Advocacy

On June 26, 2009, the US House of Representatives voted to approve HR 2996, a Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies bill that included significant increases for the budgets of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Both federal agencies should receive $170 million each for fiscal year 2010, a 9.7 percent increase from their current $155 million allotment. The vote was 254 to 173 in favor of the bill, with six not voting. Included in the bill is an additional $3.7 million for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, raising its FY10 total to $25 million. In addition, the Smithsonian Institution will benefit from $40.8 million more than last year, raising its annual budget to $634.2 million.

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s budget proposal earmarks $161.3 million each for the NEA and NEH—which matches President Obama’s initial budget request of $161.3 million for the arts endowment but is slightly lower than the $171.3 million he asked for the humanities.

CAA encourages you to write to your senators to advocate for NEA and NEH funding. You can do so at the Americans for the Arts E-Advocacy Center—it takes only a couple minutes to draft a letter, based on a template, to mail or email.

“Serious long-term challenges posed by rapid globalization, economic crisis, and threats to our national security require solutions informed by the humanities,” wrote Pauline Yu, president of the American Council of Learned Societies, in a testimony submitted last month to the House of Representations in support of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Yu called for at least $230 million in funding for the NEH for fiscal year 2010—an increase of $75 million above the present year’s budget. (Download and read Yu’s full testimony to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies.)

Earlier this month, however, President Barack Obama’s FY 2010 budget allotted only $171.315 million for the endowment, far short of Yu’s request but $16.315 million more than the current year.

With this proposed increase, the NEH seeks to establish a new grant program, entitled Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections, which will allow institutions to plan or implement preventative conservation measures that prolong the useful life of humanities collections. The endowment will also reintroduce preservation research and development grants for projects that address major challenges in preserving and maintaining access to humanities collections and resources. And through its We the People program, the NEH will continue to fund humanities projects that strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of the nation’s history and culture.

Additionally, Obama’s request includes new oversight responsibility for the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs program. With the program’s transfer from the US Commission of Fine Arts, the NEH will manage a redesigned program of competitive grants to arts, historical, and cultural institutions in the District of Columbia.

In addition to a general overview of Obama’s NEH budget request, more information is available in the summary and highlights or the detailed budget request of the endowment’s FY 2010 appropriation request. A table with the FY 2010 funding request figures, by division and office with FY 2008 and FY 2009 appropriation amounts, is also available.

See also a brief report on funding for the National Endowment for the Art for FY 2010.

Andrea Kirsh, an independent art historian based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a member of the CAA Board of Directors, was one of several CAA delegates who attended Humanities Advocacy Day and Arts Advocacy Day, both of which took place in March 2009 in Washington, DC.

In an article for the forthcoming May issue of CAA News that is also posted online, she writes about her experiences advocating for increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, among other government programs and legislation.

Photo: The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Josh Groban (center) advocates for the arts with CAA board member Judith Thorpe (left) and Jean Miller at the Congressional Breakfast during Arts Advocacy Day

President Barrack Obama has released his budget recommendations for fiscal year 2010, which includes $161 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts—$11 million over the previous year’s budget and the largest increase in fifteen years. Obama’s administration also requested $38.16 million for the Arts in Education program at the US Department of Education.

CAA encourages you to contact your legislators to voice your support for these increases in arts and cultural funding through the Arts Action Center, sponsored by Americans for the Arts. You can use or modify existing letter templates to tell Congress to support Arts in Education and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has released a new study in its Research Note series that shows women are making gains in traditionally male artist occupations, but still earn less than male artists. Women Artists: 1990–2005 takes a closer look at female artist employment trends that were previously mentioned in the NEA report Artists in the Workforce: 1990–2005, published in May 2008.

Totaling almost 919,000 artists in 2005, women represented 46 percent of the artist labor force, comparable to their percentage of all civilian workers. The note reveals significant patterns in pay disparity, demographic, and educational trends, and women’s advancement in various art fields over the past fifteen years. This note draws on data from the US Census Bureau’s 2003–5 American Community Surveys, along with the 1990 and 2000 population censuses.

Among the key findings:

Female artists earn less than male artists. Women artists who work full-year, full-time earn $0.75 for every dollar made by men artists. Women workers in general earn $0.77 for every dollar earned by men.

