CAA News Today
Taking Down Public Art – What do Art Historians and Scholars Think?
posted by CAA — August 24, 2017
Public art, statues, and monuments have seldom been in the news more than in the past few weeks. Figures from Christopher Columbus to Robert E. Lee, from Peter Stuyvesant to Stonewall Jackson have been topics for debate. Regardless of one’s political or cultural point of view, nearly everyone seems to have an opinion.
We want to know what CAA members think about preserving or removing public works of art. How closely tied are a historical figure’s actions to a depiction of the person? How important are these pieces of public art to preserve? Should they be removed? Should they be destroyed? We want to know what you think and why.
We will compile the results of this form and report back CAA members’ thoughts and feelings on these monuments at this moment in history.
House Subcommittee and Full Committee Approve Bill to Fund the Endowments
posted by CAA — July 14, 2017
On Wednesday the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies approved a bill that would provide funding of $145 million each for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in FY2018.
For many of us, this provides a respite of relief as it is a stark contrast to President Trump’s prior call to zero out the agency.
Although the $145 million figure is a $4.8 million drop from the FY2017 budget, this is a reassuring step by Congress in recognizing the value of the arts in America and the need for a strong public arts agency.
While the subcommittee’s proposal brings us hope, our work is not done. In fact, we at CAA will continue to step up our efforts to educate, communicate, and of course, advocate for the artists, art historians, critics, curators, designers, scholars, librarians, educators, students, conservators, and many other professionals in the visual arts world who make up our membership and affiliates.
UPDATE: On July 18, the full House Appropriations Committee approved the bill in its current state. These earmarked funds may be voted on by the full House of Representatives after the summer recess. The Senate will consider funds for the endowments later in the year also.
We encourage you to regularly check out our advocacy page to learn more about CAA’s stance on the issues and how you can join us in mobilizing and championing the field of arts and culture in our country.
An Interview with Linda Nochlin
posted by CAA — June 08, 2017
CAA is proud to launch our newest initiative for fostering academic discussions about art and its purpose through conversations with diverse scholars and practitioners from our community. Every month, executive director Hunter O’Hanian will interview a notable scholar or artist who is making or has made progressive change in his or her field, with the goal to not only learn more about their craft, but to understand the artist or scholar behind it.
Our first interview in this series is with renowned feminist art historian Linda Nochlin, a long time CAA member and author of the pioneering essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” We caught up with Linda at her home on the Upper West Side, where art and inspiring works lined every wall of her apartment. Read the full conversation below (or click the video!) to hear Linda recount the early beginnings of her career, her thoughts on feminism then and now, her advice to young scholars, and a sneak preview of her upcoming book, Misère.
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Hello, my name is Hunter O’Hanian, and I’m the Director of the College Art Association. I’m here today with Linda Nochlin. Hello Linda. |
| Linda Nochlin: | Hello. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | How are you? |
| Linda Nochlin: | I’m okay. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | You’ve been a member of CAA for a long time. It’s great to have this opportunity to chat with you. Let’s talk a little bit about your background. I know you grew up here in New York, in Brooklyn. You earned degrees from Vassar, Colombia, and NYU. You taught at Colombia, Vassar, Yale. You’ve won many awards from CAA. Most recently you won the 2006 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for writing in art. I know you’ve won a Guggenheim Fellowship. I know you’re a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. You’ve got an honorary doctorate from Harvard. A lot of it’s really been about what you’ve been doing as far as thinking about, writing about, teaching about art. What brought you to art? |
| Linda Nochlin: |  I was always interested. When I was a little kid, I liked to paint and draw. I was very much encouraged to paint and draw both by mother and by my school. Being in New York, I had all these museums. There were a lot of other people who were interested in art that were around me, that were my friends. It seemed sort of natural to go to museums. I enrolled myself when I was 12 in the class for talented children at the Brooklyn Museum. A very interesting place. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | You enrolled yourself you said? |
| Linda Nochlin: | I went with a portfolio and they said, “Come on.” |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Great. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I was always interested in art, music, dance. I loved to dance. The arts. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Apart from your writing, have you been drawing and making work through your adult life as well? |
