Tucson and Southern Arizona arts organizations could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in government funding after the National Endowment for the Arts withdrew grant offers and terminated existing grants that didn’t align with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The NEA sent out letters Friday night to arts organizations nationwide informing them that their grants were being reconsidered if they did not align with Trump’s priorities to support "projects that elevate the nation’s HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities) and Hispanic serving institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful and support the economic development of Asian American communities."
Dozens of Tucson arts organizations were among those notified, including the Arts Foundation of Tucson and Southern Arizona, which was told the $500,000 American Rescue Plan grant it was awarded in 2021 was being rescinded.
But Arts Foundation CEO Adriana Gallego said the NEA notice came after she already distributed the last of those funds.
The foundation has two other NEA grants, both for $75,000, that were not highlighted in the letter Gallego received.
“Hopefully we will be able to use the funds if they don’t send out a termination letter,” she said.
The NEA letters targeted specific grants that won’t be funded after May 31, but the full scope of the grant terminations is unclear, said Christina You-sun Pak, executive director of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the state agency responsible for dispersing arts funding.
“I think that's something that we're trying to find out,” she said.
The NEA is required to distribute 40% of its annual budget to states, which use the money to support local artists and arts organizations. Arizona last year received just shy of $1.2 million from the agency's $207 million budget; Trump's so-called "skinny budget" calls for eliminating funding altogether for NEA and 17 other federal agencies including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Southwest Border Regional Commission.
NEA also awards individual grants. Recent local recipients have included $35,000 to Lead Guitar, $25,000 to True Concord Voices & Orchestra and Tucson Symphony Orchestra, $30,000 to Loft Cinema and $45,000 to Southwest Folklife Alliance to put on the 2025 Tucson Meet Yourself folklife festival downtown.
The alliance was notified that its grant was being rescinded, said Executive Director Maribel Alvarez.
The alliance immediately appealed the NEA decision, citing the festival’s role in promoting a number of areas that align with Trump’s agenda, including supporting tribal and Asian American communities.
As of Monday, she had not had a response, she said.
The NEA contributes 10% of the festival’s $480,000 annual budget. The loss is not crucial, Alvarez said, but it does create a gap.
Southwest Folklife Alliance also learned that its $70,000 NEA grant for its ongoing Center for Cultural Organizing in Tucson’s south-side La Doce neighborhood was being canceled. The community land trust project is a collaboration between the alliance, the city of Tucson and grassroots organizers from Regeneración.
Fox Tucson Theatre was notified that its $20,000 NEA grant for two presentations was being rescinded, but the theater has already spent the funds. Fox held one of the presentations last fall and the other in February and has been reimbursed for both, said Executive Director Bonnie Schock.
“All NEA awards are reimbursement grants, so you have to have spent the money and then you submit for reimbursement,” she said. "It was the fastest payment I've ever seen from the National Endowment in my career. It hit our account within three days."
Eddie Torres, president and CEO of the New York-based arts funders association Grantmakers in the Arts, said legal challenges to the NEA’s actions are already in the works.
“It is our sincere hope that all of these efforts simply could be restored by the courts, or it could be restored by the legislature,” he said, referring to Congress, which has the final say on how the federal government spends its money.
Torres said his organization is meeting with members of the Senate Appropriations Committee this week to lobby against the cuts, which he said could devastate rural communities.
“The places where NEA and NEH funding most matter are places that don't have a lot of foundations, they don't have a lot of individual wealth,” Torres said. “… Increasingly, in those areas without NEA and NEH funding, those are the places that are going to get hit the hardest.”
The NEA cuts come a month after the National Endowment for the Humanities sent similar letters to grantees including Arizona Humanities notifying them that the agency was no longer honoring its commitments. The NEH funds such things as libraries, museums, public TV and radio, humanities research and historic sites.
Brenda Thomson, executive director of the nonprofit Arizona Humanities council, pegged her organization’s loss at nearly $1.16 million, minus $74,300 that it was able to disperse before the NEH grants were rescinded.
The Mellon Foundation last week threw humanities organizations a lifeline when it committed $15 million in emergency funds to the Federation of State Humanities Councils.
“I would call it a hail Mary pass of the best kind,” said Thomson, who said each state humanities council will get $200,000 and another $50,000 in matching funds.
“We can't do it without federal funding. We can go for several months, maybe through year end because we have a small endowment fund,” she said. "We're doing everything we can to meet the challenge grant. … We want to be here.”
