LATE IN 2008 as Barack Obama prepared for his inauguration as President of the United States, American museums prepared for massive cuts. The endowment that funds the Getty Trust, for example, lost twenty-five per cent of its value in six months, a stinging but sadly unexceptional decline. The sharp chill of frozen budgets was only the beginning. Several institutions are eliminating jobs and departments, and exhibition schedules are in disarray. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has cancelled three travelling shows that it had planned to host between this summer and next. Cancellations there and elsewhere mean that Tate Modern’s Cildo Meireles retrospective, recently at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, will not visit North America. University facilities are similarly vulnerable. The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University closed in May, four months after Brandeis announced controversial plans to sell the Rose’s collection. The plight of art museums is representative of conditions for arts organisations throughout the United States, where falling endowments spell decline – slow or cascading.

Advocates for the arts had held high hopes for the era of an Obama administration. The President’s campaign had taken the unusual step of adopting a platform in support of the arts, with promises that included greater attention to arts education, increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the revival of cultural diplomacy. This was a welcome change after twenty years during which federal arts bodies were vilified by social conservatives, weakened by political opportunists and ultimately marginalised by the debilitating arguments that surrounded them. George W. Bush did not seem as hostile to the arts as were some others of his political stripe; but his administration treated the arts as a reassuring reflection of national identity rather than as a showcase for creative initiative or as a means of persuasion in the global marketplace of ideas. In contrast, Obama’s arts policy recognised these virtues and their importance in an open society. Although the arts survived under Bush, they seemed much more likely to thrive under Obama and a comparatively supportive Congress. That optimistic view is now tempered with the understanding that support for the arts slides down a list of public priorities during an economic crisis.

There is some good news, however, along with encouraging signs that the new administration takes the arts seriously. In February the NEA received $50 million in additional funding, equivalent to about a third of its current annual budget, as part of the $787 billion economic stimulus act. This preserves thousands of jobs and helps to secure additional funds from other sources. The 2010 budget requested for the NEA will be $161.3 million, an increase of four per cent over this year. (It would be politically unrealistic to expect more.) Obama has also nominated Rocco Landesman as Chairman of the NEA. Best known for producing Broadway shows, Landesman has a record of ­successfully bringing together commercial, philanthropic and non-profit organisations. Obama’s arts platform refers several times to ‘public/private partnerships’ and, as Landesman’s nomination suggests, such hybrid arrangements will probably become a preferred model for arts organisations during the next few years. Organisations that can put this into practice effectively should find a sympathetic ear in the present administration.

Several proposals that had languished for years – such as a cabinet-level arts appointment or even the creation of a Department of Culture – briefly regained traction and some prominent support, evidence perhaps of optimism rather than realistic expectations. Even if the arguments for additional bureaucracy were convincing, the prospect of more partisan warfare over cultural issues is unappealing to an electorate that is tired of bickering. Furthermore, it would drain political capital from an administration that can ill afford the distraction. Instead, the administration has indicated its intention to give the arts a more prominent voice in the White House. The Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, which plays a vital role in presenting policy to the public as well as to state and local government, is likely to have an adviser for the arts. This will put arts policy closer to the centre of power than it has been since John F. Kennedy appointed August Heckscher as Special Consultant on the Arts to the President. Equally significant is the First Lady’s effective advocacy for the arts. In May, at a ceremony to mark the reopening of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michelle Obama noted that artistic and cultural activities in the United States generate $160 billion annually and employ nearly six million people in non-profit organisations alone. (She also mentioned that her husband took her to a mus­eum on their first date.) These are not the words of an administration that intends to treat the arts merely as a luxurious diversion.

It is not unusual for politicians to laud the economic benefits of the arts, their educational value, their enriching role in people’s lives and – as Mrs Obama pointed out – the need to break down barriers between the arts and the public. This is all familiar, albeit comforting, terrain. More intriguing is the pos­sibility that those in government might value the arts not as instruments of policy, nor as window dressing, but for their essential qualities: innovation, resourcefulness and the ability to create something from little or nothing (views similarly voiced in more than one recent British government report). Artists and arts organisations require profound talents for identifying and solving problems. They are well equipped to provide imaginative examples of succeeding against the odds. The enduring benefits of the Obama administration’s arts policy might not be increased funding or new alliances. The real prize might be that artists and arts organisations now have every incentive to demonstrate their talents to an administration that is willing to recognise good ideas, to listen to many voices and to nurture their sources without smothering them.