Hundreds of artists punished the National Donation for the Arts (NEA) in an open letter this week after the Agency had imposed new requirements for subsidy applicants not to exploit diversity, equity and inclusion (dei) programs or use federal funds to ‘genderideology to promote. “
The updated compliance standards for applicants come after the NEA has canceled its Challenge America subsidy for “disadvantaged communities” and announced that the financing priority would be given to projects that sign the signature of the “declaration of independence”.
On Tuesday, February 18, 463 artists and cultural employees sent a letter to NEA leadership, as reported by the New York Timesasking the agency to reverse the course of his compliance with the recent executive orders of President Trump that prohibit diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in federally financed agencies and only recognize two genera In the federal government.
According to the updated NEA guidelines for compliance, organizations that submit a subsidy application state that they will provide records about their compliance with executive orders, in addition to existing NEA -requirements, including compliance with actions that prohibit age and discrimination in disability.
A NEA spokesperson has not yet responded to various studies.
In response to HyperallergicThe request for a signing list, theater director and 2019 MacArthur Fellowship receiver Annie Dorsen said the list was private. In a document obtained by HyperallergicArtists said they chose to be anonymous because they thought the letter would be “stronger without specific authors.”
Among the artists who have publicly stated that their participation in the Missive Performance artist is Holly Hughes, a member of the group known as the NEA Four. In 1990, the NEA withdrew the subsidies from Hughes and three other artists after the congress had adopted a “decency” clause with which it could reject applications based on the subject. The artists, of whom the majority belonged to the LGBTQ+ community, then sued the NEA in a case that ended at the Supreme Court, where judges confirmed the clause.
“The attacks on artists then took place, such as now, at a very censorious moment with a National Freak Out about the popularity of hip hop, and limitations on the distribution of information about reproductive services and safer sex information,” Hughes said Hyperallergic.
In Tuesday’s letter, artists accused the agency of leaving his mission To “promote and support an environment in which art benefits everyone in the United States” and asked for its current requirements to turn and refuse similar future limitations. The undersigned also accused the establishment of “conforming to Trump’s reactionary and discriminatory executive orders.”
“Artists are not busy promoting ideology (whatever that means),” is the letter. “We are forced to tell our truths, create community around the stories that give life to those truths, and to make a common cause with others while we share this time on earth.”
Hours after the artists sent the letter to NEA officials, the agency held a prescribed webinar about the disputed new guidelines in which Michelle Hoffman, director of Arts Education for the NEA, said that Federal Financing Inspection Requirements have been around for decades.
“All applicants from federal funds must sign a certainty of compliance,” said Hoffman.
Hoffman said that the America Challenge in its trade fairs for art project programs was rolled up as a matter of efficiency, but later added: “In accordance with executive orders, we will not finance projects that include dei activities.”
Tackling the focus of the 250th anniversary of the independence projects on the new guidelines, Hoffman said that the NEA had already collaborated with the congress for special projects in 2016 Under the Obama government. A sentence that states that these projects would be given has since the financing priority has been removed from the NEA website.
Hoffman did not explain why are eligible for organizations that request applications for art projects from three years of art programming to five years.
Although Hoffman said that the requirement of compliance with federal policy is an established practice for making fairs, the open letter signators said that the NEA had made a “short-sighted decision” to meet orders that the potential has to be on constitutional grounds to be canceled.
“The two goals of these limitations: queer and trans artists, and the much broader overlapping communities indicated by anti-dei language, are the target in all aspects of public financing,” Hughes said Hyperallergic.
