Democracy Demands Wisdom: An Overview of the NEA’s Support for All Communities

May 1, 2025

Ben Kessler  -  Ben Kessler, AFM Director of Government Affairs

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act. Upon creating the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Johnson said, “Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves, and to others, the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.”

The NEA, however, has always had its distractors. During his first time in office, President Trump’s budget proposed eliminating the agency. Each time, thankfully, Congress dismissed the president’s request and provided an increase in the NEA’s annual appropriation. During the Biden administration, Republican and Democratic arts champions in Congress beat back attempts on the House floor to significantly cut NEA resources.

And today, the NEA’s fate hangs in the balance. As we have seen across the federal government, its sister cultural agencies have experienced alarming cuts. A March 14 executive order dismantled the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The staff at the NEH has been decimated by the Department of Government Efficiency. As we hope for the best for the NEA and work to affect positive outcomes, it is worth understanding a bit of what the agency does and its history.

The fate of the arts endowment most notably hung in the balance 30 years ago when it was on the frontlines of the so-called culture wars. Those who sought to preserve the work negotiated creative solutions to keep the agency going. Most notably, the NEA could no longer directly support individual artists.

The changes were not perfect. But they worked. At the time, Congressional Republicans were railing against photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s explicit exhibition, “The Perfect Moment” and photographer André Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” Limiting support for organizations on a project-basis insulated the agency from those distractions and undue criticism. In the years since, the NEA has continued to earn bipartisan support in Congress.

Other new programs and approaches are responsible for fortifying the arts endowment. Once described to me as “federalism at its best,” 40% of the NEA’s grantmaking funds move through six regional arts organizations and 56 state and jurisdictional arts agencies for regranting. For those whose worldview favors empowering those at the state level, it was the perfect approach. For too long, the NEA was viewed as welfare for the coastal and culturally elite. Now, all 435 congressional districts benefit annually from NEA funding.

Congressional Republicans also became steadfast champions for the NEA’s increasing support for rural communities and military connected populations. For more than 30 years, through the Citizen’s Institute on Rural Design, the NEA has partnered with rural communities with populations of 50,000 and fewer. This program provides local and regional leaders with expert assistance in fields ranging from architecture to design and rural planning.

Creative Forces is NEA’s national initiative supporting military-connected populations. It is a partnership with the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. The work helps improve the health, well-being, and quality of life for military and veteran populations exposed to trauma, as well as their families and caregivers. As musicians, you are well aware of the positive health outcomes because of access to the arts and arts participation. There is support for clinical programs across the country and funding for nonclinical, community-based arts engagement projects.

That day in the White House Rose Garden nearly 60 years ago, President Johnson was echoing the legislation he was signing. The law’s authors listed many reasons why the federal government had a responsibility to support the arts and humanities. Among them: “Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens. It must therefore foster and support a form of education, and access to the arts and the humanities, designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.”

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