I see a huge difference between govt commissioned artwork vs privately commissioned...but then, I'm of the opinion that the govt doesn't really have much business funding the arts.

I have no quibble with support of symphonies, museums, or libraries of course.

But for the writer who can't find readers, painters who can't sell their work for the cost of the canvas, theater groups who put more people on the stage than they do in the audience...govt funding of such is not only foolish, it's essentially dishonest, both to the public and to the artist. It creates artists who don't understand that popular success will give them the financial freedom they need to fully explore their "fringe" ideas, and it uses public funds to underwrite artwork which that very same public has already deemed unimportant.

If these people or groups want to continue their work self-funded (or if they can scrape together private money), more power to them. Then at least they are driven by the passion to create, not the scramble to meet another grant request deadline.