That art museums should be financed by the state

One often stated role of the government is to defend its borders and citizens from invasion, oppression, and harm   That is to maintain the integrity of the republic/monarchy, its language, culture, and heritage. The citizens identify themselves as part of their State in the form of nationalism.  The history of a nation, it's customs,  and values are very important in developing national identity, and historically that identity is a core ingredient for conscription and propaganda during times of war.  From a modern perspective, that identity is exemplified internationally in sport and other non-war competitions.

We see national identities exemplified through passports and currency.  Currency often depicts people, places, or things of national interest in an artistic form.  Those people places and things usually fall under the definition of "national treasure".    A National Treasure is defined by the Oxford dictionary as "an artifact, institution, or public figure regarded as being emblematic of a nation's cultural heritage or identity."

Many countries have legislation in place to protect national treasures.  (National Treasure Act (UK),  Treasure Trove Act (Canada), National Monuments Act (Ireland),  The Antiquity Act (US) ). which gives them default ownership of any treasure that has been lost, and subsequently found.  As the government is the owner of the property, the people are all co-owners.  The people have a right to benefit from that property, which would include learning about them.  and viewing them. 

The most applicable case of a national treasure act that applies to art is the Egyptian law on the Protection of Antiquities, established in 1983 (https://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/laws10egyptenl.html).    Internationally the protection of national treasures has been protected by treaty.  The 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects (https://web.archive.org/web/20100326162020/http://www.unidroit.org/english/conventions/1995culturalproperty/1995culturalproperty-e.htm) is an example where international support is given to protect cultural treasures and has been used to recover treasures, as we see in this case with Egyptian artifacts on sale in London UK.  (https://www.cnn.com/style/article/egypt-stolen-artifact-recovered-scli-intl/index.html)

Domestically and Internationally a measurable level of effort, agreement, and enforcement goes into identifying and securing items of National Treasure (which includes art).  With the importance of the treasures being identified and the fact that said treasures are actually the property of the people collectively, the State certainly holds the responsibility of securing and making those treasures reasonably accessible to the public.

As such I affirm that the State should be responsible for the funding of Art Museums containing national treasures.

The entire crux of the affirmative argument seems to rest on this idea of "national treasures" and how it is the responsibility of the state to protect and maintain these treasures. However, the affirmative assumes that the idea of nationalism is inherently good and that there is a prescribed "national identity" that is dictated by the state. Obviously, this is a fundamental error. While the affirmative will try to equivocate on what he is defending, "national treasures" is just a nicer way to say "propaganda." The affirmative tried to make this seem nicer through examples that we would agree with (the United States, Canada, Egypt, etc.), but one need only look at any dictatorship or authoritarian state to see how art and culture can be perverted into another method of political control. Now, I am not suggesting that there is no such thing as important art; there are quite obviously cultural works that are important to be preserved and seen by the public, but it is not the responsibility nor the right of the state to co-opt this art from private institutions and use it for propaganda purposes, and private institutions have proven themselves more than capable of handling and showcasing art to the public.

 Now, this ties in really nicely into the main argument I want to present today: State Control of Culture

In this motion, there are four actors that require analysis: governments, populations, institutions that are/will be funded by the state, and institutions that won't be. It is undebatable that receiving public funds gives an institution a market advantage over its competitors; that public funding is money that can be deducted from ticket prices or used to pay for more researchers, more prestigious exhibits, etc. Thus, any institution receiving public funding is likewise more likely to impact the cultural zeitgeist of society. Thus, it is imperative to determine how the state decides which institutions receive public funding and which don't. I would argue that the state has a vested interest in protecting its own image, and thus its decisions about which institutions to support will lean to museums that portray the state in a negative or neutral light. For example, the most prestigious institutions in the world, the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, both present their artifacts in what appears to be a neutral light, instead of showing them in the contexts of colonialism and oppression that led the lion's share of these artifacts to end up in these institutions to start with. In the world advocated for by the Negative, no museum would be subsidized by the state, and instead, all institutions would operate independently of the government. This would remove the influence governments hold over culture, which in turn would prevent governments from using culture as yet another arm to control peoples' views and opinions.

The second argument I want to bring forward is the idea of Government Expenditure

This is relatively straightforward but it is important to point out nonetheless. Let's take the affirmative at their best, where we all live in a utopian paradise where state bias plays no part in deciding what institutions to support and "national treasure" is not a dog whistle for an artifact that supports the government's view of history and culture. Even in this perfect world, it is still undebatable that financing these institutions is expensive. This is money that is taken from taxpayers, money that could be used by a starving family in Manchester to afford groceries or by a child in Green Bay to receive open-heart surgery. If you believe that taxpayer's money is sacred and should only be used in ways that directly help the people of a state, slightly reducing the ticket price of some museums that only reinforce colonialist or statist attitudes should be opposed at its face.

It is for these reasons that any lover of culture, non-biased art, or fiscal responsibility has a duty to reject this motion and vote with the Negative.