The National Endowment for the Arts was founded in 1965 to “nurture creativity, to elevate the nation’s culture, and to sustain and preserve the country’s many artistic traditions,” by addressing inequality and lack of accessibility in the arts.
Thanks to political corrosion and loving “budgets cuts,” the NEA is now a shadow of its former self, with half its original budget and staff.
The majority of financial funding of the arts has been from private donors and corporations.
The large influx of private funding for the arts is crowding out the NEA and undoing its 50 years of public service. The support to already well-funded institutions that cater to large groups of mostly educated, wealthy white people.
If we want our art institutions to represent more than one view of American culture, the private funding of art institutions needs to be balanced by public funding.
It’s no secret the United States suffers from severe inequalities but no one recognizes that these inequities permeate every facet of society, including the arts.
Most artistic communities, including marginalized groups, are underfunded because public funding is limited and private donors don’t care.
For example, The DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland released a report called “Diversity in the Arts.” The report found that the median percentage of private contributions to black and Latino arts organizations was 5 percent.
The report also found the median percentage of private contributions to “mainstream”, also know as white, arts organizations was 60 percent.
If this narrative sounds familiar, it really is the same old story of rich, mostly white people using their money to gain cultural dominance. Whether or not private donors are consciously promoting racial and economic inequalities through their funding of art institutions is not my concern.
My concern and the concern of the NEA are to obliterate these inequalities.
According to The Atlantic, as of 2014, public funding for the arts comprises only 4 percent of all arts funding in the U.S.
Unlike private donors who are blinded by a whitewashed, Eurocentric view of art, the NEA funds art communities in all 50 States and five U.S. jurisdictions.
It does what private donors don’t think to do, which is to fund small institutions in impoverished areas through its Challenge America program.
The NEA also has partnership agreements with 60 state and local arts institutions that aide the private sector in building off of government programs.
Like many other government social programs, the NEA seeks to foster an inclusive and equal society through the funding of arts programs that are similar.
In this instance, the arts communities the NEA funds are models for how the collective U.S. society should function.
Public funding for the arts is crucial to dissolving many of the inequalities marginalized groups face in the U.S. and must be increased if we want to see any changes. Art is the key to understanding our society and us.
rcm2@indiana.edu
@RachelCMiller1
