The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today, January 14, announced $36.8 million in grants to 1,474 individual artists, organizations and museums across the United States in the first round of awards for fiscal year 2025. Last year the NEA and its sister organization, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), survived the Republican-led proposed budget cuts.
Normally, the agency’s grants are announced in January and May, with a bulk of the funding announced in the spring. January last year’s allocation amounted to the total $32 million.
NEA President Maria Rosario Jackson said in a press release that the creative projects receiving funding this year will explore new ways to integrate arts and culture into communities. Recipients of the award come from all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
Approximately $31.8 million in awards will fund specific programs to promote public engagement and arts education in the visual and performing arts Grants for art projects. Northern Arizona University received $25,000 to support her Indigenous youth media workshopan eleven-day program that pairs Indigenous high school students with established photographers, videographers, journalists and other digital storytellers to create documentary-style stories.
Also aimed at young people, the urban planning studio from Chicago Territory NFP received $30,000 to support the Creating Space public community center.
Approximately $2.7 million in funding was prioritized for small arts organizations that expand the reach of the arts to what the NEA identifies as traditionally underserved communities, especially those who may have less access to grants. These $10,000 awards, known as Challenge America grants, require organizations to share at least an equivalent amount of costs. One of these subsidies for 2025 was awarded to the Three Rivers Arts Council in North Dakota to launch a residency for Native artists with a focus on engaging students and the public through programming, including performances by flautist and flutemaker and NEA National Heritage Fellow Bryan Akipa.
Eighteen organizations received Research Grants in the Arts of varying amounts, including the Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia, which was awarded $80,000 to conduct a study on how visiting an art museum affects adult well-being can influence.
Carnegie Mellon University has also secured $80,000 to explore how college students are using artificial intelligence for creative uses to inform secondary arts education.
Fifty-four museums in the U.S. received funding from the NEA this year, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, which received $50,000, the highest possible amount, for educational programs for youth and older adults. Also receiving the highest grant amounts are the Grand Rapids Art Museum, which will fund an exhibition and public programming on human migration by artist Christopher Myers, and the Honolulu Museum of Art, which will use the money to support staff salaries for an exhibition of working. by the Japanese printmaker Kōshirō Onchi.
More than $2.8 million in Grants for Arts Projects awards will be distributed to 105 film and media institutions, with the largest grants awarded to Art21 to support his Art in the twenty-first century‘ series and to the Bay Area Video Coalition for his MediaMaker grants for documentary filmmaking.
NEA’s announcement comes days before the second inauguration of Donald Trump, who in his first term categorized NEA and the NEH as “wasteful and unnecessary funding.” Last summer, Republican Oklahoma House Representative Josh Brecheen proposed cutting $48 million from agency budgets as part of an effort to cut “awake, armed and wastefulfederal spending. However, a majority of the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to keep NEA and NEH funding intact, and in July the Senate voted approved $209 million for the NEA for fiscal year 2025, an increase of $2 million from the previous year.
A full list of winners can be viewed here.