• Women’s pay disparity increases with age. In 2003–5, women artists aged 18 to 24 earned $0.95 for every $1 made by young men artists. This ratio fell to $0.67 for 45-to-54-year-olds. Similar pay gaps by age are found in the overall labor market
• Pay gaps vary by occupation. Men and women had closer earnings parity in lower-paying performing arts occupations (such as musicians and dancers), where women earned an average of $0.92 for every dollar earned by men. The gap tended to be larger in nonperforming art occupations (such as designers and art directors), where women earned 72 percent of what men earn
• Pay gaps vary by state. The pay disparity was smaller in ten states, such as New York and Arizona, where women made 80 percent or more of what men made. Women made less than 75 percent of what men made in twenty-seven states, including Virginia, Michigan, and North Dakota

Women make up just under half of all artists nationwide (46 percent), yet they are underrepresented in many artist professions. In 2003–5, nearly eight out of ten announcers and architects were men.

Women have achieved a greater presence in some artist occupations. By 2003–5, women made up 43 percent of all photographers and 22 percent of all architects—representing gains of 11 and 7 percent, respectively, since 1990.

Women artists are as likely to be married as female workers in general, but they are less likely to have children. In 2003–5, more than half of all women artists and all women workers were married. Yet only 29 percent of women artists had children under 18, almost six percentage points lower than for women workers in general.

Female artists cluster in low-population states. Women made up more than 55 percent of the artist labor force in Iowa, Alaska, New Hampshire, and Mississippi in 2003–5. They represent well below half of all artists in New York (45.8 percent) and in California (42.6 percent).

Andrea Kirsh is an independent curator and scholar and an adjunct faculty member at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. She is also a member of the CAA Board of Directors.

I don’t usually hang around with the likes of Robert Redford, John Legend, and Peter Yarrow, but last month I did. With Nia Page, CAA director of membership, development, and marketing, and Sara Hines, CAA marketing and development assistant, I joined these performers and other arts advocates at the House Office Building in Washington, DC, as part of Arts Advocacy Day. Held March 31-April 1, 2008, the event was the twenty-first year that Americans for the Arts has brought together grassroots advocates from across the country to lobby Congress for arts-friendly legislation. CAA has been a longtime cosponsor of these important days for American arts and culture.

More than five-hundred-plus individuals from institutions and locations all over the country descended on Capitol Hill to raise awareness about funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Department of Education, along with specific bills under consideration in the Senate and House of Representatives concerning tax laws, Federal Communications Commission regulations, and foreign exchange policy.

Redford, Legend, Yarrow, and the rest of us were among a coalition of representatives from the NEA and Americas for the Arts who addressed the House Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations in the first congressional hearing in over a decade dedicated to the importance of federal arts funding. We were outside the hearing room with an overflow crowd of more than two hundred that lined an entire third-floor hallway.

Some historical background: after the culture wars that followed the outcry against funding Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and others, the NEA’s budget was cut from $176 million in 1992 to $99.5 million the following year, with grants to individual artists completely eliminated and the endowment’s other grant programs sorely lacking support. During the past fifteen years, the agency has slowly been recovering, with an encouraging $20 million increase in 2007, bringing the current budget to $144.7 million. Still $30 million shy of the baseline goal to reach 1992 levels, the current presidential administration has now proposed a $16 million cut for 2009.

The United States is unusual among advanced democracies in having no federal department of culture; current arts legislation is spread over more than fourteen congressional committees, which also have responsibility for forest fires, homeland security, and the entire tax system. The current Congress is looking at funding for the NEA, NEH, Institute of Museum and Library Services, arts education, and State Department cultural exchanges; tax legislation allowing artists to take fair-market-value tax deductions for donations to museums; and the inclusion of arts education within No Child Left Behind legislation (as well as several issues affecting the performing arts).

I was among the thirty-four Pennsylvanians who met in Senator Arlen Spector’s office with his staff member, Mary Beth McGowan, to ask for support for arts-friendly bills and to tell stories of how federal funding has benefited the state. Spector is a member of the Senate Cultural Caucus and a long-time friend of the arts, but that doesn’t make such visits any less important. The group included fourteen students in Drexel University’s Arts Administration Program (who had raised their own funds for the trip) and Silagh White of ArtsLehigh, an initiative at Lehigh University to integrate arts throughout the curriculum and educate an enthusiastic audience; two Lehigh undergraduates joined her.

Page and Hines joined seventy-five New York art supporters who lobbied the offices of Representatives Charles Rangel, Carolyn Maloney, and Louise McIntosh Slaughter and Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, to name a few, urging Congress to support increased funding for the NEA and NEH and to cosponsor the Artist-Museum Partnership Act. They also urged Congress to appropriate $53 million for the US Department of Education’s Arts in Education programs in the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill.

