A Candidate For NEA Chair Says Trump Won't Gut Agency
- Tim Cusack
- Jan 23, 2017
- 7 min read
We... might be skeptical.
The world of professional arts administration has been buzzing on social media after The Hill reported on Thursday that the Trump transition team is eyeing the National Endowment for the Arts for total elimination. This proposal is in line with the recommendations of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in its Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017 released in February of last year. (Although, as we’ve pointed out here before, the Heritage Foundation has been plotting the agency’s demise for at least the past 20 years.) Curiously, the Trump team is at the same time vetting potential candidates to put forth as their nominee to head the agency.
This begs the question why. Why go through the motions to search for an individual to nominate when the conventional wisdom holds your side wants to do away with the position? As it so happens, a long-time colleague of mine, Christopher Carter Sanderson, artistic director of Gorilla Rep (best known for its annual Midsummer Night’s Dream performances in Washington Square Park), is one of the potential s̶a̶c̶r̶i̶f̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ nominees. I reached out to him to inquire why exactly he would even want a job that, since the Bush I administration, has been a political hot mess and headache for many of its chairs, far out of proportion to its relatively modest current annual budget of slightly less than $148 million (cheaper than even Trump’s sparsely attended inauguration).
Sanderson, it should be noted, identifies as neither a Democrat nor a Republican but rather is registered as an Independent as well as being a member of the Socialist Party USA. When you consider that he’s also a Navy veteran who deployed to Iraq, his potential nomination could give the arts warriors on opposing sides of our political divide plenty of reasons to either support or block the appointment (particularly if they represent the state of Kentucky).
So why go through all that potential grief for an agency on the Republican’s hit list?
Sanderson is adamant that the agency will not, in fact, be defunded. When pressed for the reasons he believes this, he could cite no internal administration or Congressional sources to corroborate his assertions. Rather, he suggested that the United States, for purposes of its diplomatic standing and international reputation, “needed” an official arts agency to assure the other advanced, Western-style democracies that we’re still playing by civilized norms.
In addition, Sanderson alluded to the tradition of “cultural diplomacy” in which the United States sends its artists as representatives to other countries (hostile and otherwise) to promote cross-cultural understanding through performances and exhibitions. Finally, he pointed out that many NEA grants support arts education and social services initiatives that would then have to be funded through other government programs.
While Sanderson’s vision and passion for the agency are commendable, upon further reflection, even if he is correct (and that’s debatable), his rationales raise serious questions about the potential direction Trump operatives could take the agency.
Before we even go THERE, however, I think it’s important to first point out that the notion the incoming administration is concerned what foreign governments think about us is dubious at best, if not outright laughable. If there was any uncertainty concerning this point, Trump’s Steve Bannon–penned blood-and-soil, America First inaugural address on Friday should lay that fantasy to rest.
However, giving Bannon et al the benefit of the doubt (I know, I know), even if they do care, it’s fair to point out that the Nazis also cared very much what the international community thought of their rule—to the point of maintaining a show concentration camp filled with artists at Theresienstadt (Terezín) in the present-day Czech Republic.
They also established an official state cultural ministry, the Reich Chamber of Culture under the direction of Joseph Goebbels, one of the purposes of which was to generate favorable propaganda for the regime. One shudders to think how the more extremist members of the Trumpist Revolution might want to utilize the NEA, especially if they decide to spare it. If the Nazi analogy comes off as hysterical, let’s not forget that Bannon is on record comparing himself positively to Hitler’s favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. (You really can’t make this stuff up.)
And while the US government has been utilizing the potential of its homegrown artists to create a positive image of the nation abroad since the Fulbright-Hays Act established the Mutual Education and Cultural Exchange Program in 1961, this program is administered by the State Department not the NEA. (Fulbright-Hays is also being targeted for drastic cuts by House Republicans.)
When asked about this, Sanderson implied that he believes this program should come under the purview of the agency he wants to head. However, since departments in the Executive branch are notoriously protective of their turf, actualizing such a change would require the expenditure of a great deal of political resources. I wouldn’t place bets on Rex Tillerson’s opponent if this came down to an internal fight.
