In one of the first signs of collective pushback to the Trump administration’s arts initiatives, several hundred American artists are calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to roll back restrictions on grants to institutions with programming that promotes diversity or “gender ideology.”
Among the 463 writers, poets, dancers, visual artists and others who signed the letter are the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Jackie Sibblies Drury, Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel. There is also one name with striking historical resonance: Holly Hughes, a performance artist who in 1990 was one of the so-called N.E.A. Four, denied funding by the agency because of concern from conservative critics at the height of that era’s culture wars.
“In some ways this just feels like déjà vu all over again,” Ms. Hughes, now a professor of art and design at the University of Michigan, said in a telephone interview. “These funding restrictions are a good barometer for who is the easy punching bag in American culture at the moment.”
The artists on Tuesday sent a letter to the N.E.A. objecting to new requirements for grant applicants that the organization put in place this month to comply with executive orders signed by President Trump. One of the requirements is that applicants “not operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws”; the other is that federal funds not be used “to promote gender ideology,” referring to an executive order, prompted by Mr. Trump’s concern about public policy toward transgender people, that declares that American policy is “to recognize two sexes, male and female.”
The artists’ letter asks the N.E.A. to “reverse” the changes, saying “abandoning our values is wrong, and it won’t protect us. Obedience in advance only feeds authoritarianism.”
“Trump and his enablers may use doublespeak to claim that support for artists of color amounts to ‘discrimination’ and that funding the work of trans and women artists promotes ‘gender ideology’ (whatever that is),” the letter adds. “But we know better: the arts are for and represent everybody.”
The letter was sent to 26 N.E.A. officials on Tuesday morning. An N.E.A. spokeswoman, Elizabeth Auclair, said on Tuesday afternoon that the agency had not yet received the letter, but that “presidential executive orders have the full force and effect of law and within the executive branch must be implemented consistent with applicable law. The National Endowment for the Arts is a federal agency and will fully comply with the law.”
The letter-writing effort was spearheaded by Annie Dorsen, a writer and theater director — and a recent law school graduate — who was a recipient of a so-called genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2019. “I felt it was important in this moment to signal to the N.E.A. and to anyone else paying attention that artists were aware of what was happening and not staying silent,” Ms. Dorsen said.
The changes at the N.E.A. are occurring at the same time that Mr. Trump has assumed control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He replaced numerous board members, and the new board appointed him as the center’s chairman; several staffers have been ousted, and some artists have resigned from positions there or canceled appearances.
Some programming has also been canceled, including a touring production of a musical for young audiences, “Finn,” about a gray shark who wishes to be a glittery fish. The show’s creators believe the tour was canceled because the show’s message of self-acceptance was deemed problematic during the Trump era, but Kennedy Center officials say there was not sufficient interest in the tour from presenters around the country to make it financially viable.
