Once again, the budgets of the agencies that support the arts are to be cut. Meanwhile, costs in the arts are going up. But one continues to read and hear of one more dance group being formed, yet another theater company striving to lure audiences. Each new enterprise is self-assured of prestige, confident of support, and hungry for subsidy from public funds.

This disparity between shrinking means and growing supply points to assumptions about art that have not been examined for a long time. The most common is that there cannot be too much art. If private funds…