One of the most obvious psychological burdens that artists in a frontier nation have to bear is the knowledge that the artifacts of culture, as well as a generous public concern for them, are primarily to be found elsewhere. Provincialism, in this sense, is the perception that real culture is exterior or foreign to one's place, and involves the corollary proposition that if one is to “have” culture at all, one must earn it personally and laboriously. Culture must, in the abstract, matter a great deal before serious effort will be expended to secure it. This may seem a truism today, but it has been an especially American truism with important, sometimes obscure implications for the artistic mind in America.