CAA News

“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.

President Barrack Obama has released his budget recommendations for fiscal year 2010, which includes $161.3 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts—$6.3 million over the previous year’s budget and the largest increase in fifteen years (about 4 percent). 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.

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

The Artist-Museum Partnership Act of 2009, legislation introduced in both houses of Congress, would allow a fair-market-value tax deduction for charitable contributions of literary, musical, artistic, or scholarly compositions to collecting institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. At present, a donating artist, writer, or composer can only deduct the cost of materials used to create the work, which is not a fair incentive to donate and also hurts the missions of public and nonprofit institutions nationwide to increase public access to these unique creations.

The sponsors of the bill—Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) for S 405 and Representatives John Lewis (D-GA) and Todd Platts (R-PA) for HR 1126—hope that past enthusiasm for such legislation will grow in the current 111th Congress. Although similar Senate bills have passed five times in previous years, the House version of the bill in the 110th Congress had 111 cosponsors. Now that a new Congress is underway, more cosponsors are needed to help advance the bill.

The American Association of Museums has worked with the Association of Art Museum Directors to provide a draft letter that you can use to encourage your federal lawmakers to cosponsor the bill. With your help, this important legislation for both artists and institutions can move forward.

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $19.8 million in one-time grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. National service organizations, state arts agencies, and regional arts organizations—from the Southern Arts Federation to the Arizona Commission on the Arts—have individually received amounts from $25,000 to nearly $600,000 to support the arts sector of the economy; most groups have received awards in the low six figures. The NEA has published the complete list of grants and amounts.

The NEA’s state and regional partners will invest their recovery funds in projects that assist arts organizations in retaining critical staff as well as artists and other contractual personnel. These critical staff will enhance the ability of arts organizations to realize their artistic and public service goals. State and regional agencies will mirror the NEA’s recovery grant program and adapt their programs to respond to the particular needs of their constituents.

In July, the endowment will announce a second category of one-time direct recovery grants, which will support a nonprofit arts sector that has seen declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn. Please see the NEA’s recovery page for updates on these recovery grants, agency reports, and other information.

On Tuesday, March 23, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will reconsider the case of a Swiss professor and Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, who was banned from entering the country in 2004, reports John Schwartz of the New York Times. Based on a provision for ideological exclusion in the USA Patriot Act, Ramadan was declined a visa by the US government to travel to America and take a position at the University of Notre Dame.

The American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors, and PEN American Center all support the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging a 2007 ruling that upheld the government’s decision. Arguing for Americans’ First Amendment rights to hear Ramadan, this coalition is also calling on the new presidential administration to end ideological exclusion.

The Patriot Act allows the US to deny a visa to anyone whom it believes has endorsed or espoused terrorist activity or persuaded others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity. The ACLU, however, claims the government used the provision more broadly to deny entry to scholars, writers, and activists whose political views it disfavored. After the ACLU initially filed suit, Schwartz reports, the government asserted that Ramadan made contributions from 1998 to 2002 to a charity in Switzerland, called the Association de Secours Palestinien, which the Treasury Department had deemed a Hamas-affiliated terrorist organization.

A bill drafted by Richard L. Brodsky, an assemblyman in the New York State Legislature, aims to prevent museums from paying for general operating expenses with the sales of artworks. Brodsky collaborated with the New York State Board of Regents and the Museum Association of New York in response, in part, to a recent deaccession by the National Academy Museum and the planned sale of works from the upstate historic site Fort Ticonderoga, as well as the decision by Brandeis University to close the Rose Art Museum in Massachusetts.

Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times reports that the board of regents already has regulations on the sale of art in place, but that these rules were too general. The proposed bill would echo standards by the American Association of Museums and Association of Art Museum Directors, which state that sales of works may be used only to acquire more works.

On March 11, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, which was approved by the Senate that same day and by the House of Representatives nearly two weeks earlier. Funding most government operations through September 30, the act includes an additional $10 million for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, increasing their current fiscal-year budgets to $155 million each. The legislation also raises the budget for the Department of Education’s Arts in Education programs to $38.16 million, and for the Office of Museum Services through the Institute of Museum and Library Services to $35 million.

In a happy coincidence, the Omnibus Appropriations Act was passed by the Senate and signed into law on Humanities Advocacy Day, in which CAA participated. Robert L. Lynch, president and chief executive officer of Americans for the Arts, said “On the heels of its landmark support for nonprofit arts job recovery in the economic stimulus package, Congress has taken another step forward in restoring full funding to the nation’s cultural agencies. This marks the second consecutive increase in federal grant funds for local and state cultural organizations across the country. We are pleased that Congress is recognizing the cultural, educational, and economic contributions that an investment in the arts brings to communities and states throughout the nation.”

David Alexander has more on the larger picture in his article for the Washington Post.