During a training session on the first day, we were told, “If you don’t get involved, your opponents will.” I can’t overemphasize the importance of such lobbying. If you can’t make the trip to DC, you can still phone, write, or e-mail your senators and representatives about arts issues. They want to hear from their constituents, and the more personal your stories about the impact of arts policies and federal funding–which includes federal monies channeled through state and local arts councils–the better. Any time an individual or organization receives a federal grant, it is appropriate to thank both senators and congressman. If the grant benefits a number of people, such as funded research, which has an impact on teaching, mention it. You can keep up with current legislation at the Americans for the Arts website; if you sign up for its e-list, the organization can supply boiler letters and e-mails to you when action is needed. The website also holds a wealth of information on voting records and other means of gauging your representative’s stance on cultural policy. Get involved today!

President George W. Bush’s budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2009 seeks $271,246,000 for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The request, which was released February 4 by the White House, represents an increase of $26,023,000, or 10.6 percent, over the FY 2008 enacted level for the institute’s programs and administration.

Highlights of the IMLS budget request include the following:

$214,432,000 for library grant programs, an increase of $14,469,000 from the FY 2008 appropriation for the same purposes. This includes an increase of $10.6 million for the Grants to States program, bringing it to $171,500,000. This amount will enable the full implementation of a law passed in 2003 to provide a more equitable distribution of state formula grants. The request also includes $26,500,000 for the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.

$39,897,000 for museum grants, an increase of $8.6 million from the FY 2008 appropriation for the same purposes. The request includes $3.8 million for Conservation Project support, $22.2 million for Museums for America, $2.1 million for 21st Century Museum Professionals, and $1.35 million for Museum Grants for African American History and Culture.

This request includes $2.5 million for collecting public-library and state-library statistics, $500,000 to launch a pilot program on museum data collection, and $1 million to study and report on the state of libraries and museums in the United States.

You can download two PDF documents detailing the institute’s appropriations history and budget information: IMLS Appropriations History 1998-2009 and IMLS Requested and Enacted Budgets 2006-9.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development.

Avid museum goers, community leaders, museum professionals, and individuals who have encountered barriers to museum-going are encouraged to make their views known at one of three public hearings on the use of public funds for museums, announced Anne-Imelda Radice, director of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The institute is the primary source of federal funding for the nation’s museums and libraries.

“In order to fully understand the impact of public funds for museums, we must hear from interested members of the public on the use of taxpayers’ dollars for these cultural institutions,” Radice said.

IMLS is particularly interested in testimony from school coordinators, older people, special-needs groups, and directors of cultural tours. IMLS would also like to hear from leaders who can speak about the use of public funds for cultural purposes based on their understanding of county, state, and federal budgets and their experiences with any and all kinds of museums, including art, history, natural history, and children’s museums, as well as planetariums, science centers, gardens, and zoos.

Hearings will be held at three locations in March:

March 10, 2008: Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio
March 12, 2008: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
March 14, 2008: Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California

Radice and members of the National Museum and Library Services Board will listen to both formal and informal testimony. With the testifiers’ permission, testimony will be recorded and used as part of a report on the public funding of museums that will be released in summer 2008.

The public hearings are the last in a series of IMLS’s information-gathering efforts designed to determine the sources and uses of public funds for museums. Also part of the effort is a rigorous examination by the Urban Institute, which, through a cooperative agreement with IMLS, has gathered information about public funding for museums through a national survey as well as through individual interviews with museum professionals and museum funders in selected states, in order to compare the impact of different funding mechanisms. All the information gathered, including the perspectives from the public, will be part of the IMLS report.

To participate in the public hearings, please contact Mamie Bittner or Celeste Colgan. For more information on the IMLS Museum Study, see www.imls.gov/news/2008/012208_bkg.shtm.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development.

As a national cosponsor of Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day, CAA encourages its members to participate in one or both of these important advocacy events, held annually in Washington, DC.

Arts Advocacy Day, taking place Monday and Tuesday, March 31-April 1, 2008, brings together a broad cross-section of America’s national cultural organizations to underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts, the humanities, and arts education, as well as for other programs within the federal government that have an impact on the visual and performing arts.

Humanities Advocacy Day, administered by the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), takes place Monday and Tuesday, March 3-4, 2008. This event provides a unique opportunity for concerned citizens to communicate to Congress the vital importance of federal support for research and education in the humanities. The NHA’s annual conference also takes place during this time.

As a national cosponsor of Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day, CAA encourages its members to participate in both of these important advocacy events, held annually in Washington, DC.

Arts Advocacy Day, occurring Monday and Tuesday, March 12-13, 2007, brings together a broad cross-section of America’s national cultural organizations to underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts, the humanities, and arts education, as well as for other programs within the federal government that have an impact on the visual and performing arts.

Humanities Advocacy Day, administered by the National Humanities Alliance, takes place Monday and Tuesday, March 26-27, 2007. This event provides a unique opportunity for concerned citizens to communicate to Congress the vital importance of federal support for research and education in the humanities.

If you are interested in joining other CAA members at either of these events, please e-mail Laurel Peterson.