How NEFA Cripples the Visual Arts and Its Legitimacy

 The oxymoronic New England Foundation for the Arts does virtually nothing to fund or expose the Visual Arts in New England. "That can't be", you say. Wrong.  Wrap your head around the fact of the matter.

Having a Hard Time Getting Funded, Go Away

An argument can be made that just because visual artists are treated like unworthy and unwanted competition for funding consideration in the New England region - there is always the opportunity to apply for grants and funding from the National endowment for the Arts (NEA) directly.  And that's true but missing some critical context.

All of the other regions at least pay lip service to funding the Visual Arts and its aesthetic ecosystem of related practice. Artists who receive even perfunctory recognition at the regional level can also apply nationally and have something in their back pocket as a local reference. NEFA offers no such opportunity.

And for New England artists this means that they are not only competing for national recognition but that they are doing so against artists who already have a foot in the door.  If there is a complete disrespect for one's art at the regional level the why oh why would the NEA give you the time of day?

And While NEFA is at It, F.uck the Galleries Too

The local Art Gallery scene in America consists of seat-of-the-pants funding and all-hands-on-deck volunteerism.  

All of the aforementioned funding recipients have in-house, payrolled, grant writers. Few, if any, galleries and community venues have anyone who qualifies to help (see Rule #1).

The monopoly of dance, theater, and performance funding by NEFA is nothing short of money laundering.

The majority of funding is awarded to first, private school programs, occasionally State programs, and lastly the occasional, politically connected smaller venues. These well-endowed or tax-payer funded  University entertainment venues usually have budgets that fully fund the next year's offerings.  NEA funding is cycled back into their program funding priorities.  This is an obvious windfall for performing arts programs.

Woo hoo! Rule #1: Life. Ain't. Fair.

Pragmatically, that leaves ALL of the Visual Arts, Writing, Conservation, Folk Art, and myriad other galleries left to go fish for funding elsewhere.

For the record, art galleries are where all the platitudes are either practiced or ignored. The word community is synonymous with local art galleries.  Patrons looking for cultural mirrors of their community will find it here or not at all.

Body Blows

The NEFA Resilience Funds that were awarded as a consequence of Covid were feeble at best. The funding largely targeted arts administration. The description of the grants and amounts awarded sound like pissing in the ocean to change the tides.

*TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!*.  All they want to do is continue stable employment for a diverse full-time staff as well as 18 teaching assistants, provide technology, and reach 400 lower income kids. Ambitious?

The diversity of the staff is irrelevant to receiving funding.  Reaching 400 lower income kids is irrelevant to the funding. The biggest question here is that this example is a copy of numerous such requests.

The obvious need is for a virtual presence from which to broadcast arts programs. Period.  What was required is that NEFA itself would negotiate, fund, and train all New England Galleries with an autonomous web footprint, a paid subscription for social media meeting spaces, and some single source technical assistance. That would have been a cost-effective, ever-so-virtuous solution under the circumstances. Missed opportunity.

Resiliency Revisited

The concept of Disaster Capitalism is ubiquitous these days when natural disaster suddenly and unexpectedly shuffles the deck of normalcy.

NEFA's malfeasance in regard to Visual Arts extends much further. The New England States are home to thousands of historical and socially significant artifacts that range from buildings, functional institutions, burial grounds, and other social treasures.

Extreme weather, misguided natural resource management, and self-inflicted incompetence are compounding the risk that all of these cultural assets are in danger.

Visual Arts funding is one aspect of sustaining a healthy aesthetic infrastructure but promoting healthy gallery practices, restoration and future proofing of all of New England's brittle treasures, creating feedback and fundback loops so that local artists and artisans participate in the funding is critical.

Resiliency funding must be an ongoing program dedicated to the New England gallery infrastructure.  The Private Universities and State Schools should not be skimming these funds away from non-profits and individuals who enrich the region.

So at least one question is, "Why is NEFA so incompetent and mismanaged?"  Administration is not an art.