We expect a lot from our arts and cultural organizations. We expect them to be dynamic and ever-changing. We expect them to be stewards of our shared heritage through the collection and exhibition of art, the Earth's natural treasures and the scientific and technological ingenuity of our species. We expect them to be partners in the education of our children, the economic vitality of our cities and the open exchange of ideas. When they are all these things, we revel in their successes, pointing to them as a source of civic pride and accomplishment.

Our region has enjoyed a decades-long period of satisfying arts and cultural growth that has made the country, and the world, take notice. As a prominent member of the region's cultural community, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh has contributed to and mirrored its successes.

With the support of many individual and institutional donors, including the state of Pennsylvania, we have recently invested more than $100 million in the expansion of our diverse attractions and programs, including the creation of Dinosaurs in Their Time, the renovation of the Scaife Galleries and the opening this weekend of roboworld. Last year we set a new admissions record of 1.2 million visitors to our four museums. We reached another 340,000 people, most of them children, through educational outreach programs.

But the good times can't roll on forever. And when the economy sours, support for arts and cultural organizations and the programs they provide almost always loses its appeal.

I don't envy governors and state legislators their task. And I don't question their sincerity. But when survival instincts kick into gear, too often they lead us in directions we regret later. The question is, what kind of survival will we accept? What, exactly, do we want to be when the dust of the current economic crisis settles?

In recent remarks made at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, President Barack Obama recounted the curious survival instincts of Abraham Lincoln who, in the middle of the Civil War, signed into law the act creating the academy. It seems President Lincoln was planning for the country's long-term survival long before its short-term crisis was even close to being resolved. For Lincoln, survival was about much more than basic sustenance.

Here in Pennsylvania, the budget proposed by the state Senate would provide zero funding for arts and cultural organizations. And while the state House still hopes to preserve some level of arts funding, Gov. Ed Rendell hasn't been sending many positive signals.

Organizations such as Carnegie Museums will survive such cuts, although the most extreme budget proposals would force us to eliminate programs. But many of our smaller arts-and-education partners won't survive, and years of encouraging cultural development throughout the region could be lost.

So, what's the real harm?

First, the economics: According to an economic impact study by Americans for the Arts, in Allegheny County alone, cultural and arts organizations employ more than 10,000 people and generate some $342 million a year in regional economic activity. Nationally, nonprofit arts organizations are a $166 billion industry that supports 5.7 million jobs and generates $29 billion in annual revenue for local, state and federal governments.

But even more compelling are the effects that creative arts and science programming has on our kids. Regionally, cultural groups provide an incredible range of after-school and summer programs, in-school outreach activities and year-long initiatives that motivate our young people, inspire smart career paths and fuel their desire to question, learn and excel.

Diane Miller, who grew up in Pittsburgh's Hill District and is now vice president of community programs and partnerships at the St. Louis Science Center, has written eloquently about how informal education experiences really matter, especially for at-risk youth:

"Protected by museum and library walls, I dreamed of taking risks, of leaving the safety of a familiar community to rub elbows with the rest of the world. I learned about man's inhumanity to man, the strength of the human spirit and that power comes from inside. I looked past the lackluster present of the low-income community I had been born into and looked forward to the future that was hinted of inside those museum and library walls. ... I was born in Pittsburgh but I was a citizen of the world. This knowledge set me apart from most of my classmates living in the present, weighted down by the grimness of reality ..."

This is one outcome of the arts that's impossible to ignore. But it's not impossible to measure: Studies show that students who take multiple years of arts courses outperform peers who don't on both the verbal and math portions of the SATs. Even more important, creative arts and science experiences instill in kids the joy of discovery and the importance of having a voice. It's at tough times like these that the demand for this kind of inspiration is the greatest.

We're all in survival mode. The question is: What will we be, long-term, if all of our budget decisions are made with only short-term goals in mind?

Famed documentary producer Ken Burns drove this point home in the parting words of his commencement address to this year's graduating class at Boston University: "Insist that we fight the right wars. Governments always forget that. Insist that we support the sciences and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do with the defense of the country, they just make the country worth defending."

To those fine words I would add this: Let's not forget why it is we expect so much out of our arts and cultural organizations before we make decisions that would irreparably harm them.