The Future of Public Funding?

Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal's drama critic and composer, has an interesting article on the Detroit Institute of Arts.  I recommend it to you, in part because Teachout is a gifted writer but also because it illustrates some of the inventive ways public institutions are working with the new reality: lower government appropriations and subsidies.  The institute's solution was to ask for a local tax, but in return give everyone in the tax district free membership to the museum.  This type of specific quid pro quo might become popular.