Opinion

Art for taxpayers’ sake

The Issue: A controversial art exhibit by Paul McCarthy that is showing at a taxpayer-funded gallery.

***

Seth Lipsky presumably hasn’t seen “WS” yet, but he’s upset that he had to support the Park Avenue Armory so it could produce an exhibit he won’t like (“‘Debauchery’ You Pay For,” PostOpinion, June 19).

That’s understandable. But if his numbers are right, we paid about $6 each in taxes for the armory. Don’t we have better things to worry about?

Just off the top of my head, taxpayers paid a lot more for Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, and nobody’s happy with what’s going on in those spaces. Couldn’t Lipsky go after some bigger fish?

Dan McCarthy

Brooklyn

Lipsky is entitled to his outrage, but the taxpayers had nothing to do with the erection of that armory. It was built with privately raised funds by the Army’s Seventh Regiment in the 1870s.

As a matter of fact, the state only came into formal possession of the armory after a battle in court.

I. Makuch

Denmark, NY

First of all, we need more, not fewer, artists like Paul McCarthy to poke holes in the mind-numbing idiocy that is “American culture.”

Tax dollars for art always invite antagonism, even from left-wingers.

But let’s get real here: Who’s dying at the armory, and who’s getting rich at the public trough?

The awful debauchery that most Americans oppose is tax dollars being wasted on endless wars, corporate welfare and bailouts for rich bankers.

I hope The Post continues to rail against McCarthy and keeps giving him all that great bad publicity.

Benoit Balz

Manhattan

Public art is analogous to public science — you don’t get to vote on the outcome after supplying the initial funding.

Think of it like public incentives for movies, as the armory’s president suggested.

Would you prefer only Disney and “Transformers” movies instead of “The Godfather,” “Chinatown,” “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull”?

Lee Chirtel

Williamsburg, Va.