Museum directors decry feared cuts to national arts agencies
BOSTON (AP) — The heads of five Boston arts museums are pushing back against feared Trump administration cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The museums’ directors say in an open letter that the agencies — and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — help foster knowledge of the arts, create cultural exchanges, generate jobs and tourism, and educate young people.
Federal support has been a critical piece of the puzzle for museums in our shared mission to foster knowledge, create cultural exchange, generate jobs and tourism, educate our youth, ignite the imagination of our audiences, and nurture the creativity of working artists. Across the country—in communities small and large, urban and rural—the NEA and NEH help to guarantee access to the arts and the preservation and presentation of diverse cultural expression. The prestige and visibility of the NEA and NEH connect our entire cultural community, though we are well aware of the outsized influence of federal dollars at our most vulnerable arts institutions across America.
They say NEA and NEH funding has been instrumental at each of the Boston museums.
In one example, they point to grants that helped digitize the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s collection.
The letter was signed by the directors of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Institute of Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
