The arts and humanities in Illinois would be deeply injured by the Trump administration’s proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal funding institutions.
And Chicago — a world-renowned nexus for the performing arts — would face particular peril, according to Illinois arts agencies and Chicago arts organizations.
“As far as I’m concerned, I would say this is a disaster,” said Shirley Madigan, chairman of the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
“I’ll start with a simple statement — it’s an abomination,” said Mark Kelly, commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
“Instead of culture wars, it’s ‘Let’s abolish culture.'”
Said Angel Ysaguirre, executive director of the Illinois Humanities Council, “Part of the argument about eliminating (endowments) is that the general public will pick up the costs. I would remind people that almost half of our budget comes from the NEH.”
Grants from the NEA “have the most impact on small to midsize arts organizations that are really making huge differences in their communities, as well as supporting neighborhood-based initiatives to larger institutions,” said Claire Rice, executive director of Arts Alliance Illinois, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the arts.
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NEA recipients include such far-flung ventures as the Chicago Hip-Hop Theater Festival produced by Kuumba Lynx; “7,000 Oaks,” produced by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in partnership with Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance; and 3Arts residencies for artists with disabilities.
But high-profile organizations such as Goodman and Steppenwolf theaters, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, Joffrey Ballet and others will feel the blow, their leaders said.
To look at the scene from a wide aperture, the combined annual budgets of the NEA and NEH are about $300 million. It’s worth noting that last year the NEA distributed $3.65 million in the form of 111 grants to arts and cultural organizations across the state, according to Arts Alliance Illinois. Because arts institutions leverage these funds to obtain matching grants and additional funding from private donors and foundations, the ripple effect extends the impact of the initial award.
In fact, public funding constitutes about 2 percent of grantees’ total revenue, while public dollars leverage a one-to-nine ratio cash match, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
The loss of this funding would be profound across the state, according to Tatiana Gant, executive director of the Illinois Arts Council.
“It would be very serious,” Gant said. “We’d see a loss of services in many areas.”
In Illinois, where the state budget impasse has prevented the Arts Council from receiving funding, the organization has survived on the $865,900 it has received from the NEA in this fiscal year. That has allowed the Arts Council to continue to function and to provide moneys that “must meet our state priorities,” Gant said.
All of this helps fuel a $2.75 billion arts industry in Illinois, which generates $324 million in government revenue ($158 million to the state and $166 million locally), according to Americans for the Arts. That activity supports nearly 80,000 jobs, according to AFTA.
The Illinois Humanities Council — which supports a broad range of cultural, literary and educational activities across the state — receives $1.1 million of its $2.3 million budget from the NEH, Ysaguirre, of the IHC, said. In addition, the NEH made 34 grants to organizations and institutions in Illinois (excluding the council), for a total of $2.5 million, according to IHC.
Much of this money is sent to people and places that do not have alternative resources, Ysaguirre said.
“Our largest program is the Odyssey Project, which is a nine-month course that meets twice a week and teaches classes in American history, philosophy, literature, art history and critical thinking and writing to adults who live at or below 150 percent of the poverty line and never had a chance to go to college,” Ysaguirre said.
“Last year we graduated about 110 people from the Odyssey Project. These are not wealthy Chicagoans who are the primary audience for this programming. Our work reaches every district across Illinois and many of the small towns, where working with public libraries we’re the No. 1 provider of cultural programming in some small communities.
“And I’ll tell you, these programs are the ones that are really hard to fundraise for,” Ysaguirre continued. “My one biggest point is that the great thing about NEH support is that it allows us to do work in places where it’s the most difficult to serve, because of geographic isolation or because who the constituents are.”
The City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events — which produces all manner of free festivals, exhibitions and performances — during the past couple of years has received annual NEA grants of $140,000 (through the Illinois Arts Council Community Arts Access Program) to partially fund its Cultural Grants Program/Individual Artists Program and $45,000 in direct NEA funds for the Chicago Cultural Center Arts Organizations in Residence Program.
