Urbanowski: Federal actions impact local access to arts

Over the past two weeks, I have received numerous calls and emails from local arts organizations reporting on late-night email notifications informing them of the cancellation of existing federal grants.

The most recent was a blanket email on May 2 indicating multiple National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants have been terminated. Just like the notification of cancelled grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in April, it appears likely that these terminations are not legal and will be challenged in court. They create substantial turmoil and financial uncertainty — threatening the stability of a sector already traumatized by the effects of a range of presidential executive orders and current economic pressures.

In Santa Clara County, our local arts organizations operate on tight margins that require each to be nimble and entrepreneurial in order to provide important programs and services to local residents. Our nonprofit arts groups tend to be  small — only 8% have annual budgets over $500,000, and the average annual income for a culture sector worker in Silicon Valley is less than $50,000.

Our arts ecosystem is a dynamic, organically grown network of hundreds of multidisciplinary arts and cultural organizations and thousands of artists, creative entrepreneurs, volunteers and individual participants distributed across a broadly diverse region.

Our arts groups build equity, drive social change and advance healthy outcomes for residents in our county. They do this with very little private philanthropic support — despite our region’s wealth, 90% of philanthropic giving leaves the region. Government funding is critical to ensure access to arts programming for youth and families from every cultural background and socio-economic segment of our county. Every federal grant is leveraged to raise local and private dollars.

Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez of MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana told me,  “MACLA was shocked to receive two emails the evening of April 9, cancelling our two IMLS grants, with a loss of $463,000 to our San Jose economy. Both grants went through a highly competitive, rigorous review process, with input from peer museum professionals and IMLS staff. One grant supports MACLA’s visual arts exhibitions and related public programs, including the highly popular South First Fridays, payments to artists, staff salaries, costs of mounting the exhibitions and marketing and promotions. The other grant is for workforce development, a paid, year-long curatorial fellowship to train the next generation of cultural workers. MACLA takes our obligations seriously, meaning we need to find the money to pay for the remaining five months of the curatorial internship.”

Most cancelled federal grants are for projects already in process and some for multi-year support of ongoing programs. In the Bay Area, an open letter by a leading group of Northern California museum directors noted not only the immediate impact of cuts on museum services to local residents, youth and families, but also the potential impact on democracy itself: “These actions will undercut and nullify museums’ capacities to support free expression and the accurate depiction of history … Federal support of museums — both financially and in their affirmation of programming based on merit and free from censorship — is essential.”

The range of local organizations impacted by federal retracting of existing grants includes Opera San Jose, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, San Jose Jazz, Opera Cultura, CreaTV, San Jose Museum of Art, MACLA, San Jose Taiko and more. Downtown San Jose arts group Local Color was anticipating using their first ever NEA grant for “Mural Museum,” to reactivate and light vacant storefronts with projection-based digital murals, but the grant was withdrawn. New Museum Los Gatos is appealing termination of an IMLS grant to fund their Muwekma Ohlone Exhibition Revitalization in partnership with San Jose State University that included school tours.

And beyond this retraction of existing grants, the president has submitted a fiscal year 2025-26 draft budget proposing deep cuts to non-defense discretionary programs, including drastic reductions to cultural and educational programs. Specifically, his proposed budget eliminates funding for the NEA, NEH, IMLS and Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Karen Kienzle of the Palo Alto Art Center and Foundation commented, “Seven IMLS grants over the past two decades have helped us to reach new audiences, engage the community in novel ways, and promote new ways of learning through the arts.”

So what can we do locally? Of course, you should let our federally elected officials know protecting the NEA, NEH and IMLS is vital to our social cohesion, the education of our youth, our local economy and the foundation of a healthy local community. Send your email today.

Locally, now is the time to ensure funding from state, regional and local government and private philanthropy steps up. It’s time to work together to provide local resources to secure local control and services and programming to local residents and communities.

Alexandra Urbanowski is CEO of SV Creates, the state and county designated arts service organization and local arts agency for Santa Clara County. She serves on the leadership committee for the California Coalition of County Art Agencies and as a board member at the School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza. Her columns appear every first Wednesday of the month. Contact Alexandra at [email protected].