Sanderson is on firmer ground with his arguments about the NEA’s support for social services programs that contain an arts component. Its Creativity Connects Projects, for example, pair arts organizations with NGOs working in the environmental, community, healthcare, and military sectors, among others. Projects presently being funded (to the tune of $2.5 million) include partnerships with the League of Women Voters to increase voter registration nationwide and the Legal Aid Justice Center to address reforms for the juvenile justice system in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
As laudable as these programs are, they are not exactly in alignment with current Republican collusion in voter suppression and the school-to-prison pipeline. Here again, one must question if right-wing activists could potentially preserve this aspect of current NEA programming only to later bend it towards their ideological ends.
As for arts education programs, these expenditures have always been among the least controversial throughout the agency’s history, and here the narrative becomes a bit more complicated. With presumptive Education Secretary Betsy DeVos overtly hostile to the very idea of public education (as we’ve pointed out here and here), the NEA could serve a useful purpose by shifting more dollars to not-for-profits favorable to the regime, thereby in effect privatizing arts training in the country from the earliest ages while at the same time serving a useful indoctrination purpose.
Based on an analysis of the descriptions of NEA grants awarded in 2016 available on its website, last year the agency earmarked approximately $1.9 million dollars, or one-third of its total arts-education budget, to programs that were specifically designed to serve public schools. Some of these grants went directly to districts to support in-school instruction or teacher training; others were awarded to off-site arts programs exclusively reserved for public school students.
However, a smaller number of grants were funneled either to charter schools, Christian-based arts programming (for example, a Harlem-based gospel-music society), or to organizations and summer programs that presumably serve youth regardless of where they attend class. Will the NEA be under pressure to favor these latter institutions under the current administration?
Sanderson’s final point is perhaps his most persuasive, although even here, I remain unconvinced. The way he sees it, Trump is a native New Yorker and real estate developer who understands pragmatically that the arts are good for business. As Sanderson puts it, “Donald Trump knows that if Broadway isn’t there, no one’s staying in his hotels.” He also reminds me that Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, was a replacement for the female lead in Will Rogers Follies back in 1992. Sanderson claims that Trump also invested in the show, which proves at the very least that he recognizes the value of populist art.
However, I could find no evidence that Trump put money into the production. Rather, it seems more likely that this was a mutually beneficial arrangement between himself and Pierre Cossette, who was the show’s lead producer and a close personal friend of the billionaire. Ticket sales were sagging. Maples was desperate for a Broadway show. Cossette saw the value of exploiting her tabloid “stardom” to boost box office, and Donald wanted to play William Randolph Hearst to Marla’s Marion Davies. The capital in this instance was more social and sexual than monetary. We reached out to a representative for Ms. Maples, who declined to even seek comment given Trump's history.
Undaunted, Sanderson continues along this pragmatic line of argumentation: “There’s not a lot of ideology to what’s he’s going to be doing. He’s treated the Republican party like any other of his business dealings. It’s like a distressed company that he’s taken over. He’ll extract as much profit as he can from the arrangement, and then he’ll move on. There aren’t enough ideologues within it who can oppose him.”
But there are, Blanche. There are.
The NEA is a minuscule line item within the vast federal bureaucracy, yet it exerts an enormous symbolic charge on both liberals and conservatives. The Republican governing coalition we now know will be an uneasy alliance of traditional career conservative politicians, hardline Tea Party/neo-fascist radicals, and bottom-line-obsessed plundering plutocrats. Clearly the center cannot hold.
The last of the Heritage Foundation’s ten reasons for doing away with the agency is that “federal arts subsidies pose the danger of federal control over expression.” Conservatives have always had a fear that government arts funding was the first skid down the slippery slope to totalitarian-style propaganda. What might happen if or when the ideologues who want to destroy the agency, the ideologues who want to use the agency, and Trump’s own business interests and show-biz instincts collide? It would be an irony worthy of the Bard if the little agency that has always had to fight for its existence brought down the plague on all their houses.
Whether Sanderson or any other potential chair will be able to physic the agency through the turbulent times ahead could possibly prove as dramatic as an NEA-funded theater piece.
UPDATED (1/23/2017 12:33 p.m.) - This story was updated to note that a representative for Marla Maples declined to comment on Trump's history with the Will Rogers Follies.