| Linda Nochlin: | No, I quit. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | How come you quit? |
| Linda Nochlin: | Well, I don’t know. I just got interested in writing about it rather than making it. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | You have a very long history of publishing. There’s certainly a lot of work that you’ve done with Realism and Courbet. What attracted you to that particular period and that particular genre? |
| Linda Nochlin: | Probably it was political I think. It was during the McCarthy period that I came to maturity. I went to the Institute. I really wanted to work on something that was anti-McCarthy. That was left. I was a person of the left and Courbet was the ideal subject in that. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Tell me about what you remember of the McCarthy era and what was going on at the time and how artists and writers were dealt with. |
| Linda Nochlin: | It really was a very oppressive period for people in intellectual and artistic pursuits. Even if they didn’t come and get you, that was always a threat lying over. I remember I began my Frick talk with a long quotation from Karl Marx. People were dumbfounded. I remember my teacher said, “Linda, you’re so brazen.” It was scary times. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Watching the news today, do you see any similarities? |
| Linda Nochlin: | No. I think it’s a different thing now. It’s scary in a different way, but you can say what you want. Unless you’re in government. I think it is a different take. It’s not good and it’s not pleasant, but I think it’s different. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | I noticed…. I’ve read that you said you were introduced to feminism in the late 1960s. You were probably in your 30s at that time. You wrote that you became a feminist virtually overnight. Tell me about that. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I had been in Italy in ‘68, ‘69. I came home and a friend came with all these publications and said, “Do you know about feminism”? It was called the women’s movement. I said, “No.” She said, “Read this.” She left me Off Our Backs and rather the somewhat crude broadsheets of the early feminist movement. I stayed up all night reading and I was a feminist the next day. Certainly I always had been to some degree, but I could see now I could become formally as part of an organization, as part of a movement. Yes, I was a feminist. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Do you see the movement alive today? |
| Linda Nochlin: | Mm-hmm [affirmative] yes. But, of course, a lot of people I know happen to be feminists. I don’t know how alive it is otherwise. I think it still is. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | It’s interesting. I meet a lot of male feminists, too, which back in the beginning of the movement…. |
| Linda Nochlin: | It would be unheard of. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | It would be unheard of for a man to say he was a feminist. Now there’s many of us who are actually happy to say that. |
| Linda Nochlin: | You think of the Women’s March after the inauguration this year. It was enormous. Enormous. Not every one of those people might be a self-pronounced feminist, but they’re all feminists in the sense that they gathered together to show that they believed in something and were against other things. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Of course there’s the essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” that you wrote in 1971. I think ARTnews published that? |
| Linda Nochlin: | Yes. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | First of all, tell me about the title. How did you end up with that title? Why have there been no great women artists? |
| Linda Nochlin: | I was at a Vassar graduation the year before and I think … I can’t remember who it was. He had a gallery. He was a well known gallerist. He said, “Linda, I would love to show women in my gallery, but why are there no great women artists?” I started really thinking about it and one thought followed another. It almost wrote itself. It seemed all so hitched together, so logical. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | You address the question in the beginning of the essay about how many great artists there are regardless of their gender, the fact of what actually makes a great artist. Talk a little bit about that. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I refuse to say it’s something inborn, a golden nugget I would say, but artistic greatness, artistic production depends so much on time, place, situation, etc. It was no accident that up through the Renaissance, even the 18th century that artists came in families. Father artists, mother artists. You think of the Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach family, family practice. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | You write in here “The problem lies not so much with some feminist concept of what femininity is, but rather with their misconception shared with the public at large of what art is with the naïve idea that art is the direct personally expression of individual, emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms. Art is almost never that. Great art never is.” |
