Trump Dissolves Arts Committee Previously Restored by Biden

New York Times

30-01-2025

The Trump administration has quietly dissolved the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, part of a flurry of executive orders aimed at rolling back the previous administration's policies on art, culture and historical commemoration.
The move was part of President Trump's first executive order, issued on Inauguration Day, that reversed more than two dozen 'harmful executive orders and actions' taken by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
That order has drawn attention for its rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government, which has left federal museums and cultural organizations uncertain how to respond. The dissolution of the arts committee, made without comment from the White House, has been little noticed. At some point, its website was taken down.
Since it was established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, the committee has brought together prominent artists, powerful allies of the president, academics and museum professionals to advise on cultural policy. Members have included the singer Frank Sinatra; the cellist Yo-Yo Ma; Terry Semel, a former chairman of Warner Bros.; and Robert Menschel, a former Goldman Sachs partner.
In the 1990s, it petitioned President Bill Clinton to restore funding for public arts education, to require high school students to have competency in a foreign language, and to expand tax incentives for cultural philanthropy. Under President Barack Obama, the committee developed Turnaround Arts, an experimental initiative to boost arts education in the nation's lowest-performing schools.
The committee was nonpartisan. But during the first Trump administration, it inadvertently became a showcase for the mutual antagonism between Mr. Trump and what he has often derided as out-of-touch cultural elites.
In August 2017, 17 members resigned in protest over Mr. Trump's response to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. In a group open letter, members including the artist Chuck Close, the novelist Jhumpa Lahiri and the architect Thom Mayne criticized what they said was Mr. Trump's 'support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans.'
The White House then issued a statement saying Mr. Trump had already been planning to disband the group, calling it 'not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars.'
Nearly two years into his administration, in September 2022, Mr. Biden revived the group, calling the arts 'the soul of America, reflecting our multicultural and democratic experience.' His executive order cited the importance of the arts and humanities in tackling 'the greatest challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis and the scourge of hate-fueled violence.'
In April 2023, Mr. Biden named 31 members, including prominent figures like George Clooney, Jon Batiste and Shonda Rhimes as well as museum curators, academics and the leaders of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian.
The co-chairs were the singer Lady Gaga and the producer Bruce Cohen, a Biden supporter who also received a National Medal of Arts that same year.
The committee, which had an annual budget of roughly $335,000, met six times after resuming operations. Its activities, according to public records, included reviewing a proposal for a campaign to combat the loneliness epidemic identified by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general.
Records do not indicate how many members of the group actively participated, or the range of subjects on which it offered advice. Its final meeting was held on Jan. 9.
Steve Israel, a former Democratic U.S. representative from New York who served on the committee, said he was disturbed by Mr. Trump's move.
'Not only did he fire us all, but he disbanded the actual committee,' Mr. Israel said. 'It suggests that there's a proactive hostility toward arts and humanities.'
The dissolution of the committee was just one of the Trump administration's recent actions touching on cultural matters, most of which reversed Mr. Biden's initiatives or restored Trump efforts that Mr. Biden had undone.
On Wednesday, in an order dedicated to K-12 education, Mr. Trump revived his 1776 Commission, which he created in 2020 to promote 'patriotic education.' In a separate order, he reinstated his call for the creation of a National Garden of American Heroes and his executive order protecting monuments on federal land from vandalism.
That second order, titled 'Celebrating America's 250th Birthday,' reiterated Mr. Trump's calls for a robust celebration of the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, in July 2026. As part of that, he announced a task force, led by him, that would 'plan, organize and execute an extraordinary celebration.'
The order provided no details on funding or programming but specified that the task force would be housed within the Department of Defense.