The NEA is more than just funding

One of the things I’m always going on about is this: if those of us in the arts want more people to attend, participate, and donate—and ultimately, for the arts to be taken seriously—we need to be more valuable to more people.

I explored this idea in one of my most popular posts on my ArtsJournal blog, Row X. In that post, I flipped a comment from theatre director Barry Edelstein on its head. Edelstein had expressed a wish for more funders like Roy Cockrum and his foundation, which supports the arts at a high level. I argued that what we really need are thousands of small donors, not just a few big ones—because that would mean our work mattered to thousands more people.

This week, I read another excellent piece of analysis on HowlRound by Sarah Wilbur. She highlights the work of National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chair Maria Rosario Jackson and her team under the Biden Administration to embed the arts in other federal programs, especially in health care and public health. (See also my post earlier this week that highlights many efforts for the arts serving service members, veterans, and military families.) Wilbur also notes how the previous NEA staff under Chair Jackson worked to distribute funds more equitably, reaching smaller and more diverse groups of artists and organizations.

Those efforts went beyond just awarding grants; they involved shifting policies to ensure more inclusive funding—just like the changes Wilbur described in her earlier piece about major foundations. I expanded on that in response to Roman Sanchez’s essay about the good work happening in small theaters across the country.

But here’s the thing: just like funding itself, embedding the arts throughout American life is something the arts sector—and its supporters—will largely have to do on their own. We can’t count on top-down support from the NEA or any federal entity for the next four years at least. If we want more participation, more funding, and more respect from the broad American public, it’s up to us to make the arts more valuable to more people’s lives.