The Trump administration has found yet another axis of grievance: art. Specifically, art that centers Indigenous and queer identities, such as Jeffrey Gibson’s immersive exhibition “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT,” currently on view at MASS MoCA through 2026. In early May, the National Endowment for the Arts quietly rescinded a $50,000 grant it had previously awarded the museum, stating the exhibition “no longer serves the interest of the United States.” MASS MoCA’s director Kristy Edmunds, in a sharply worded public statement, suggested readers let that line sink in. Really sink in.
The NEA, now marching in step with the administration’s executive orders and ideological priorities, has been busy pulling the plug on other projects that had passed muster under the previous administration. Paramount Hudson Valley in Peekskill lost a grant that would have helped fund Cirque Zuma Zuma—an African circus arts performance planned for Black History Month—and an Argentine tango showcase during Hispanic Heritage Month. Hudson Valley Shakespeare was defunded too. The money was earmarked for its Tent Pole Commissions program, a rare pipeline for new work by living playwrights not named David Mamet. Art Omi in Ghent also received notice that the offer of a federal award administered by the NEA was being rescinded.
Pilobolus, the 54-year-old dance company based in Western Connecticut, also lost a $15,000 grant to support its collaborative programming with Headlong Dance Theater in Philadelphia—one that offered training, access, and opportunity to young Black and Brown pre-professional dancers. As Pilobolus noted in a statement: "It’s not just a funding cut. It’s a rupture in the ecosystem that makes art possible."
Another Hudson Valley cultural institution, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, released a statement that it, too, had been defunded by the NEA. "On Monday, CPW received the news that a substantial peer-approved grant from the NEA had been rescinded by the Trump administration. The $25,000 award would have supported 10 outstanding photographers to live and work at the CPW artist studio in Woodstock. The NEA has consistently supported the acclaimed artist residency, Woodstock Air, since the founding of the program in 1999. The NEA grant cancellation means that in total CPW has lost over $129,000 in federal grants already fully approved by the agencies and their peer panels, amounting to approximately 10 percent of our FY25 operating budget. This includes $72,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), $32,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities , and now $25,000 from the NEA. On appeal, we were able to regain a $62,000 reimbursement from the IMLS."
The justification—“no longer serves the interest of the United States”—echoes the well-thumbed playbook of the 1980s culture wars, when Senator Jesse Helms and his moral majority launched a frontal assault on the NEA. Back then it was Karen Finley covering herself in chocolate, Robert Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic photography, Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ—artworks that conservatives deemed obscene, unpatriotic, or both. Then, as now, the real offense was that the art gave voice to marginalized perspectives, and the real crime was that taxpayers helped fund it.
MASS MoCA's Edmunds notes the grant had been awarded on November 9, 2023, pre-Trump 2.0, with funds expected this spring. The NEA’s email offered the vague rationale of “reallocating funds to projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President”—a line that reads like it was run through a Ronald Reagan commemorative paper shredder.
In the same statement, Edmunds cautioned that the NEA is not acting alone. “These are being sent en masse—not only from the NEA, but from multiple federal agencies that award and redistribute taxpayer dollars for education, science, health, research, humanities, libraries, historic preservation, parks…”—basically, any public good not aligned with the White House’s current definition of heritage.
And yet: Gibson’s show remains on view. In MASS MoCA’s cavernous Building 5, garments hang from the rafters, vibrant and ghostly, accompanied by a soundscape that resists silencing. Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee artist, continues doing what great artists do: Making work that is at once confrontational, celebratory, and uncategorizable.
The money may be gone. The art is still here. If you wish to take action to advocate for the arts and support cultural institutions, here are some steps you can take:
Urge your member of Congress to protect legally awarded funding.
Connect with your elected officials using the Americans for the Arts Protect the NEA Action Toolkit.
Amplify the call to protect the NEA with the Americans for the Arts Social Media Toolkit.