| Linda Nochlin: | Well that says what I mean. It always takes place within a context, within a setting, certain training, certain standards. What might be considered great art in one period might not be in others. It’s interesting. There’s a certain agreement in the Renaissance. They knew it was Raphael Michelangelo, etc., very little question. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | You also write here, “the fact of the matter is that there have been no supremely great women artists as far as we know.” I’m happy you added that in, “as far as we know,” although there have been many interesting and very good ones who remain insufficiently investigated or appreciated. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I think that’s been corrected to a certain extent today. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Tell me about the ones who have been discovered or investigated. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I suppose Artemisia Gentileschi would be a primary one. Who else? |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | What about women artists in the latter part of the 20th century or beginning part of the 21st century? |
| Linda Nochlin: | I think women artists have definitely caught up as leaders, as being the interesting ones making art and so on. I’m thinking of somebody like Joan Jonas, for example. I’m thinking of somebody like Louise Bourgeois. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | I was just going to ask you about Louise. |
| Linda Nochlin: | Obviously. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Judy Pfaff |
| Linda Nochlin: | The list itself is so long. I’m not saying they’re all Michelangelo, but I’m personally not a Michelangelo person. They’re really interesting and dynamic and have changed the way we look at art, which I think is important. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | I guess it’s in part because society has allowed them to some degree to be able to do that. |
| Linda Nochlin: | Yes, of course. They had to fight for it, too. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Of course. One last quote that I thought was interesting. There’s so much of this essay. I hadn’t read it for years. It’s just so dense. It so wonderful. |
| Linda Nochlin: | It is. I tried to squeeze a lot in. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | You say “most men despite lip service to equality are reluctant to give up the natural order of things in which their advantages are so great. For women, the case is further complicated by the fact that unlike other oppressed groups or castes, men demand of them not only submission, but unqualified affection as well.” |
| Linda Nochlin: | It’s sort of hard. Say in terms of color, nobody demands that black people love and adore and cater to white people. It’s only gender that does that. It’s very confusing if on the one hand there is somebody you love, live with, etc., yet who is part of a group or caste that is really denying you equality and denying you self-expression. It’s confusing to put it mildly. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | As we said, we have made progress…. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I think so. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | But how much progress to do you think that we’ve made? How tough do you think it is for a young woman, 30 years old, starting out today? |
| Linda Nochlin: | I think it’s undeniably better. The conditions are better for a woman succeeding, and a lot of the major artists now certainly are women, but there’s still a boys’ club feeling about certain types of art and certain types of artists. I think you know equality has gone so far and no further maybe. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | It’s interesting when you think about it in the sense that we think women have had the right to vote for 100 years, but still they don’t get paid the same wage. It’s been 135 years since the Emancipation Proclamation has been signed. |
| Linda Nochlin: | No, it isn’t just done by words or by the progress of a few superstars either. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Switching gears, but also on this one a little bit, obviously you’ve been involved in the academy and artistry for many, many years. What is your sense about the future for people graduating out of a master’s programs or PhD programs and getting jobs in higher education today? What do you think about that? |
| Linda Nochlin: |  I think it’s a difficult market as far as I can see. Although there are now galleries and museums throughout the country. It’s not just a question of the east coast and the west coast and Chicago. I think there is a sort of spreading, or a spread of art which allows for some jobs, but being an artist is tough no matter how you take it. I think it’s getting ahead, finding a gallery, getting a proper amount of publicity, making sure you show. It’s hard. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | What about for scholars, for those getting their PhD about being able to move their careers along? What advice would you have for them? |
| Linda Nochlin: | What advice would I have for them? Be very, very smart. Write a lot. Have strong opinions. Just don’t be a little library worm. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | It seems your strong opinions have done you well for your career. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I wouldn’t know how to not have them if you know what I mean. That’s what I’m about is my opinions. You have to know something. Frankly I know a great deal. There are very good…. I was a very good student, very good. I worked very hard. I really took pains and energy with my research, not just opinions. They have to be based on something. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Can you think of an opinion that you had out there in some of your writing that you looked at it years later and thought, “I wouldn’t have come to the same conclusion?” |
