Message from april 1st, 2059: Looking back on the economics of the arts world during the last 100 years.

Message from april 1st, 2059: Looking back on the economics of the arts world during the last 100 years.

Lenny Bruce's comments in 1959, exactly 100 years ago, about the secrataries and their bad effect on the arts was the first sign of what was later to be the great movement on reconstruction of the role of those whose work it is to make the art world and the artists in it function as smoothly as possible.

Even 50 years ago, this restructuring was not felt in the cultural climate of the time. Indeed, even though in Sweden a thorough cultural investigation was made in 2009, it only treated the working conditions and mechanics of the people whose call was to serve the artists. The cultural investigation did not deal with the arts at all, not even with the working conditions of the artists or the content of their work. All it covered were the rules of distribution of support among those distributing it. It sounds unbelievable to a modern ear, but that's how it was as late as in the beginning of this century..

It was not until ten years later, in 2019, that the view on the relationship between artists and bureaucrats that seem so natural to us today got the upper hand in peoples minds. And of course, as soon as the people involved, bureaucrats and artists alike, realised that this was the way to do things, things evolved very quickly and within a few years everybody was happily doing what suited them best and what they liked the most. That is, for the artist: creating art and for the bureaucrats: constructing and filling out forms and raising money for the betterment of the arts and the citiziens. And what a glorious cultural life we all got at last.