Agency follows a uniquely American way of funding arts,
NEW YORK—When the National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965, organizers had different models to choose from.
They could have looked to the French Ministry of Culture, a cabinet-level institution committed to maintaining France’s cultural heritage. Or they could have copied the generous and government-directed support favored by some Scandinavian countries, or even the state-controlled art of their Cold War rivals: the Soviet Union and China. But the NEA, which the Trump administration wants to eliminate along with Legal Services Corp., the Institute of Museum and Library Services and dozens of other agencies and programs, developed in uniquely American fashion: diverse and independent, with a significant part of the budget distributed to state and local organizations. It also collaborates with nonprofit and private donors. “Our system is quite different from any of the other countries,” says Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of the nonprofit Americans for the Arts, which leads a network of organizations and individuals involved in the arts. “Most of the other countries use a subsidy system with few or any other sources of funding.”
“I love the NEA model because it was founded on a government-private giving system, and nothing succeeds like having buy-in from the various communities,” says actress Jane Alexander, who served as NEA chair from 1993-97. “I’m a resident of Canada and while there’s a lot of support for the arts it can be hard to get a project off the ground because there’s not a lot of incentive for private giving.”
From the beginning, the endowment was rooted in American political culture. It was founded when faith in government was high and when advocating for the arts was a popular position for an elected official. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, elected in a landslide in 1964, had strong public backing to fulfill the goals of the assassinated John F. Kennedy. And the economic expansion of the post-World War II era had led to a growing appetite for self-improvement and increased money and leisure time for artistic interests. “There wasn’t this feeling we needed to rescue the arts,” says Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University and a former NEA official who helped write and edit an NEA history that covered the endowment’s years from 1965-2008. “We hear that now a lot, but the original point was more along the lines of we have the momentum and we should take it to the next level.”
Dana Gioia, who headed the NEA from 2003-2009, says the endowment has managed to use relatively little money to build a nationwide arts network. But the NEA has endured contentious moments, rooted in a long-term debate over how and whether governments should fund the arts.