by Bill Ivey
Crippling cuts to the staff and grantmaking capacity of the NEA have left advocates reeling. The complex federal/nonprofit relationship in arts and culture built over decades has been shattered. Consigned to enduring the five Kubler-Ross stages of grief, supporters of the old model find themselves toggling between “denial” and “depression.” But reality will inevitably sink in, ushering in “acceptance” while begging the inevitable question, “What do we do now?”
First, the hard, simple truth: Change happens, and this one is big. Over the centuries there have been two consequential policy-based interventions in support of cultural programming in America. The “WPA Era” lasted from 1934 until 1943; the “NEA Era” from 1965 to 2025. Each period was distinct; each exhibited notable strengths and weaknesses, neither was comprehensive. Both interventions now reside in the past. Today, the stories of the WPA and NEA should be memorialized, celebrated, their histories mined both for best practices and for assumptions and strategies that should be avoided as we move ahead.
We need to think long-term now. Otherwise, we risk getting stuck in some rescue plan fantasy that the old model will magically snap back into place. That means there’s one thing that leaders who care about cultural vitality as a civic good absolutely should not do: We must not accept truncated, reconfigured, politicized reboots of existing federal agencies as worthy of our engagement. Of course, everybody needs to work, and pressure to accommodate and compromise will be strong. But even if the Endowment survives on paper, its size, unique structure, legislated independence, and complex pattern of influence in the nonprofit world are gone for good.
Government policy speaks the language of art, artists, and audiences but mostly works by engaging those corporate structures that support artists and artistry. As we develop a new case for government in the arts, it’s important to remember that, despite decades of exponential growth in the nonprofit cultural sector, Americans mostly source art, knowledge, and information from for-profit corporations, many of which are conglomerated global giants.
A new policy strategy must address the ways audiences, artists, and critics have tracked failure in America’s cultural process – access to live performance, the preservation of heritage artistry, fairness to creators in streaming and in the development of AI technologies. No data needed here: These public-interest failures lie at the feet of gigantic companies like Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, Apple Music, Live Nation, Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Size matters. As mergers and acquisitions have enabled cultural industries to “bulk up,” the capacity of the business model to engage artists, artistry, and audiences with respect and flexibility has evaporate. Size bakes-in an inevitable focus on profit and shareholder value, forming an endemic inability to deal with anything other than art, artistry, artists, and audiences at a blockbuster scale.
If there’s one thing that the past half-century has taught us, it’s that small defines the best frame for nurturing our cultural scene. A visionary-driven startup, a boutique arts company – small record labels, independent film, art galleries – these appear capable of maintaining a founder’s focus on artist relations, audiences, and historical asset preservation. But once an “independent” company is absorbed by a multinational, artistic vision and public purposes are sidelined, replaced by debt service, stock buybacks, and an intense focus on the bottom line. My first point: If it is to work, a “Post-NEA” cultural policy must limit the size of companies that deal in art, information, and knowledge creation.
Second, even our biggest arts nonprofits already meet this essential standard of scale. They are all, measured beside global conglomerates, small. In the 1950s, Ford Foundation executive W. MacNeil Lowry shaped the foundation’s emerging commitment to cultural vitality by, among other things, advancing the superiority of the nonprofit business model, arguing that by eliminating pursuit of profit as a primary objective, “artistic directors” would be freed to advance the very best in the arts. Lowry was wrong about this; nonprofit artistic leadership was pretty quickly pulled into a perpetual dance balancing vision against marketplace demands. But in another way, Lowry was right: Nonprofits have demonstrated that government regulation that limits size while requiring that activities accommodate values outlined in an official “statement of purpose” has produced a class of small to medium-sized arts companies capable of achieving financial stability while serving the interests of artists and audiences.
Whatever our chosen new direction, it is critical that whatever comes next must first secure the support of the American people, not just the enthusiasm of arts leaders. Writing in the New York Times, William Herkewitz, a former senior official with the now-vanished USAID, observed that the “biggest failure” of his agency was to bypass essential public support. Herkewitz points out that although USAID accomplished great things, “The biggest reason we never got the story out is that the American public was never USAID’s primary audience. Instead, a majority of our communication efforts were [sic] aimed entirely at Congress and other government insiders. This was our choice. Our flawed logic was that if lawmakers understood the agency’s impact, they’d protect its work.”
Unfortunately, over the past half-century arts advocacy fell into exactly this routine. Accomplishments and initiatives of the agency were pitched to supportive members of Congress and to committees that controlled the NEA budget. Public support was limited to “the converted” and channeled into events like “Arts Advocacy Day” that brought nonprofit staff and board members to Washington to comingle and then commune with mostly friendly elected officials. Over decades, this insider strategy secured modest funding and helped the NEA survive conservative attacks during the 1990s. It won’t suffice today. Now the NEA is one of the “walking-dead,” wandering in the wilderness beside the USIA, NIH, the EPA, Public Broadcasting and other targeted agencies. Absent a reservoir of broad, deep support, if the Endowment goes away completely, will Americans notice?
America’s next attempt to link the objectives of good government with the public interest must get the general public on our side. We can start by bundling up the diffuse dismay driven by the unhelpful effects of the actions and values of global giants. To start again, the theme of our comprehensive policy strategy must be led by two simple objectives: Cultural startups must be encouraged to incorporate as nonprofits; for-profit cultural companies must be regulated to restrict mergers and acquisitions, keeping them small.
Let the work begin!
* ”The Arts and the National Government,” a report written by cultural advocate August Heckscher, was submitted to the John F. Kennedy White House in December 1962. It is one of the central documents foreshadowing the establishment of the Arts Endowment.