| Linda Nochlin: | I’m sure there are. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | It’s so interesting how we develop those opinions based upon what we believe at a given time. |
| Linda Nochlin: | Oddly enough I’ve remained more or less consistent. I’ve added some artists in, subtracted some, but the ones that I like are still the ones that I’m interested in. At least many of the issues that I was committed to, I’m still committed to. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | What are you working on now? |
| Linda Nochlin: | I’ve just finished a large book called Misère about the representation about misery in the second half of the 19th century in France and England. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Wonderful. |
| Linda Nochlin: | That’s at the publisher right now. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | When should we expect to see it? |
| Linda Nochlin: | In the fall I should think. Thames & Hudson as usual.* *Update: Misère is slated for release after Spring 2018. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Are you excited about it? |
| Linda Nochlin: | Yeah, I am. I laughingly said to my editor, “Are you going to be able to sell a book called Misère?” He said, “Misère by Linda Nochlin, yes.” It was fascinating, really interesting. It pulls together a lot of things I’ve been interested in all along. It’s both new territory, but based on elements that I’ve been interested in for a long time. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Any nuggets that you want to give away from that that come to mind? |
| Linda Nochlin: | Let me think. There’s been relatively little in investigation of the representation of the poor and oppressed. Middle class Impressionism, etc., upper class before that, religious high-minded themes, battles, just the everyday lives of the poor and “uninteresting,” so to speak, not much setting. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | It’s interesting because that seems like a very timely topic for us. |
| Linda Nochlin: | Exactly I thought of that too. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | As we think of how elections change and how government change and how the education system changes about access, I think it seems.… |
| Linda Nochlin: | Absolutely. It was certainly true in the 19th century, early 20th. I think it’s an interesting book. I hope other people find it interesting. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | I look forward to seeing it. Thank you so much for allowing us here in your home. It was great to chat with you about these things. |
| Linda Nochlin: | Good. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | I look forward to seeing you at another CAA event soon I hope. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I hope so. |
| Hunter O’Hanian: | Thank you. |
| Linda Nochlin: | I would love to. Thank you. |
CAA Statement on May 23, 2017 Trump Proposed Budget
posted by CAA — May 23, 2017
In early May, we recognized that your advocacy matters. Calls, letters, and visits from our members and arts and humanities supporters changed the fate of the NEA, the NEH, and the CPB for the remainder of the 2017 fiscal year. The federal agencies even got a little bump in funding.
With the release of the more detailed White House FY2018 budget this morning, we now know that we at CAA, our members, and advocates for the arts and humanities must renew our efforts to fund these agencies through another fiscal year.
The proposed budget put forth by the White House is nothing short of a gutting of federal support for the arts and humanities. The proposed budget asks for $29 million for the NEA, $30.45 million for the CPB, and $42 million for the NEH. These sums are intended as wind-down amounts resulting in the shuttering of the agencies in 2019. Yet, these are only three agencies among a long list facing cuts under the Trump FY2018 budget. Arts education through the Department of Education is zeroed out and the IMLS would see a 90-percent drop in funding, from $231 million to 23 million in FY2018. Social services agencies assisting the financially insecure are some of the hardest hit with cuts.
Though these numbers are disheartening, we do know from our advocacy efforts on Capital Hill this year that the arts and humanities garner bipartisan support. Many of our elected officials understand the importance of these programs. They see the impact in their own districts through the work of non-profits, higher education institutions, and others who receive grants from the federal agencies.
But the fight is far from over.
Once again, it is imperative that all those who have been touched by the arts and humanities renew the fight to keep these agencies alive and thriving. We urge our members and supporters to make contact with your local representative and tell them the NEA, NEH, and CPB are an integral part of your lives and society.
If you would like to hear what Holly Hughes, one of the NEA Four thinks about the rationale for defunding the NEA, click here.
Use our toolkit to contact your local representative.
Read our March 16, 2017 Statement on the FY2018 skinny budget.
