AFTER BEING INFORMED by the President Donald Trump administration that their National Endowment for the Arts grants were terminated earlier this month, two local nonprofits will still be able to implement the programs they planned – with the help of national foundations stepping up to fill the void.
In January, the Larry Spring Museum and Art Explorers were told they would receive $10,000 grants from the NEA.
Dedicated to the science experiments and outsider art of Larry Spring and artists working in the fields of art and science, the Larry Spring Museum was set to receive a grant to expand its Redwood Time project, which examines the narrative of settlement and resource development on the Northern California Coast. The grant will fund an artist in residency with artist Ursula Brookbank and an artist workshop with Anne Beck.
Art Explorers, an art gallery and studio for adult artists with disabilities, was awarded a grant to launch Film School, which will offer filmmaking workshops to its artists culminating in a film about Fort Bragg.
The grants were part of the NEA’s Challenge America program, which funds art projects in underserved communities, including rural areas like Fort Bragg, and populations such as individuals with disabilities.
It takes on average 25 to 40 hours to write a NEA grant. Thousands of nonprofits across the country apply and less than 300 organizations are selected.
Art Explorers board member Adele Horne called the grant “a really big deal” due to its competitive nature.
However, the excitement of the grant awards was short-lived.
In March, the museums received emails from the NEA that funding may be delayed due to staff having to review executive orders signed by Trump that could possibly impact the grants.
On May 2, the Larry Spring Museum and Art Explorers received emails stating that “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.”
Both grants were determined to fall out of scope of Trump’s priorities, which include art projects that “empower houses of worship” and “make America healthy again.”
That’s when two national arts organizations stepped up to the plate.
On Wednesday, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced that they would jointly award $800,000 to 80 nonprofits across the country that found their programs in jeopardy due to NEA grant uncertainty.
The Larry Spring Museum and Art Explorers were among the chosen organizations. Each would receive $10,000 to implement the programs they proposed to the NEA.
“We’re thrilled,” said Maria Trombetta executive director of Art Explorers. “We are deeply grateful to these foundations for providing this generous support at such a critical moment for so many organizations.”
The response was similar for the Larry Spring Museum’s Executive Director Anne Maureen McKeating. “We are deeply grateful that the Frankenthaler and Warhol foundations have elected to ensure that visual art projects that lost their funding—many of which serve remote communities like ours—can move forward without further interruption.”
There was no time like the present, according to Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the Frankenthaler Foundation. She hopes that other organizations will step up to fund organizations that are seeing funding dwindle away by the power of the president’s pen.
“In times of crisis—whether in response to natural disaster, global pandemic, or financial disruption—foundations do their best work when they come together to assert shared values,” she said.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.
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