“Just (last) fall, 40 (Chicago) arts organizations received $1.3 million from the NEA, and there’s another series of awards scheduled for the spring,” cultural commissioner Kelly said.
“When you look at those awards, these are the organizations that shape and frame culture in this city, from the Art Institute to Steppenwolf to Lyric Opera.
“And then, in addition, there are so many of our organizations that support creative youths and are just fundamental to the developing of young people.
“SkyART is a nonprofit that engages youth in creation, in making … and teens flock to it. It gives them meaning, purpose.
“Marwen (a nonprofit providing free art classes) is just a wonderful school that serves students from across that city that come for their classes and create the opportunity to create art. And the list just goes on.”
Drill down into specific art forms, and the toll of the losses mounts.
“We have received $365,000 from (the NEA) over the last five years,” said David Schmitz, executive director of the Steppenwolf Theatre. “No one else is really focused on expanding the canon of diverse voices. They actually fund those plays.”
Steppenwolf premieres of Tracy Letts’ “Mary Page Marlowe,” Mona Mansour’s “The Way West” and “Head of Passes” by Tarell Alvin McCraney all received NEA funding.
Schmitz also argued that the Chicago theater ecology “could not exist without NEA funding,” given the way the federal agency long has sent funding from state and local agencies, money that then gets funneled to smaller organizations and becomes a gateway to other resources.
“In the late 1970s, it was NEA challenge grants that basically saved the Goodman from going out of business,” said Roche Schulfer, longtime executive director of Goodman Theatre, referencing the tricky years following the theater’s separation from the Art Institute of Chicago.
“What is really distressing about all of this to me is that this has long been a model public-private partnership. A small amount of public money leverages a large amount of private contributions. I think the administration really is trying to limit diversity of thought.”
Chicago theaters continue to seek support from the NEA.
“We just sent in a proposal last week” said Erica Daniels, managing director of Victory Gardens Theater. “Their grant-making with us has long been integral to our work, especially in the area of social justice. It’s gut-wrenching. I just hope people realize what the NEA does in creating partnerships for the benefit of humanity.”
“We feel this is a tragedy,” said BJ Jones, artistic director of Northlight Theatre, which received a $20,000 NEA grant for its recent production of “Faceless,” a play by a recent Northwestern University graduate named Selina Fillinger about Muslim-Americans and religious freedom.
“The NEA has stimulated important projects, especially new work, that otherwise would not have seen the light of day.”
Said Greg Cameron, executive director of Joffrey Ballet, “Yes, the NEA matters. The NEA directly supported our re-imagining of ‘The Nutcracker’ this past season. Most of the dance companies in Chicago have small budgets, and that makes the NEA support even more critically important.”
Even an organization as long-established and esteemed as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra long has sought support from federal funding.
“The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association has been the beneficiary of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts on an annual basis for several decades,” said Jeff Alexander, president and CEO of the orchestra’s parent body, via email. (He did not specify the dollar amount the CSO presently receives.)
“These grants are important to us, and have supported education and media projects, special programming and touring activities.
“The per capita support from government agencies to arts organizations in the United States is already among the lowest in Western civilization. We encourage Congress and the Senate not only sustain but to increase funding to the NEA through the current budget process.”
Anthony Freud, general director, president and CEO of Lyric Opera, also noted the trickle-down effect of NEA funding and the serious consequences to small-to-midsized performing arts groups if federal arts subsidy were eliminated or hobbled.
“While only a tiny percentage of the overall national budget, federal funding for the arts benefits every region of the country — economically, creatively and in producing a sense of community,” he wrote in an email. “We at Lyric are fortunate to have more diversified revenue streams, but smaller organizations rely on national funding to provide essential cultural services to their local communities.
“Now more than ever, it is critical that we have these opportunities to come together, explore the challenges our world is facing and celebrate the diversity that is a cornerstone of our great country.”
