“Cultural Abandonment”: The impact of losing government funding for arts, culture and humanities

One of the primary purposes of public funding for the arts is to provide equitable access to the arts. Government is supposed to be serving the collective good, and for the arts that means providing funding that allows the arts to get to people that wouldn’t otherwise be able to access an arts program, or to introduce the benefits of the arts to people that would otherwise not have considered it by offering it in a more convenient or accessible setting or approach.

With the attempts by the Trump Administration to actually or effectively defund the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services through canceling grants, this access is threatened. Private funding may make up some of the difference, but if all or most of the collective $600 million of these three federal funders is allowed to be eliminated, that will likely never be fully replaced. Plus, the whole point of public funding is the equality of access; private funding has no mandate or requirement to be equitable like public funding does.

Mass Cultural Council Executive Director Michael J. Bobbitt calls this “cultural abandonment”, and I agree with him.

Read more about his views, analysis, and call to action here.

Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash