Programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be shuttered completely.
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Without the NEA or NEH, the idea of starting an art-based start up in a rural community would be “not just hard but almost impossible”, McKay said.
Several Hollywood personalities immediately took to Twitter where they spoke out against the proposed budget cuts.
And these proposed cuts comes as a concern to people across the arts and humanities spectrum. This is distributed to more than 300 arts and culture organizations statewide.
President Donald Trump’s first federal budget plan proposes a complete defunding of both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
View the wide range of NEA funded programs here, and a timeline of 50 years of NEA-supported arts in America.
While there have been battles to protect the NEA in the past, Massachusetts Cultural Council executive director Anita Walker says this feels different. She and Hatch said they do not think administration officials understand the importance of arts and culture funding. It would kill us to put the brakes on that momentum.
“We know we’re OK this year, but the next two years?” said Barbara Theroux, one of the festival organizers. PBS emphasized that their funding is a minute part of the yearly budget-simply $1.35 per citizen each year, watched by 82 percent of TV households.
Meanwhile, Theater Bay Area Director Brad Erickson is heading a delegation of state arts leaders flying to Washington on Monday and Tuesday (March 20 and 21) to lobby Congress on what they’re calling an Arts Advocacy Day.
“Arts organizations across this country are phenomenal at bringing communities together”, Proctor said, pointing to Literary Arts’ sponsorship of a talk last week by Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond about his new book, “Evicted”, which examines housing instability.
Humanities Montana awards grants to county historical museums, local libraries and state parks for historical and educational purposes. Other beneficiaries include the Hollidaysburg Community Band, the Altoona Chorus of Sweet Adelines and a classical music project at Penn State Altoona.
Here at The Architect’s Newspaper (AN) we are hoping to begin a debate on the value of these federal agencies and how they aid our profession. That project was completed thanks to foundations, individual donors and “cost management”, he said. “This is a public/private partnership; for every dollar allocated for public media, we raise more than six, from the public”. The newly reelected Richard Nixon expanded arts funding in 1973; he believed strongly that government had a role to play in promoting the arts. Funding has supported increased access to the Native American and Northwest art collections, as well as Northwest Film Center education and exhibition programs, among many other projects.
“This is the “public comment” period right now for people”, Mckay said. Hers was one of the organizations that won a grant from Thomson’s group.
“What we have here is an attack upon global citizenship and national civic culture”, Jim Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, told TPM of the potential elimination of the NEH. These moves will harm larger arts programs than ours and hurt their chances for survival.
But the symphony’s Snyder Etters said she is concerned with Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal to remove arts funding from the general fund and into a bond program.
“At that time we were really unprepared to have this kind of debate”, she said.
Whatever Trump proposes in his budget, probably within days, a generally sympathetic Congress will get the final say. “We’ve been under the gun forever”. “We’re not really anxious”. “In a state like Montana there aren’t necessarily the funds to be raised”.
Across Maine, Anderson said, librarians are showing “so much energy and creativity” in ensuring their institutions serve as “a central point for the town” that partnering with them to help is especially rewarding. “Those are forgotten stories otherwise”.
“A deep fear came to pass for many artists, museums, and cultural organizations nationwide early Thursday morning”, the dramatic first sentence of The New York Times report on the proposal begins. The corporation dates to the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.
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“Federal support for the arts and humanities is essential to our education system, economy and who we are as a nation”, the letter to Trump said. “History tends not to judge us kindly when we don’t”.
