Greek tragedy was so important to the state that the polis funded the annual dramatic competition, the Festival of Dionysus, and even provided seats gratis to citizens who could not afford to pay. Although Rome was much less culturally sophisticated than Greece, it too provided funding for architecture, for the visual arts, and for cultural events. The cathedrals of the middle ages were built in part with public funds. Native American cultures dedicated tribal and not merely individual resources to dances, feasts, parades, and art. Today every advanced civilization helps fund the arts and humanities from the public treasury.
German cities subsidize opera, one of the finest and most expensive of the arts.
Our northern neighbor Canada supports public broadcasting, a National Film Board, and intensive public subsidies for arts and humanities programming. The fact is that the arts and humanities have never been able to pay for themselves. They have always been funded partly by sales, partly by rich patrons, and partly by the state, just as they are today in the United States. It bills itself as entertainment and makes no pretensions to culture. The market has never been the exclusive judge of cultural viability.