America is a consumer society; from food to clothes to cars to movies, we occupy ourselves with buying and "consuming" the goods that others produce. And because we are quick to put a dollar value on just about everything (even carbon emissions!), it should come as no surprise that, as a society, we are obsessed with the value of particular artworks as well as the people who make them. From an early age, we are taught to esteem artistic achievement as the cornerstone of our civilization. At the same time, we are equally conditioned to measure art's worth — in terms of time and money — against the seemingly infinite universe of stuff we spend our lives consuming. Little wonder, then, that 96 percent of Americans say they are greatly inspired by art, but only 27 percent believe that artists — and the art they produce — contribute to the good of society. Put another way, Americans think art is great, but they really don't want to pay for it.

In Patronizing the Arts, Marjorie Garber, chair of Harvard University's Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, lays bare the fundamental conundrum of Americans and their relationship to art: we are at once patrons and patronizing. Whether through government, foundations, universities or private charitable giving, Americans annually spend billions of dollars in support of the arts but give short shrift to the art creation process and frequently denigrate those who dare to think of "artist" as an actual job. That, says Garber, who has written widely on topics ranging from Shakespeare to human sexuality, is because Americans are fundamentally mercantile in their world view. And in a society focused on the exchange of goods for profit, she adds, it's little wonder that the average office jockey cannot comprehend a painter being supported so that he can paint. Let him paint away on his own time, most Americans will say, and if what he produces is worth anything, then someone's sure to buy it.

The problem, of course, is that artists have to eat and need a roof over their heads, both of which cost money. In her exceptionally literate book, Garber (who adroitly references Madonna, Borges, Freud, and Frank Gehry in virtually the same breath) focuses on what it would take to build a sustainable environment where art as process, and not merely product, is acknowledged and fostered by the society at large. To do so, says Garber, we need to think differently; in fact, we need to do away with the entire concept of "arts patronage." The arts patron, she tells us, is an ill-conceived and outmoded model. And while the arts cannot as yet do without the hundreds of millions of dollars patrons annually contribute, we need to purge ourselves of the notion that money given in support of the arts is little more than a handout for people who would be more productively employed doing something else.

Borrowing a page from government and private support for science, Garber instead calls for the re-imagining of arts patronage as "big art." We don't think of funding for cancer research as charity; it's an investment in public health and the well being of humanity. So why not think about the arts in similar terms? Instead of conceiving of funding for the arts as the largess of a privileged class bestowed on the talented (albeit idle) few, why not make actual investments in creativity?

Of course, it's not as though government, foundations, arts institutions, and universities aren't already doing that. Garber acknowledges as much as she ticks off the names of many organizations and institutions that have bought into that premise, from the Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller foundations, to the NEA/NEH, to academic institutions such as Juilliard, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale. And because she is both an academic and director of Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, it's not surprising that her solution to the conundrum she describes is to aggressively expand funding for the arts on American college campuses. Alongside "big science," not to mention "big sports," Garber would like to see colleges become something far more than the diploma mills many of them seem to be. Students need to "live the arts," not just get good grades in art history en route to law school, she writes. Indeed, hers is, in many ways, a return to an earlier ideal of the university as a transformative environment that shapes the mind and world view of those lucky enough to attend one.

Still, it's not clear that more funding for the arts at the university level will break us of our habit of taking art and artists for granted; were we to double investments in the arts across the board, it would still only be pennies on the dollar to what we willingly spend on movies, pop music, and video games. It isn't because we live in an age lacking in exceptionally gifted artists or that artists go ignored. (Garber herself is a huge fan of Yo-Yo Ma.) To borrow a phrase, the fault might not be in our stars, but in ourselves.

Indeed, given the invasive — some would say corrosive — effect of consumer culture on how we choose to live our lives, we may have already passed the point of no return. Garber would disagree, reminding us that no civilization can long survive without great art. But if she's right, there is much work to do and little time to waste. It remains to be seen, of course, whether our efforts will result in the foundation of a new appreciation for the arts — or amount to little more than a few last sandbags holding back a rising tide of twenty-first-century materialism.