The proposed NEA budget cut “clearly would require us to add funds from other sources,” said Jim Hirsch, executive director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, a midsized orchestra that receives $10,000 annually from the arts endowment, which amounts to one-half of 1 percent of its operating budget of more than $2 million.
The Field Museum also expects impact from the potential elimination of federal funding organizations.
“Historically, we do receive funds from NEA and NEH,” Jaclyn Johnson, the museum’s public relations and community awareness director, said in an email. “Currently, we just closed a grant from NEA for our work with Native American artists and organizations (including the current Chris Pappan exhibit) and we just began a small grant awarded from NEH on our co-curation work with the Filipino-American community, and we have another project currently in review.”
The NEA granted $70,000 to the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest exhibition of contemporary architecture in North America. The Chicago Biennial has tweeted that “our 2017 edition depends on the support of this vital institution.”
And the Chicago Architecture Foundation received a 2017 NEA grant of $35,000 to support Open House Chicago, a free citywide event that opens the interiors of buildings through the city for tours.
Cinematic arts in Chicago also turn to the NEA, which is the “largest single funder” of the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, according to Milos Stehlik, founder and artistic director of Facets Multimedia, which presents a wide range of art films. This year’s festival, starting in October, has a budget of $480,000, of which $65,000 came from the NEA.
Stehlik says he has “no clue at the moment what it would mean if we lost that funding, but it would be extremely difficult to replace because the philanthropic climate is already so stressed, especially in Chicago and the need to fund social services.”
And the Chicago International Film Festival, the big film fest in town, every fall relies on NEA grants, which “play a major role in our ability to provide high-quality film programs, including free public events for our communities,” according to managing director Vivian Teng.
The proposed elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have local impact, as well.
Chicago Public Media, parent organization of WBEZ-FM 91.5, gets about 6 percent of its annual $25 million budget, or $1.4 million, in CPB funds, said Goli Sheikholeslami, CEO of Chicago Public Media.
“I don’t want the perception to be that it’s 6 percent, and we’ll find a way to make it up because you really have to think of public radio in its totality,” she said. “The ecosystem has to be healthy.”
And for that ecosystem, “the annual federal funding we get is an essential element in our financial stability. We think about ourselves operating within a system, and we think about the health of the entire system. In many of these small markets, public radio is sometimes the only access they have from a broadcasting perspective to a news and information channel.
“The other way to look at it: It’s not insignificant, either. It is still $1.4 million that we would have to find another way to make up that gap. You know, we are working so hard to minimize the disruption to our listeners” by limiting on-air pledge drives, she said.
In literary arts, Young Chicago Authors — which for 26 years has provided creative writing and poetry workshops in Chicago Public Schools and is best known for its annual Louder than a Bomb poetry festival — received $20,000 this year from the NEA to continue its artist residencies in local schools.
“If we lose that, it would be really hard for us. We would have shrink the program,” said Alissa Goldwasser, YCA’s director of institutional giving.
The nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago has received funding annually “pretty much since the beginning” of its JazzCity program, which brings performances into neighborhood parks, said executive director Lauren Deutsch. And Orbert Davis’ Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, a jazz-meets-classical symphonic organization that is unique in America, also has received funding from the NEA.
“We are disappointed because we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals of all ages in thousands of communities, large, small, urban and rural, and in every congressional district in the nation,” said NEA chairman Jane Chu in a statement.
“We are greatly saddened to learn of this proposal for elimination, as NEH has made significant contributions to the public good over its 50-year history,” said NEH chairman William D. Adams in a statement.
Rice, of Arts Alliance Illinois, tried to see hope.
“They say a crisis should never be wasted,” she said. “Maybe this moment allows us to think even more broadly and about policy and advocacy work.
“For the Arts Alliance, this isn’t about saving money. It’s about misunderstanding what the arts do.”
The Tribune’s Chris Borrelli, Steve Johnson, Chris Jones, Blair Kamin, Nina Metz and John von Rhein contributed to this report.
hreich@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @howardreich
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