Less than a week after President Trump took office, word quickly spread about his administration’s plans to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as to privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. To put this in perspective, the NEA and NEH each have an annual budget of about $150 million. Within a projected federal budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office, of $3.9 trillion for the fiscal year 2016, the NEH and NEA’s budgets combined total less than 0.0075% of federal costs.
Locally, one venue affected by such cuts would be Case Western Reserve University Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, which annually partners with Northeast Ohio museums, educational institutions and arts organizations for the popular Cleveland Humanities Festival
CoolCleveland talked to Peter Knox, the Eric and Jane Nord Family professor and director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, about the threat of eliminating federal funding.
CoolCleveland: First of all, if these cuts take place, how will this affect the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities?
Peter Knox: We have a grant proposal pending with the National Endowment for the Humanities for $200,000 to support the Cleveland Humanities Festival. Obviously, our ability to put on bigger and better events and to do more outreach into the community would be limited if we don’t secure that funding. There would also be – and I think in many ways this is just as if not more alarming – terrible consequences for individual scholars. In the humanities, there are very few sources of funding for research scholars to support their activities and the National Endowment for the Humanities is chief among them. If that were to disappear, there is not the funding out there in private and non-government institutions to take up the slack.
CC: In your opinion, what are the ramifications of cutting arts and culture funding that people are not taking into consideration?
PK: I think a lot of people assume that the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts are just supporting a bunch of pointy headed eggheads in big cities researching topics that they don’t see as particularly germane to their lives or producing art or exhibiting art that they don’t particularly care for. But in fact, probably about half of funding of both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities go to state and local associations that are funding projects in communities small, medium and large across the country. The National Endowment for the Humanities, for example, has been very engaged in directing its funding into public programs. Probably, again, I’d say a substantial chunk, maybe half of their funding, goes into projects that they call the Humanities in Public Square. These are specifically directed to programs that involve the community, and not the academic community. These are, again, historical societies, events at your public library, teacher support, all kinds of activities that really don’t necessarily have all that much to do with what goes on in universities and big museums.
CC: If these cuts take place, what does the community arts & humanities scene look like going forward?
PK: If you want to see what the impact in Ohio will be, go to the website of Ohio Humanities, which is our state humanities agency. It’s supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can run down the list of projects around the state at public universities, colleges and community associations that Ohio Humanities is able to support of because of the funding they get from National Endowment for the Humanities. And a lot of that stuff will just go away. Your community will simply be a lot less active, with a lot less going on. There will be fewer cultural opportunities, and we’ll all be the poorer for it.
CC: Sadly, such cuts would also involve children with educational programming taking a hit.
PK: I think that’s right. Obviously, PBS and NPR are the most conspicuous places where people will notice the difference. I think you will probably be seeing the possibility of privatizing those entities and when that happens, they’re not going to have the same kind of educational focus that they have now. Elmo will be more about entertainment than education. And we’ll miss that.
CC: It’s not a stretch to envision Elmo selling his audience the latest sugary cereal over a love of reading or dancing.
PK: Yeah, and Big Bird will be doing sponsorships, but will the networks have the same kind of educational and informational content? I don’t think so. You can judge by what we see in commercial broadcasting, that’s just not going to happen. That’s not where the advertising dollars will come from.
CC: Finally, the demise of PBS has socio-economic ramifications considering such programs as “Sesame Street” play an integral role of educating underprivileged preschoolers.
PK: It will further broaden the divide between the haves and the have nots. The people who can afford to send their children to expensive private schools and colleges will feel this much less than parents and kids in public institutions. It will tend to concentrate culture and access to culture among the privileged classes, and the opportunities for people to enjoy a play, a musical performance, an art exhibit – without having to travel hundreds of miles and spend lots of money that they don’t have – will disappear.
On the national scene, Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert L. Lynch sent out a letter calling for activism among those who create, enjoy and cherish the arts.
“I believe our collective job in the arts community is to tell our story and make our case again and again at the federal, state and local levels,” Lynch said. “Americans for the Arts is committed to working with you to ensure that all Americans have access to the arts and that we protect and cultivate funding for the arts.”
Among the many items he detailed is a petition seeking 100,000 Arts Action Fund member signatures to be sent to the White House. http://artsactionfund.org/page/s/trump-arts-petition
“We are seeing that the current efforts to eliminate the NEA seem to be based on old Heritage Foundation arguments formulated more than two decades ago,” Lynch said. “Even though these arguments are dated, that does not mean they won’t have weight with new legislative listeners.
“The argument to eliminate or slash federal arts funding comes up every year, and your collective efforts have stopped that from happening in the past. But in the current political environment, it is critical that all of us redouble our efforts.”
The Americans for the Arts suggests the following actions:
• Take two minutes to contact your two Senators and your House representatives now.
• Join the Arts Action Fund (for free) so we can get alerts to you as quickly as possible and you can respond to decision-makers fast.
• Work to get other colleagues to join the Arts Action Fund. We ask that you pledge to reach out to at least five board, staff, members, or audience members. Two national partners, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and Blick Art Supply, brought in 42,000 members and 37,000 customers respectively to become arts advocates for our cause.
• Register to attend National Arts Advocacy Day on March 20–21 in Washington, DC where you can add your voice in person.
• Inform us of any specific actions impacting the arts in your community as a result of the President’s new executive order on sanctuary cities via an e-mail to Ruby Harper (rharper@artsusa.org).
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