{"id":9991,"date":"2018-06-19T14:48:28","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T14:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=9991"},"modified":"2020-07-27T20:59:43","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T20:59:43","slug":"beyond-survival-public-funding-for-the-arts-and-humanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=9991","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Survival: Public Funding for the Arts and Humanities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Think Tank that has yet to be named<\/a>, “Structures of Support,” 2012\u2013present.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three decades into the long culture wars, how are artists, scholars, and cultural organizations navigating shifting political, community, and financial tides? Where have we encountered friction or congruence between federal priorities and our work at state, local, and community levels? Has our work changed\u2014in structure, presentation, or substance\u2014in response to these priorities?<\/p>\n

Despite threats of elimination earlier in the year, federal funding for the arts and humanities has been preserved\u2014at least for now. While rightly celebrating this collective accomplishment, we must also acknowledge that ideological pressures on US cultural policy are performed as much through selective funding as outright defunding. Each successive presidential administration has stamped its particular priorities on funding agencies, shaping arts and humanities research through both direct and indirect means. The grantmaking models now used by the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities were carefully devised to avoid the headline-grabbing controversies of the 1980s culture wars while articulating the value of the arts and humanities to a non-elite, often skeptical public. Simultaneously, arts and scholarly communities have sometimes struggled for diversity in terms of race, class, and gender. Nonprofit cultural and educational institutions evolved alongside twentieth-century funding models, with diminishing federal funding giving way to support from private philanthropy, and its concomitant priorities. Surviving funding programs often expect artistic and intellectual activities to contribute to community development, shore up fraying social services, or emphasize their policy implications\u2014a challenging charge made more difficult by the patchwork of fragile social, economic, community, and technological infrastructures on which such work rests.<\/p>\n

In an environment of heightened scarcity and competitiveness, how do we negotiate the differing audiences, priorities, and compromises that inevitably register in creative, academic, and public discourse? How do we defend our existing, imperfect, imperiled institutions while also calling for\u2014and ultimately achieving\u2014more expansive public funding of a wider range of aesthetic and political voices?<\/p>\n

We seek 500-word responses to these questions from communities of art-making, scholarship, and exhibition practice. Moderated contributions will be posted to an online forum hosted by Art Journal Open<\/em>. Some respondents may subsequently be invited to expand their text into a longer article. Responses will be accepted through August 20, 2018 to publicfundingforum@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Sarah Kanouse<\/strong>
\nArtist and Associate Professor
\nDepartment of Art + Design
\nNortheastern University<\/p>\n

Jeremy Liu<\/strong>
\nSenior Fellow for Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development
\nPolicyLink<\/p>\n

Catherine Morris<\/strong>
\nSenior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
\nBrooklyn Museum<\/p>\n

Mimi Thi Nguyen<\/strong>
\nAssociate Professor
\nGender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies
\nUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Kanouse, Jeremy Liu, Catherine Morris, and Mimi Thi Nguyen seek 500-word responses from communities of art-making, scholarship, and exhibition practice regarding public funding for the arts in an environment of heightened scarcity and competitiveness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kia_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[341],"class_list":["post-9991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-notes","tag-beyond-survival",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}