Urban Artworks, Challenge America Grant to Support Youth Apprentice Program
The AACCES Art Show Presented by AACCES and DBC featured an incredible group of artists who created artwork to highlight African American contributions through culture, community, and education to the Tri-Cities and Pacific Northwest. This show was supported by NEA funding and would no longer qualify for funding under current guidelines prohibiting the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Many artists aim to convey a political message through their work. In fact, a primary function of art is to transcend barriers and confront difficult topics. Art is a conduit for new perspectives, emotional connection, acquisition of knowledge, and powerful conversations because it is a conveyor of the human experience. However, in order for art to function as a conveyor of the human experience, it has to reflect all voices, all experiences, all people.
Historical data tells us that cis, white, heterosexual males have largely had the monopoly on paid art gigs and wall space in revered fine art institutions. In recent history, some organizations and federally funded programs have made a concerted effort to remedy this. In the past 5 years, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) distributed $18,890,372 to arts organizations and artists in the state of Washington. Much of this was focused on supporting artists who had been largely underrepresented, particularly through the Challenge Grant which “primarily supports small organizations that reached historically underserved communities that have limited access to the arts relative to geography, ethnicity, economics, and/or disability.”
As of this month, National Endowments for the Arts announced that they will be cancelling the Challenge grant in lieu of supporting art that celebrates the 250th anniversary of the United States. They also said that they will restrict their support only to artwork that abides by and complies with Trump-prescribed censorship, which demands that organizations do not “operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws”; or “promote gender ideology” (with reference to an executive order recognizing only “two sexes, male and female”). All of these changes are now prominently posted on the NEA website.
During his first term, Trump attempted to eliminate the NEA; now, he has shifted his approach to recruiting them as a purveyor of his white nationalist agenda. Censoring what artwork is seen and supported by the American public is an attempt to control any challenge to the violent coup on democracy that is happening in our country right now.
Art is formidable. Art can be used to fight fascism, and Trump is a weak and insecure fascist who cannot withstand being challenged, so he is attempting to suppress the arts and squash the possibility of artists arousing feelings of determination, horror, outrage or hope — as those feelings could inspire collective action.
German critical theorist Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) strongly believed in art’s capacity to make us aware of violence (as it appears in capitalism and fascism), and its power to express suffering and hope which cannot be fully communicated in language:
Art may resist injustice; not through directly achieving practical change, but by forcing the audience to become aware of the violence that governs their own history and the social order within which they and we are trapped. Art’s unique mode of resistance involves provoking thought rather than action.
Now, more than ever, it is important for artists to continue creating when they have space and energy to do so, and for community members to support organizations supporting artists. Please visit Café Con Arte and Aub’s Lounge, and follow Urban Poets Society and other arts organizations in our community doing the work. We need art.
Many artists have written the NEA in protest of their willingness to preemptively bend the knee, stating: “We oppose this betrayal of the Endowment’s mission to ‘foster and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States’.”
If you feel called to let the NEA know how you feel about the recent changes, this is a link to leadership contacts at the organization: https://www.arts.gov/about/leadership-staff
Ashleigh Rogers is an artist, art instructor, and facilitator in Tri-Cities, Washington. Her work explores the themes of connection and intergenerational stories through experimentation in painting, photography, installation, and sculpture. Ashleigh is passionately dedicated to facilitating accessible arts programming in her community.
Find her on Facebook: fb.com/AshleighRogersArt or Instagram: ashleigh.a.rogers
