The American Government No Longer Values the Arts

On the afternoon of May 2, when arts nonprofits across the country began receiving news that their grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were terminated or withdrawn, the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) received not one, but three emails.

The 49-year-old nonprofit, founded to encourage independent video-making in the Bay Area, has been awarded at least one NEA grant a year for over 20 years. 2025 was no exception: in January, the NEA awarded BAVC $100,000 to fund their emerging filmmaker fellowship and preservation program.

But like dozens of Bay Area arts nonprofits, the May 2 emails stated that BAVC’s projects no longer aligned with the NEA’s priorities, recently updated by President Donald Trump. They had seven calendar days to appeal the decision.

Executive Director Paula Smith Arrigoni says BAVC will appeal, but she feels torn about it. “We want to support BAVC and the sustainability of our organization, but trying to fit within these very narrow values that we do not adhere to also doesn’t feel great,” she told KQED. “So I have really low confidence that even through the appeal process, there will be remedies.”

It’s a refrain that has echoed across organizations large and small over the past week, reflecting the sheer number of nonprofits who’ve counted on the NEA, and who are now the victims of an all-out arts bloodbath by the Trump administration under the guise of eliminating waste.

In 2024, the NEA budget was $207 million, .003% of the federal budget.

Chances are, nearly every arts nonprofit you know and enjoy is touched by the NEA. The awards have funded a Spanish-language film series at the Roxie, design and building workshops at Girls Garage, and a dance education program for elementary-school students at San José’s New Ballet.

“In many senses, the National Endowment for the Arts is a symbol as much as it is a funder,” says Tom Parrish, managing director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, which had a $40,000 grant withdrawn. “To have this support canceled is basically saying that we are no longer valued — that the arts are no longer valued in America.”

Funding halted mid-projects

For many NEA grant recipients, especially those who received grants in 2023 and 2024 and still had balances to spend, the May 2 termination emails were particularly cruel.

“For some of our colleagues,” Parrish told KQED, “they’ve already done the projects, or they’re in the middle of the projects.”

The California Symphony, for example, has only received half of its $20,000 NEA grant to support its three-year Young American Composer-in-Residence program. Composer Saad Haddad will present his third and final composition next summer, in a program meant to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary.

Donato Cabrera, artistic and music director of the California Symphony, notes that the anniversary is one of the new priorities for NEA funding. “That’s the irony of it all,” he says, “let alone the fact the title of our program is Young American Composer-in-Residence — it feels rather in alignment.”

Despite the termination of the NEA grant, Cabrera says the symphony has no plans to stop the residency program, and will find a way, somehow, to pay for it. “It is well known amongst aspiring and young composers as one of the stepping stones that creates a career in composition in this country,” he says. “So we’re going to hold onto this program as tightly as we can.”

Many of the canceled NEA grants were meant to support artists at the beginning of their careers. At BAVC, the MediaMaker Fellowship is for emerging documentary filmmakers.

Berkeley Rep’s $40,000 NEA grant was to support their incubator program, The Ground Floor. “Any loss of support impacts our pipeline of new plays,” Parrish says. “The Ground Floor has helped to support hundreds of projects and brought bold, innovative stories to life on our stages and across the country.”

Cult of Love, Ain’t Too Proud, American Idiot, Hadestown — all either went through the incubator program or premiered at Berkeley Rep.

This is the power of an NEA grant. It gives nonprofits the ability to take chances on the experimental, visionary projects that may not have commercial outlets. Grant funds mean artists get paid, audiences experience new work, and younger generations are supported in fields that need their fresh energy.

What’s lost

The NEA might not be the largest funding source for a nonprofit, but it can be the most prestigious.

“One of the really beautiful things about the NEA is that they’ve been very committed to funding smaller organizations,” Arrigoni says. Once a nonprofit has received an NEA grant, she adds, “you have this amazing stamp of approval.”

Sayre Batton, executive director of the San José Museum of Art, agrees. “It has a multiplier effect,” she says. “I would say probably for every dollar from the NEA, we might be able to raise five or $10 more on a match.”

The SJMA was set to receive a $50,000 NEA grant this year, to support an exhibition and catalog for the work of Pao Houa Her. That show opens July 11 at the museum and sites around the city.

The museum had also received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), canceled in April. The SJMA is one of many nonprofits hit by the 1-2-3 whammy of NEA, National Endowment for the Humanities and IMLS grant cancellations. In mid-April, Batton co-authored a letter with nine fellow Northern California museum directors, sounding the alarm and calling on people to contact their representatives.

Batton takes encouragement from the fact that attorneys general from 21 states sued the president, halting the dismantling of the IMLS. But she’s also aware that the international community is watching these attacks on funding with an eye to take advantage of the chaos.

“President Macron in France just announced a great subsidy and incentive for scientists to move to France,” she says. “We may see these kinds of actions taking place in arts and culture as well.”

If that happens, she says, “There will be a brain drain from the United States of America.”

At nonprofits nationwide, the effects are already noticeable. At BAVC, for example, Arrigoni has taken a pay and time cut. The fellowship will serve fewer filmmakers, and staff has already been laid off from the preservation team.

Cabrera sees the NEA cancellations as part of a longer tail of diminishing grant opportunities. “Grants that we would rely on from year to year to year, slowly but surely diminished or have gone away altogether,” he says. “Grants in general have been harder to come by, harder to find and are of generally smaller amounts.”

The NEA in disarray

The arts are often an afterthought, and especially so when a country’s democracy is quickly being dismantled. But the NEA cuts were also overshadowed by the administration’s flood-the-zone strategy of distraction: In the days after the NEA cancellations, President Trump posted an AI-generated picture of himself as the pope, threatened tariffs on foreign films and claimed to be reopening Alcatraz — all deeply unserious proposals.

Meanwhile, the real story was here all along: the NEA is falling apart. This week, news of numerous NEA staffers stepping down or retiring began to hit grantee inboxes. It’s unclear how many staff remain, who will process appeals, or what funds might be allocated to future grant opportunities.

If, that is, future grant opportunities exist. President Trump’s latest budget proposal, also released on May 2, called for the wholesale elimination of the NEA, NEH and IMLS.

If there’s any upside, it’s that since the inauguration, nonprofit directors like Arrigoni had noticed a chilling effect on freedom of expression, especially among nonprofits who receive money from federal agencies.

“Now that we’ve lost all of our federal funding, it almost is a little bit liberating,” she said. “The funding ramifications are no longer there, and we can actually use our voices to speak out about what’s been happening.”

An important question remains, of course: what if it’s too late?