with a private gallery from London), The Re Baudengo foundation of Torino (named after and managed by a private citizen).
The second, even worse, is that these institutions together with the madness of some millionaire art collectors, are the only interlocutor of the artists whose success is directly proportional to the attention that these institutions give them: you become famous the moment that you end up on the walls of The Castle of Rivoli, or at the Grassi Palace.
This does not happen when it comes to books and music, for example. Radiohead is a publicly acclaimed stronghold of contemporary music culture, maybe even critically acclaimed, but certainly not because of a importance ratified in just any room of some public office in Bristol. The third problem, perhaps the most alarming, is the contemporary art world whose sole title "contemporary" indicates a dialog with what is contemporary, with its system and its public. We are not striving economically to preserve and defend antique cultures, that cannot be renounced (a solo exhibit of Albers, or Hoffmann) but for the exhibit of Frosi, Perrone, Tuttofuoco. While the exhibits of Monet, paradoxically, manage to fill up galleries every time. It is as though the concerts of Satie were packed while those of Jovanotti needed public resources to survive. It would be unimaginable, but in the art world it happens all the time and without much clamor.
I am not sure what the solution is. Perhaps the first to reflect upon everything should be the authors. Belittled by the idea of being economically supported like pandas in a zoo, unable to produce a culture that is relevant enough, significant or influential enough, to sustain itself with the oxygen of its own public. Perhaps they should ask themselves, if it is not better to sell their artwork to their friends, to end up on blogs and newspapers, exhibit at festivals, and get inside the real cultural circuit of the country, instead of being held under vacuum, in the air-conditioned attics of one of the foundations. Perhaps even ask themselves if it is still true that what resides in those rooms are thought triggered experiences, or if the cultural vitality of the society, its greatest expressions, and its mutations, are happening elsewhere. Ask themselves above all because, in these times of skinny cows, if the pandas are the first to succumb.