Representative Peter King, a Republican from the State of New York, reintroduced the Free Speech Protection Act (HR 1304) to protect the First Amendment rights of Americans who are sued for defamation in foreign courts. With the rise of libel tourism, the fear of a lawsuit has become a deterrent for American authors, journalists, and publishers seeking to publish works on topics such as terrorism. The bill provides protections that will deter foreigners from suing Americans.

Recently there has been a rise in “libel tourism,” where foreigners take advantage of plaintiff-friendly foreign court systems, such as in the United Kingdom, in order to sue Americans for defamation. When sued in foreign courts, it has been difficult for Americans to countersue, as they could not establish standing in US courts. Without the ability to retaliate, there is nothing to discourage the practice of libel tourism.

The Free Speech Protection Act does the following to protect Americans and deter foreign libel lawsuits:

• Allows US persons to bring a federal cause of action against any person bringing a foreign libel suit if the writing does not constitute defamation under US law
• Bars enforcement of foreign libel judgments and provides other appropriate injunctive relief by US courts if a cause of action is established
• Awards damages to the US person who brought the action in the amount of the foreign judgment, the costs related to the foreign lawsuit, and the harm caused due to the decreased opportunities to publish, conduct research, or generate funding
• Awards treble damages if the person bringing the foreign lawsuit intentionally engaged in a scheme to suppress First Amendment rights
• Allows for expedited discovery if the court determines that the speech at issue in the foreign defamation action is protected by the First Amendment.

While the goal of the bill is to protect Americans from the exploitation of libel tourism, it does not intend to limit legitimate cases of defamation. Nothing in the bill limits the rights of foreign litigants who bring forward good-faith defamation actions against journalists and others who have purposely and maliciously published false information.

In 2008, New York State passed a similar bill entitled Rachel’s Law. King’s bill raises the issue on the federal level so that all American’s rights can be protected. Senators Specter, Lieberman, and Schumer have introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

Unemployment rates are up among working artists and the artist workforce has contracted, according to new research from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008 examines how the economic slowdown has affected the nation’s working artists. The study looks at artist employment patterns during two spikes in the current recession—the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008. Not unexpectedly, this downturn reflects larger economic declines across the nation: a Commerce Department report from late February noted a 6.2 percent decrease in the gross domestic product in the last quarter of 2008. The ten-page publication can be downloaded as a PDF.

Among the findings:

• Artists are unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers, a category in which artists are grouped because of their high levels of education. The artist unemployment rate grew to 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with 3 percent for all professionals. A total of 129,000 artists were unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2008, an increase of 50,000 (63 percent) from one year earlier. The unemployment rate for artists is comparable to that for the overall workforce (6.1 percent)
• Unemployment rates for artists have risen more rapidly than for US workers as a whole. The unemployment rate for artists climbed 2.4 percentage points between the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008, compared to a one-point increase for professional workers as a whole, and a 1.9 point increase for the overall workforce
• Artist unemployment rates would be even higher if not for the large number of artists leaving the workforce. The US labor force grew by 800,000 people from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. In contrast, the artist workforce shrank by 74,000 workers. Some of this decline may be attributed to artists’ discouragement over job prospects
• Unemployment rose for most types of artist occupations. Artist jobs with higher unemployment rates are performing artists (8.4 percent), fine artists, art directors, and animators (7.1 percent), writers and authors (6.6 percent), and photographers (6.0 percent)
• The job market for artists is unlikely to improve until long after the US economy starts to recover. Unemployment is generally a lagging economic indicator, or a measure of how an economy has performed in the past few months. During the prior recession (2001), artist unemployment did not reach its peak of 6.1 percent until 2003—two years after economic recovery began nationwide.

As an example of how arts jobs intersect with the larger economy, consider the construction industry. Industry-wide declines, which began in 2006, have contributed to the shrinking job market for architects. While this group usually has the lowest unemployment rates among all artist occupations and all professionals, architect unemployment rates doubled, from 1.8 percent in fourth quarter 2007, to 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Unemployment in the designer category also doubled, from 2.3 percent to 4.7 percent. This broad category includes interior, commercial, and industrial designers whose work is closely associated with the construction industry. Eighty-three thousand designers left the artist labor market during that time period.

The contraction of the arts workforce has implications for the overall economy. A May 2008 NEA study revealed there are two million full-time artists representing 1.4 percent of the US labor force, only slightly smaller than the number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the military (2.2 million). More recently, a National Governors Association report recognized that the arts directly benefit states and communities through job creation, tax revenues, attracting investments, invigorating local economies, and enhancing quality of life. There are 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations that support 5.7 million jobs and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year, according to a study by Americans for the Arts.

The NEA Office of Research and Analysis produced Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008 using published and unpublished data from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The research note measures unemployment rates among workers who self-reported an artist job as occupying their greatest number of working hours per week, whether the employment was full-time or part-time.