CAA News Today

At press time, Congress had passed yet another Continuing Resolution (CR), once again postponing action on the annual appropriations, including those for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and virtually the entire federal government, except for the Pentagon. The recently passed CR gives the new Republican-controlled 108th Congress until January 11, 2003, to make changes and decisions about federal-agency appropriations for fiscal year 2003. As a result of this, most federal agencies will continue to operate at last year’s appropriation levels for what will be at least a quarter of the new fiscal year.

With the results of the November 2002 election now in, Senate Democrats will lose their committee chairs when the 108th Congress convenes. The House subcommittee that oversees the budget for NEA and NEH will also get a new chair as Representative Joe Skeen (R-NM) retired. When the new Congress begins to address the fiscal year 2003 budget, deep cuts to domestic programs are expected in an attempt to come closer to the President’s spending-level recommendations. Whether or not the 108th Congress will reduce the funding increases for the NEA and NEH that the House approved last July remains to be seen.

At press time, not a single appropriations bill for fiscal year 2003 had been presented to President George W. Bush for his signature. Indeed, the House-Senate conference committee was still debating amendments to the Interior Appropriations Bill, which includes funds for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As reported in the September 2002 issue of CAA News, the U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment last July to increase funding by $10 million for the NEA (for a total of $127 million) and $5 million for the NEH (for a total of $131.9 million) over President Bush’s fiscal year 2003 budget request; however, it is not at all clear that the Senate will agree to these increases. Congress will most likely finish work on a majority of the spending bills, including the Interior Appropriations Bill, after the November elections.

In addition to appropriations bills, there are a number of other legislative initiatives ready for a vote, including the Museum and Library Services Act of 2002 (H.R. 3784), a reauthorization measure for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The existing authorization for the agency was scheduled to expire on September 30, 2002. Both the House and Senate have finished work on the reauthorization bill, but it is currently stalled in the House. Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), chairman of the Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Select Education, wrote a letter to the House leadership, calling on them to schedule a vote on this important measure before the current IMLS authorization expired. A vote had not been scheduled at press time.

In the coming year, it will be more important than ever for people working in the arts and humanities to advocate for increased federal funding for arts and cultural programs, since they are often the first programs to be cut in an economic recession. The federal budget process begins in February 2002, we urge you to participate in the following arts and humanities advocacy events in Washington, DC, co-sponsored by CAA : Arts Advocacy Day, March 11-12, 2002, and Jefferson Day, March 21-22, 2002. Both events will bring together artists, scholars, and others to express the importance of federal support for the arts and humanities to Congressional leaders.

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-Marta Teegen, Manager of Governance, Advocacy, & Special Projects

On July 17, 2002, the U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment to increase funding by $10 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and $5 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) over President Bush’s fiscal year 2003 budget request. The amendment directs the $10 million increase for the NEA to the agency’s Challenge America program, an initiative designed to extend the reach of arts programs to underserved communities. No specifications were made for the additional NEH funding.

If these increases survive a vote in the Senate and receive the president’s signature, the NEA will begin the fiscal year in October with $127 million (a $12.1 million increase from fiscal year 2002), and the NEH will have $131.9 million (a $7 million increase from last year).

CAA cosponsored Arts Advocacy Day on March 11-12, 2002, hosted by Americans for the Arts, and Jefferson Day on March 21-22, 2002, hosted by the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), in Washington, D.C. Both events brought together a broad cross-section of national cultural organizations, academics, and grassroots arts leaders to promote the arts, arts education, and humanities to Congress through increased support for the federal cultural agencies.

In addition to requesting more funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), CAA representatives Marta Teegen and Paul Skiff focused on two key policy issues on Arts Advocacy Day this year: grants for individual artists and fair-market-value tax deductions for artists.

Concerning grants for individual artists, Teegen and Skiff argued that the NEA has always sought to promote America�s cultural heritage and values both domestically and abroad through these grants. Specifically, NEA grants have supported and encouraged ingenuity, freedom of expression, and risk taking. Since Congress eliminated grants to individual artists in 1995, the NEA has placed the majority of its emphasis on education and access programs. To remove artists from the grants program, however, leaves this national arts-funding initiative without positive examples of individual achievement, which provide high standards upon which to base educational goals. A program for funding the arts that does not have examples of individual professional achievement, much less encourage ingenuity and risk taking, does not allow the U.S. to establish cultural authority or credibility worldwide. Therefore, it is necessary that the NEA recognize individual artists with longstanding achievement, and encourage them to be outspoken with their unique viewpoints and innovative, advanced ideas. After all, it is artists who are recognized by the national and international public for being positive examples of American cultural leadership.

