When Deborah Block, artistic director of Philadelphia’s nonprofit theater company Theatre Exile, received word last November that a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts had been approved for the development and production of R. Eric Thomas’ play Glitter in the Glass, she immediately set to work on getting this dramatic piece up and running. Fifteen people—including a stage manager, an assistant stage manager, a director, five designers and some others—were hired, and the playwright himself needed to be paid.
Glitter in the Glass will open as planned on May 29, with twenty-two performances running through June 22. Missing, however, will be the $25,000 to help pay for it—that was rescinded shortly after President Trump assumed office and demanded that federal agencies reduce their budgets by, in some cases, canceling already approved grants.
“Theatre Exile’s budget for the year is $850,000, so losing $25,000 is a big thing for us,” Block told Observer. The cost of producing Glitter in the Glass itself is $95,000, but “we’re still going ahead with it. I’m under contract with various people, and we’re proceeding as best we can.” Under existing NEA protocols, groups are informed that their grant applications are approved, and the federal agency reimburses the organizations for monies already spent up to the amount approved. Those like Theatre Exile that already expended cash on projects are now out of luck. Block’s options are few, largely consisting of “letting our audiences know that our grant was frozen” and contacting some wealthy philanthropists in the area who have been supportive in the past. Block’s worry is that every nonprofit arts group in Philadelphia will be contacting these same people “and they may just get tapped out.”
Covering the shortfall in this year’s budget is potentially doable, but Theatre Exile has to make the same financial pitch to those same philanthropists for next year, and they’re not the only ones. At least 202 other visual arts, performing arts and literary arts organizations around the country have received notice that previously approved NEA grants have been canceled. Many, like Theatre Exile, are quite small groups, while some—including the Massachusetts-based dance company Jacob’s Pillow ($70,000, $30,000) or the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver ($40,000)—are more sizable. Last week, the NEA sent MASS MoCA an email alerting the institution of the termination of a grant earmarked to support Jeffrey Gibson’s commission “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT,” which is currently on view. The museum’s director Kristy Edmunds wrote in a statement that “the President’s priorities and agenda are mentioned vaguely,” adding that she was “struck by the words being used [and] how important they are to absorb.”
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The full introductory text of the emails received read “The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities. The NEA will now prioritize projects that elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster A.I. competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities. Funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.”
Some of the rescinded federal grants are for larger amounts, such as a $100,000 grant for the Maryland-based Arts Every Day to support the expansion of music education in Baltimore public schools or the $65,000 grant to Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to support an unnamed exhibition, but most are in the $10,000 to $40,000 range. Brooklyn Children’s Theatre, for instance, was to receive $10,000 to pay for free musical theater classes for children, and the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art will no longer receive a $30,000 grant to underwrite an exhibition series.
While, like Theatre Exile, many institutions and organizations will look to private donors for additional funding, relief may come from unexpected places. Currently offering a bit of succor to these organizations are the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation, which have announced that they are jointly allocating $800,000 across eighty cultural nonprofits impacted by the rescission.
A number of groups originally approved for grants before they were cancelled—Studio Two Three in Richmond, Virginia; Light Work in Syracuse, New York; Lawndale Art & Performance Center in Houston, Texas; OZ Arts Nashville; Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Arkansas; the Steel Yard in Providence, Rhode Island; Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts; Dance Source Houston; Visual Studies Workshop in Buffalo, New York; Fountainhead Arts in Miami, Florida; Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts; New Harmony Project in Indianapolis, Indiana; and the University of California at Berkeley—sought federal support for artist residencies, while many others were planning performances and visual arts exhibitions. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts had a $30,000 grant application approved for an exhibition of the work of William Villalongo, a multi-media artist living in Brooklyn, while the Brooklyn Children’s Theatre was expecting a $10,000 grant to support free musical theater classes for children.
The loss of federal funding—tens of millions of dollars of it—imperils some projects more than others. “With the recent cancellation of the $25,000 grant for our artist-in-residence program, we are indeed concerned about the implications for our operations, commitments and expenditures,” Scott Evans, executive director of the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, told Observer. On the other hand, Kathryn Mikesell, co-founder and executive director of Fountainhead Arts, claimed that the loss of its $40,000 grant award will not affect its artist residency program, adding that “we are actively reaching out to foundations and individuals who currently support Fountainhead to ask for increased funding, developing new programs to increase revenues and asking for introductions to potential new funders through our network of supporters.”
Jacobs Pillow executive and artistic director Pamela Tatge told Observer that the two NEA grants that were terminated “present a challenge to our overall financial picture; however, it does not—and will not—impact our intention to present the 2025 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival as planned.”
The cancellation of a $65,000 grant to the National Council for the Traditional Arts to help put on the 83rd National Folk Festival in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2026 “confused us,” the organization’s executive director Blaine Waide told Observer. “We’ve been getting funding for the festival from the NEA since 1970.” Ironically, the festival is listed as Mississippi’s contribution to the America250 celebrations that the Trump administration has been promoting to encourage patriotism. “It’s very confusing.” The organization has reached out to several donors to help “make up the difference.”
Whitney Gill, executive director of the Maine Crafts Association, began lining up mentors and an exhibition space for an apprenticeship program for contemporary crafts artists when she learned that her $23,000 grant application had been approved in early January, only to find out that the award had been put on hold weeks later. “I’m still in shock with all of this,” she said. Eight emerging artisans were selected to take part in the program, working with master craftspeople over a period of seven months, culminating in an exhibition of their newly created work. The program will take place as planned with the same number of apprentices and mentors, thanks to several individual donors and the California-based Maxwell Hanrahan Foundation, which made up the money the National Endowment for the Arts rescinded. “For one year, my problems are solved,” Gill said, “But what about next year?”
The NEA’s actions have drawn protests from organizations that rely on federal funding as well as regional arts funding agencies such as Arts Midwest, Creative West, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mid-Atlantic Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts and South Arts. Those groups joined to release an open letter on May 6 denouncing the rescission, urging “Congress to restore the grant funding in support of the arts, culture, and creativity that was passed during the last budgetary approval process, in addition to maintaining its broad bipartisan commitment to funding the NEA in next year’s budget.”
In fiscal year 2024, the three federal agencies that award grants to arts and culture groups across the country—the still-imperiled Institute of Museum and Library Services received a federal appropriation of $294.8 million and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities—received $207 million each, a total of $708.8 million for a nation of 340 million people, which comes out to just over $2 per resident. In the wake of this administration’s sweeping changes, it is highly likely that nonprofit organizations will be soliciting more donations, more directly, from all of us.