CAA Amicus Brief on Trump’s Travel Ban
posted by CAA — May 22, 2017
CAA added its name to two amicus briefs in opposition to the United States president’s travel ban, officially known as Executive Order 13,780. We joined the Association of Art Museum Directors and American Alliance of Museums, along with ninety-four art museums. The cases are: International Refugee Assistant Project v. Donald J. Trump in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; and State of Hawaii and Ismail Elshikh v. Donald J. Trump in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The brief argues that the travel ban inhibits the work of museums. “The negative effects of the Order are already being felt,” the document reads, “as several museums have postponed or canceled future exhibitions that require foreign artists, lenders, collectors, curators, scholars, couriers, and others whose ability to contribute can no longer be assured.” Specific examples include the Cleveland Museum of Art, which canceled a music performance, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which has doubts about securing loans for an exhibition of Persian art.
We consider joining this amicus brief as inherent to our advocacy efforts and our international reach at CAA. The travel ban impacts the international attendees of our Annual Conference, it impinges on the flow of information and discussion between colleagues, and it harms the practice of research more broadly.
An Interview with Holly Hughes of the NEA Four
posted by CAA — May 11, 2017
Hunter O’Hanian, CAA executive director, recently spoke to the artist Holly Hughes about proposed budget cuts for the National Endowment for the Arts. Hughes is known for being one of the NEA Four—artists whose work was described by Republican lawmakers as controversial and even pornographic. The debacle over the NEA Four led to the closing of the federal agency’s program of giving grants to individual artists.
O’Hanian and Hughes discuss ten points that originated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that advised Trump on his recent federal budget proposal. The two take on each suggestion point by point, offering a rebuttal to the Heritage Foundation’s logic.
Though we know the most recent budget does fund the NEA and NEH through the fall of 2017 with a small increase in funding—and we are thrilled about that—we do not believe we are in the clear. When funding is allocated again in the fall this conversation should serve as a reminder to why the arts and humanities are so important to our world.
Advocacy Matters
posted by CAA — May 05, 2017
Back in January, CAA was one of the first national organizations to speak against the threatened cuts to the NEA and NEH by the new administration. We participated in the national advocacy days for both the NEA and NEH and CAA staff made more than 20 visits to Congressional offices. In addition, we put together an Advocacy Toolkit to help CAA members reach out to their elected representatives to make their voices heard.
We were pleased to learn that the both the NEA and NEH (along with many other important Federal agencies) will continue to be funded in the current fiscal year. In fact, they even received a slight increase. Importantly, we saw strong bipartisan support for these programs in Congress as they understood the importance of art and culture in the lives of so many people in this country.
However, we don’t believe that these programs are out of the woods yet. Later this summer the president will offer a more detailed budget for the next fiscal year which will begin this fall. We are concerned that the president’s proposal will try to make the same cuts we saw in the budget he prepared last March. We ask you to stay alert to the news and to continue to reach out to your elected representatives to let them know how important these agencies are to our well being.
In advance, many thanks for all of your support.
Best,
Hunter O’Hanian
Executive Director
Art Professors of America Interview
posted by Christopher Howard — April 25, 2017
CAA recently corresponded with Marc Handelman, an artist and assistant professor of visual arts for the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, about a new grassroots organization concerned with advocacy issues, called the Art Professors of America.
When and why did the Art Professors of America form? What are its goals?
A couple of dozen art professors from several schools in the Northeast came together in the wake of the election initially to discuss how we might respond to a right-wing campaign to blacklist liberal and progressive faculty by smearing them as un-American. Simultaneously, many of us were seeing a troubling uptick both of threats and attacks on Latino, Muslim, and LGBTQ students, and of anti-Semitism on campuses. Some of us were also experiencing increased feelings of anxiety and self-censorship. Most of all, we felt the urgency and need of being together and sharing our experiences as artists and educators and citizens. We decided to meet every two weeks in New York and continue the conversation. Because colleagues from around the country reached out to be part of the dialogue, we started an email group that now represents professors in well over a dozen states. We are currently working on expanding this network to all fifty states, welcoming art professors of all ranks and teaching status, including TAs and those between positions. Our primary goal right now is to be a platform that connects people nationally and shares critical information. Our latest project was the launch of our website that features news related to education in our political climate and a critical resource page.
