Former ICA director: What is driving Trump's venom against the arts?
In the federal budget, arts funding makes up an infinitesimal fraction of spending. The NEA's
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Rather, the ineffable power of the sector lies in art itself, in the creative energy it represents and releases, and in the role it has played — over and over — in amplifying issues and movements that are part and parcel of resistance and hope.
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Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 book 'The Origins of Totalitarianism,' examined Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia in a way that feels all too relevant today. We learn that authoritarianism flourishes on loneliness, it offers a simplified world view divided into 'us' and 'them,' and it uses control of history and the arts as strategies to reinforce and inculcate a message of fear and obedience.
Contemporary art of all kinds, on the contrary, possesses a truth-telling power to shape and narrate our shared history — a power to change whose stories are told, and by whom. The arts can speak to audiences long excluded from our walls and stages. And they are particularly important for America's young people.
Today across America, cultural organizations are tackling loneliness, pervasive since the COVID-19 pandemic. Museums, concert halls, and theaters offer space for collective learning and gathering. They present programs for young people and elders that foster social interaction and creativity. And they support artists as they make and share their work with others.
I recently stepped down after 27 years leading the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In my experiences at the ICA and with other arts organizations, I have long seen one key form of recognition of the power of arts: the recognition that almost everyone shares when they see their child, niece, or neighbor playing in the third-grade recorder concert, bringing home a drawing for the refrigerator door, or reciting a poem at school. It is the recognition of creativity at work. It is witnessing the joy of self expression. And it is the relief of knowing our children have the inner resources needed to cope with the complexity of their futures.
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I trace my own career as a museum director to early exposure to the arts: first in after-school painting lessons, and later in visits to the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, my hometown — where my world exploded as I encountered painting and sculpture from around the world and across time. These were truly aha moments that have lasted a lifetime.
That is one reason why programs for young people have been central to my work. The ICA launched its
Many arts and museum education programs in the United States have long been supported by federal grants, now being dismantled by the Trump administration. Support for the arts is an investment in our nation's long-term creativity. It is vital for the immediate survival for many arts organizations and individuals and for the recognition that the arts sustain us all.
Equally important, though, freedom of expression is a tested antidote to a single authoritarian voice, determined to isolate and divide us. That is why the arts, in all their glorious forms, are both so feared and so necessary.
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