Category: Politics

Text of sign on letter created by Partner group planning DC’s Arts Advocacy Day 2011:

Mayor Vincent Gray
John A. Wilson Building
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20004
March 5, 2011

Dear Mayor Gray,

We are writing to ask that you maintain the FY 11 local funds allocation
for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

The District’s local funds contribution to the arts and humanities is less
than $5 million dollars this year, and those funds were distributed in
over 300 grants to artists and community groups providing access to the
arts for District schoolchildren and residents. We know that you are an
arts supporter – with some serious hand dancing skills, to boot – and that
you face tremendously difficult choices in the FY 12 budgeting process.
With such a small allocation for the arts and humanities already, deeper
cuts will have no discernible impact on the overall budget, and the arts
have already been disproportionately cut: from over $14 million in FY 09
to under $5 million in FY 11.

Continue reading “Letter to Mayor Gray, March 2011”

I reported on the DC Advocates for the Arts blog yesterday that President Obama’s FY 12 proposed budget will trigger major changes in the DC cultural landscape. In addition to reductions to the NEA and NEH which will affect local grant-making, the proposed budget would eliminate the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program (as DC has known it) by turning guaranteed operating support funding from the US Commission on Fine Arts into semi-competitive grants administered by the District’s arts agency. Continue reading “Phoney Baloney Insiders”

What the city actually spends arts money on is maybe not what you would expect. Because of changes over the last decade, what actually gets funded looks odd to anyone who knows the arts in the District, with some smaller orgs receiving as much support as some of the largest orgs, and vast difference between funding levels of larger orgs.

• The Kennedy Center received 18 grants totaling $245,978.59 between 2005 and 2010, equal to local arts provider the Washington Improvisation Theater which received 14 grants totaling $246,300.00.
• Continue reading “How does the District fund the arts?”