Do arts funding bodies reinforce elitism?

On the 14 August ABC Radio National 'The Music Show' podcast 'Arts Policy and the 2010 election: Who Cares?' the musicians participating in the show explained that they wanted their music to be accessible to a broad audience.

This got me thinking about being a visual artist and being knocked-back a few times for arts grants. There's a learning curve to writing these grant applications and I've done a few now but never with success. My most recently rejected grant application effectively said that my artwork wasn't 'conceptual enough.' A fellow artist and friend who is an absolutely gifted portrait sculptor had his grant application rejected because 'the artwork is too dated' and not in demand.

There's often criticism of the visual arts for being too obtuse, too cryptic, too hard to understand, too elitist. And I wonder if that's partly to blame on the arts funding bodies who seem to reward artists working like this.

Of course the funding bodies have to manage the difficult situation of receiving more applications than can be funded, but why do they pick the artists and artworks that they do? If their objective was to make the arts more accessible rather than appealing to a small, elite audience, then couldn't they take a different approach to funding decisions?

And no, I haven't given-up hope yet of winning a grant! Have I told you about the new cryptic, obtuse, elitist series of works that I'm developing...