What is the purpose of the advocacy resource APA is building?
There are many potential and actual threats that faculty are facing increasingly. Some of these issues begin at the state level, where funding for classes or entire programs are being cut due to their political content. Other issues range from online harassment to deceptively progressive legislation for free-speech protection on campus. Meanwhile, higher education in general continues to foster crippling student debt as institutions struggle to deal with increasing demands for greater diversity, inclusion, and equity. The resource page we launched and continue to build on modestly attempts to provide critical information and tools to help us deal with some of these problems, from distributing information about student loans for undocumented students to debt models in art education. Other items provide online security protocol and consent laws for recording in classrooms. Some of the categories include Censorship and Intimidation, Critical Pedagogy, Alternative Art Programs, Debt and Precarity, Sanctuary and Immigration, and Legal Resources, among others.
Where do the resources come from?
Nearly all of the content already exists online in some form, from other organizations and studies. Populating the website was an extensive three-month process of collecting information and links and aggregating them in these categories. We have been so grateful to other working groups and colleagues for sharing their resources as well.
What are the most urgent issues confronting art professors in the United States today?
Clearly we don’t assume to speak for every program. But in the immediate context, the travel ban and ICE deportations may have the most immediate effects on our students, faculty, and visiting artists. Academic freedom has been under various levels of threat for a long time, and it remains to be seen how deeply and broadly new threats develop. But economic precarity and inequality remain the most pressing structural issue in education both for art schools and the larger university system. This affects part-time adjuncts who, already underpaid, are increasingly asked to do things such as decrease their course loads so as not to trigger contingent benefits, the end of tenured lines, and students who suffer under crippling debt or have no access to higher education at all. Critical and progressive curricula can’t make up for the undergirded issues of access, which are directly tied to geography, race, and class.
Under this current political regime, arts faculty may actually have a greater deal of security than professors and departments researching and teaching social justice, antiracism, and climate change. We need to continually find ways to support our colleagues in other fields.
How can CAA members get involved?
We welcome new arts-affiliated adjuncts, TAs, and professors into our organization and dialogue—the more voices represented, the better. Members will have access to group documents and files, as well as The Story Collection Project, which shares and archives testimonials and stories about what is happening in different corners of our campuses and in classrooms across the country. Meanwhile, the Art Profs America website, offering news, links, and resources, is live and available to anyone online. Please feel free to share with other colleagues as well. You can visit us, or join at http://artprofsamerica.com.
To request to join the discussion, please visit https://groups.google.com/d/forum/art-profs-america. You may also follow APA on Twitter.
Statement on the US President’s FY2018 Budget Proposal
posted by CAA — March 16, 2017
Today the US President released his proposal for 2018 federal budget – it envisions transferring additional billions of dollars to the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security from many important domestic programs such as the Environmental Protection Agency, education, and legal services. As expected, the budget also calls for the complete elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and 16 other federal agencies. CAA was one of the first national organizations to speak against these cuts.
Read the statement against these cuts that CAA released on January 23, 2017.
As educators, art historians, artists, curators, museum directors, designers, scholars, and other members of the visual arts community we must act to defend the role of arts and humanities in our society. The budget process is long and ultimately controlled by the US House and Senate. Earlier this week, CAA traveled to Washington for Humanities Advocacy Day to meet with many congressional offices to discuss the importance of continued NEA and NEH funding. We will return again next week to do the same for Arts Advocacy Day.
In addition, CAA assembled an Arts and Humanities Advocacy Toolkit with information on how to contact your representatives in Congress to voice your support for the NEA and NEH and the many quality programs they fund. Call their offices. Email them. Attend Town Halls. You can learn how these agencies support activities in your area here: funded by the NEA and funded by the NEH. Be sure to let your representatives know of the impact of the arts and humanities in your districts. Spread the word to your colleagues and friends.
