Scottish composer Peter Maxwell Davies has leveled a blistering (and lengthy) attack on the UK government for ignoring the importance of serious art, literature, and music, days after the director of the National Gallery did the same. “Keeping people in a state of ignorance is good for the government in power – it precludes the possibility of articulate criticism, induces political apathy, and its by-product is a frustration which bursts forth into seemingly mindless, unmotivated violence.”