How Arts Advocates Are Mobilizing Against Trump's Proposed NEA Cuts

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The fight to protect public arts funding began in earnest on Tuesday, as over 700 arts advocates from across the country descended on Capitol Hill for the 30th annual Arts Advocacy Day. Their purpose, unchanged for the past three decades, was to convince lawmakers of "the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts." But their mood, just days after Donald Trump's first federal budget proposal promised to gut funding for the National Endowment of the Arts, was one of renewed urgency.

"People definitely woke up a little bit and said we need to get here and we need to stand up to this directly," said Tod Kniazuk, captain of the New York delegation. He noted the record-breaking turnout for the event, bolstered by many last minute sign-ups.

Following a training session on Monday, advocates of arts institutions large and small spent the day cycling through congressional offices to make the case for public arts funding. Keith Stubblefield, the CFO of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, started his morning with Rep. Tom Suozzi, before meeting with staffers of Rep. Kathleen Rice. Both of the Long Island Democrats "seemed very supportive," said Stubblefield, joined by four BAM colleagues who were also "yearning for a way to do more advocacy work in these times." They'd hoped to meet with conservatives Rep. Peter King and Rep. Lee Zeldin, but ended up dropping off literature at their offices.

A variation of that literature has been sent to thousands of lawmakers and civilians across the country, thanks to the nonprofit Americans for the Arts. Since Trump's budget announcement, the 50-year-old organization has served as a sort of command center for pro-NEA mobilization, coordinating with disparate arts groups and laying the groundwork for a long fight on Capitol Hill. On the day after the budget proposal was released, Americans for the Arts helped generate over 50,000 emails to members of congress, President and CEO Robert Lynch told Gothamist.

Much of their advocacy emphasizes that the NEA, which has an annual budget of $146 million, is not only a nice thing to have, but also an economically sound investment. At .004 percent of the federal budget, the grants play a significant but low cost role in supporting the nonprofit arts and culture industry, which creates an economic impact of $135 billion and supports 4.13 million jobs in multiple industries, according to one fact sheet.

"The monetary value is small, but what it gives to the world is so much bigger than that," said Shauna Quill, the executive director of the New York Youth Symphony, which receives a $20,000 yearly grant to help fund tuition-free music education for students between the ages of 12 and 22. "It's assumed that for every dollar the NEA gives, an additional $9 is donated from other individuals," she added, pointing to one of the Americans for the Arts distributed sheets. "Losing that would be devastating across all areas."

(Maria Bryk/Americans for the Arts)

Those most vulnerable, Quill said, would be smaller and less visible institutions, particularly those outside of major urban arts hubs. "I think philanthropy is regional," she noted. "If you live in New York, you'll give to New York organizations, so one could see that if there's a smaller organization that's serving an underserved area, that might be the one that closes." In even simpler terms, private donors tend to cut checks for high profile causes — the very institutions least threatened by the elimination of the NEA.

According to Kniazuk, elected officials are often unaware of the critical role that the NEA may play in supporting a beloved institution in their district. Currently, over 40 percent of the fund's budget goes directly to state arts councils, who then partner with organizations on the county level. "The idea is that someone working in that county is going to have a better idea of the important and innovative grassroots programs going on," said Kniazuk, who also serves as the executive director of the Arts Services Initiative of Western New York. The regional group allocates NEA money to a range of initiatives, from bringing art therapy to hospitals to offering free museum tickets and transportation to people on public assistance. "It's the real trickle down," laughs Kniazuk.

For New York City's major museums, the threat posed by the potential defunding of the NEA is of a different sort. "When there are exhibitions where insurance valuations are really high, the result is that organizations like the Queens Museum and the Met and everything in between aren't able to afford those programs," said Laura Raicovich, president and executive director of the Queens Museum. The NEA indemnifies the moving and showing of priceless works of art, which allows museums to forego the cost of premiums that they might not otherwise be able to pay. The Museum of Modern Art has brought in more than 1,000 indemnified works in the past five years, coverage that MoMA director Glenn Lowry has called "a vital program for culture."

If that support does disappear, the impact on New York City's art institutions would be much harder to quantify than a line item on a balance sheet. As Stubblefield noted, BAM will continue to exist with or without the $50,000 in NEA funding they receive each year, but "the whole ecology for the art that BAM is involved with" would be worse off, leading to "a big problem on the supply-side of things, if you want to use business terms." Still, the BAM CFO said that witnessing the outpouring of support on Tuesday made him feel much better about the future of arts funding, at least relative to his prior despair.

Aside from the odd reliance on business language (a new side-effect of the Trump-era?), that guarded optimism was the uniting theme among those who went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday. "We're learning that our support is perhaps broader and deeper than we thought," echoed Kniazuk. "The reality is that there are a lot of arts supporters out there, and it's not just the people getting paid to work at arts organizations."

Asked if he felt good about the future of public arts funding, Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch said he was no longer in the business of making predictions.

"I think it's critical to be vigilant right to the end of the process, whether things look good or not," Lynch said. "Instead of talking to ourselves about how outraged we are, it's critical that the outrage and interest be channeled into the very systems that will make or break the decision about funding for the arts."

With that, he reminded me to call my congressman.

Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch. (Maria Bryk/Americans for the Arts)