“The showdown in Washington has reverberated across a vast expanse of the U.S. arts community and beyond the country’s borders,” report Colin Dwyer and Elizabeth Blair in Thursday’s (1/10) National Public Radio. “It has been felt not just by the museums and their patrons, but also by Brooklyn students, Los Angeles filmmakers, domestic nonprofits and foreign artists … ‘Any little crack—whether it is the elimination of money from the National Endowment for the Arts or the slowing of it down, like a shutdown does—potentially affects [arts groups] and their planning and their ability to attract other funders,’ ” says Robert Lynch, head of the nonprofit Americans for the Arts. “The NEA and its sister agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities, often represent a critical boon to many of these groups. Both agencies reach thousands of small and large organizations around the country, including NPR. And getting a grant from the NEA or NEH helps those groups to raise funds from other sources.… On its website, the NEA says it will honor all of its Fiscal Year 2019 grants and that it’s accepting applications for 2020, but during the shutdown there’s nobody working at either agency to answer questions.”
Click the links for regularly updated information from the League of American Orchestras about the impact of the Federal Government shutdown on the arts and about visas for foreign guest artists.
Posted January 14, 2019
