"We Built Way Too Many Cultural Institutions During the Good Years."

Did we? And who are "we"? "We" are all those cities across America who think we can be Bilbao, that if we build it, they will come.

Per capita, the biggest total spenders on cultural projects during this period were Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont region of California, Appleton and Madison, Wisconsin, and Lawrence, Kansas....

We seemed to buy into that Richard Florida/"Rise of the Creative Class" theory "that if we have cultural amenities, we’ll have better, more creative populations."

The biggest arts building boom in fact occurred in the South, a potential sign of cities there trying to catch up with the rest of the country. 

Look! We're not as backward as you think!

"These projects are very much emotional, they’re projects that have a lot of passion in them.... A lot of the rationality that goes into running a business sometimes doesn’t go into these projects."

Hey! That's a nice summary of the problem of letting government do anything.