While making several congressional visits during Arts Advocacy Day, Teegen and Skiff met with other arts advocates. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these advocates scoffed at our attempt to reestablish a dialogue with our elected officials about grants to individual artists, more often than not stating that ours is a lost cause. To be sure, if arts advocates from around the country are afraid or unwilling to broach this important subject with members of Congress, then it will, sadly, forever be lost. We therefore strongly urge all CAA members to engage your elected officials in a dialogue about the importance of grants to individual artists and to ask them to sponsor legislation that will fund them.

On the issue of fair-market-value tax deductions for artists, CAA has been an advocate for pending legislation for well over a year now. Sponsored by Amo Houghton (R-Corning, NY) and Ben Cardin (D-Baltimore, MD) in the House and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) in the Senate, the proposed legislation would allow artists to deduct the donation of an artwork at its full market value. This will greatly aid museums and other nonprofit recipients of art gifts by making the donation process easier and more valuable for the donor. In all likelihood, the bill will be amended to a larger tax bill; however, it is unclear whether or not there will be such a tax bill this year.

For Jefferson Day, a humanities advocacy event that focuses on increasing support for the NEH, Teegen and CAA�s executive director, Susan Ball, met with several members of the Senate Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies�the group that oversees funding for federal cultural agencies. We explained that NEA and NEH Challenge Grants have allowed CAA to offer awards to individuals from traditionally underrepresented populations at the professional level in museums and universities through its Professional Development Fellowship Program. CAA director of marketing and communications and a New Jersey resident, Richard Selden, also participated in visits (organized by Princeton University’s Office of Government Affairs) to the offices of several New Jersey members of Congress. Unfortunately, the NEH falls under the radar in most congressional offices. We need to help raise the agency�’s profile-to increase awareness of the work that it makes possible, including support for art-historical research and exhibitions, and to improve the understanding of its mission. CAA will continue to work with the National Humantities Alliance, a nonpartisan advocacy group in Washington, D.C., of which CAA is a member, to address these issues.

Also during Jefferson Day, CAA and the NHA cosponsored a reception at the Folger Shakespeare Library in honor of the new NEH chair, Bruce Cole, an art historian. It was well attended by congressional staff, humanities advocates, and NEH staff members.

As reported in the March/April issue of CAA News, President George W. Bush’s budget, which was released in February of this year, calls for modest increases in the NEA’s and NEH’s budgets in FY 2003, just enough to cover the costs associated with the proposed legislative change in accounting for retirement and health benefits costs; thus, program budgets for the two agencies are nearly identical with the present fiscal year, at about $117.4 million for the NEA and almost $126.9 million for NEH. The IMLS, on the other hand, is scheduled for an increase of 8.1 percent over last year’s budget. While advocates urged members of Congress to support a funding increase to $155 million each for both the NEA and the NEH during Arts Advocacy Day and Jefferson Day, it is still unclear whether such increases will occur in the coming fiscal year.

-Marta Teegen, CAA manager of governance, advocacy, and special projects, with Paul Skiff, assistant director of annual conference

The White House released its FY 2003 budget proposal on February 4, 2002, in which President George W. Bush calls for dramatic increases in spending for defense (a $48 billion increase), homeland security, and the war on terrorism, and makes dramatic cuts in other programs. In light of this, the nation’s cultural institutions seem to have fared fairly well.

Bush has requested almost $117.4 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (a $2.1 million or a 1.7 percent increase from FY 2002) and about $126.9 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities (a $2 million or a 1.9 percent increase from last year). The increases for these are aimed at funding the full costs associated with the proposed legislative change in accounting for retirement and health-benefits costs; program budgets are identical with the present fiscal year.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services’s projected budget of $210.7 million is an increase of 8.1 percent over last year. The administration’s budget request for the Smithsonian Institution calls for an increase of $9 million; this figure represents a 1.8 percent increase from the previous year. The total $528 million budget proposal for the Smithsonian includes $10 million for the construction of the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as $5.2 million for staffing and exhibition planning for the new museum. Funding has also been proposed for continuing the renovation work on the historic Patent Office Building, which houses the National Portrait Gallery.

Because of successful lobbying by arts advocates, the Fiscal Year 2002 Interior Appropriations bill also includes funds for the Center for Materials Research and Education at the Smithsonian Institution, despite the fact that the Bush administration previously had accepted the Smithsonian leaderships proposal to close the center. It will remain open for at least another year.

Heritage Preservation received a Chairman’s Emergency Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for “A Survey and Report on the Extent of Damage and Loss to Cultural Resources after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks.” The project will collect information about the impact of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 99 museums, libraries, and archives; 67 historic landmarks; and 245 works of outdoor sculpture in lower Manhattan, along with significant art collections and business archives maintained by many nonprofit organizations. A report will document the extent of damage and loss to cultural resources and the responses of museums, libraries, and archives to this unprecedented tragedy.

For more information on this project, please visit Heritage Preservation’s website at www.heritagepreservation.org.