Despite the White House’s opposition to continued funding for the NEA and NEH, there is sufficient reason to believe that many members of the US House and Senate will support a budget that includes continued funding for these agencies. I ask our members to join in the effort to make sure all members of Congress knows the importance of the work done by these agencies.
Hunter O’Hanian
Executive Director
Chief Executive Officer
CAA Arts and Humanities Advocacy Toolkit
posted by admin — March 02, 2017
“The phone calls and emails began coming in a few weeks ago to the Nebraska congressional delegation — all Republicans, and all potentially crucial to an expected fight over the very existence of the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities under President Trump.” –“How to Block Trump Arts Cuts? Groups Look for G.O.P. Help,” The New York Times, February 28, 2017
Arts and Humanities Advocates are already taking action. CAA encourages its members and all advocates of the arts and humanities to be persistent and do more.
On January 23, 2017, CAA released a statement condemning the proposed budget cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other federal agencies.
“For more than a century, the College Art Association (CAA) has represented art historians, artists, museum professionals, designers, and others who think and care about the visual arts and its impact on our culture. We do this in part through direct advocacy for artistic and academic freedom.
Like many other Americans, we have closely watched the proposed changes to the federal government. Recent news reports reveal that the US President intends to propose the elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This proposal is reportedly based in part on a recommendation by the Heritage Foundation that states, ‘As the U.S. Congress struggles to balance the federal budget and end the decades-long spiral of deficit spending, few programs seem more worthy of outright elimination than the National Endowment for the Arts.’
We offer our complete and total opposition to these efforts.”
The current administration’s proposal to cut funding for the NEA and NEH is based on a 1997 Heritage Foundation report, titled “Ten Good Reasons to Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.”
To support our statement, CAA has put together an Arts and Humanities Advocacy Tool Kit to help our members and anyone who wants to advocate for the arts and humanities. Information is power, after all. The Tool Kit information is pulled from a variety of sources that aid in forging partnerships, obtaining accurate data on the impact of the arts and humanities, and actions one can take in order to use your voice effectively.
We encourage you to contact us at CAA also. CAA staff will attend both Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day. The more stories we can share as we meet with colleagues and representatives, the more influence we collectively bring to the table.
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Call your representatives about any and all pressing issues.
Find your local representative
This is a helpful guide on how to contact your local representative:
The How-to Guide to Contacting your Local Official
Face-to-Face
Face-to-face meetings with representatives are the most effective way to deliver your message. Hand your representative a physical document with facts and figures and be sure to explain who you are and how the group you represent relates to your local politician’s constituency.
Town Halls are one good way to voice your opinion to your local representative in person. The Federation for American Immigration Reform has a guide on how to attend Town Hall meetings.
You can also organize and request an appointment at the offices of your representative. The National Priorities Project has a good guide to setting up office appointments.
Sign Petitions
There are myriad petitions floating around these days, addressing vast numbers of topics. It can be hard to keep track or know which petitions to sign.
Change.org remains one of the best places to find a database of petitions by topic. The site also provides explanations and background information for each petition.
To sign the petition to support the NEA and NEH you can sign the White House created petition, the Change.org petition, and the Arts Action Fund petition.
Advocates can also send postcards directly to members of Congress that are customized with their artwork or other artworks, thanks to the #savethearts Postcard Project.
Arm Thyself with Data and Information
There is lots of good data about the impact of the arts and humanities on people and places. The National Humanities Alliance is working on several data gathering and mapping projects.
Americans for the Arts is also a hub for data and information about various federal arts agencies and arts education in America.
Data on the arts and humanities can also be found on the National Endowment for the Arts Facts & Figures page and the National Endowment for the Humanities Impact Reports.
This nifty website is a running tally of all the programs that the NEA funded in 2016.
You can also search the NEA website to see all grants they have awarded since 1996. Check to see what organizations in your local area are funded by the NEA.
The same search for grants can be done on the NEH website.