How might possible loss of NEA affect Georgia arts?

Total eradication of agency may affect Atlanta Ballet.

An unseasonably cold day turned emotionally unsettling here Thursday with the news that President Donald Trump’s first federal budget plan had targeted the National Endowment for the Arts for elimination. The independent grantmaking agency — 44 grants totaling some $1.5 million in Georgia in fiscal year 2016 — has faced budget cuts before in its 52-year history, but never the threat of total eradication.

No more NEA could seriously curtail future efforts here by arts players as large and established as the Atlanta Ballet, which received a $20,000 grant to support its innovative staging of “Firebird” next month. And those smaller, yet no less impactful in their own way as the Georgia Mountain Storytelling Festival, taking place March 31-April 1 at Young Harris College, thanks in part to a $12,000 NEA grant.

Congress ultimately makes the budget. The NEA made grants in every congressional district in the country in 2016, leaving some advocates hopeful it will survive in some form.

“The nonprofit arts alone has an economic impact of $2.2 billion and (accounts for) about 31,000 jobs in the state,” said Karen Paty, executive director of the Georgia Council for the Arts, which received $772,500 from the NEA in 2016. GCA uses NEA money and additional state funds to make grants in Georgia, including $1.2 million to 186 different recipients this year. “I think we’re at the start of the process, not the end.”