The Criminal Negligence of the New England Foundation for the Arts

First, Organizational Context

The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) is one of six State and Regional Arts Organizations organized under the National Assembly of State Arts Organizations and the U.S. Regional Arts Organization. I'm enclosing these links both as reference material and as factual assertions for the arguments that follow.

Regulation, Virtuous Cultural and Identity Politic Litmus Testing, and Funding

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is a stakeholder and Daddy Big Brother funder for all of these organizations.

There are regional and state funds that also support these arts funds and they all wrap yet another layer of "community" sentiment and political intimidation - a topic for a broader discussion in this link - to the rhetoric of applying for arts grants.  There is also a hefty degree of good will and good intention - another topic for later discussion - involved.

And lastly, there are a parade of corporate sponsors and giving individuals who do more than "care" about the arts but actually donate to their anticipated and fully expected promotion by all of the organizations previously listed.

Art, The Final Frontier

One would think that this fine, oiled hierarchy of goodwill and responsibility for promoting the arts might have a source of truth for establishing a minimum agreed upon set of artistic categories  or buckets of interest that, regardless of final labeling and marketing, would broadly represent arts.

For the sake of argument let's defer to the NEA as the source of such a list.

This listing represents NEA art Funding and Grants that exist on the National (and -nod,  wink - international level). Because the NEA represents a metaphorical bottomless pit of unaccountable, voluntary and involuntary taxpayer funding, it deserves and will later get a more thorough examination in this series.

To remain focused on the immediate topic, that is, the criminal negligence of NEFA in serving its demographic arts - *cough* - "community", the immediately startling difference between NEFA and all other Regional Arts organizations is the wholesale absence of ANY Visual Arts funding... nada... none... AND!, it gets worse.

NEFA is myopically almost exclusively funneling its resources into Theater and Dance and Performance work (and in identifying this, all of these are legitimate art practices).  Take a look.

 The topics dictate the scope of opportunity necessary to participate. By maliciously neglecting and eliminating Visual Arts the categories of at least Design and Folk and Traditional Arts are also retarded from full ability to participate.

So you ask, How can this get worse? Glad you asked. Any even cursory audit of who qualifies for the funding has a a set of aesthetic and social profiles and one of the blinding profiles is that the recipients are largely entertainers and over-amplified Identity Politic performers. 

But hold your breath, it's turtles all the way down.  In many, many cases, these performers are not local acts or performers.  The recipients of the grants appear to be curators or arts organizers closely coupled to arts organizations who have no intention of promoting community artists.  Instead, they are entertaining the community artists to death or to immigrate to some other, more arts friendly, region.

And underpinning much of this, is the fact that NEFA is subsidizing private companies and academic institutions with money intended for the professional development and practice of the regional artists to whom its targeted. Search for grants awarded to Wesleyan University and you will find a staggering sum of resources that for all intents and purposes are nothing more than subsidies for student body recreation and activity funds.  The same is true for other venues.

More troubling is that these performances - dance, theater, advocacy - charge admittance fees, prioritize their student bodies for ticket access (at discounts from the public), and, for all the rhetoric about equity, do nothing to adjust the ticket prices to acknowledge that public funds were ALREADY dedicated to the performances.  And by discriminating participation first to young, educated college attending students, the "community" both of local artists and local art supporters, is not being served -it is being marginalized and neglected.

New England,  America's Visual Arts Desert

NEFA is to Visual Arts in New England as climate change is to our burning forests.  There is no vision and no accountability to be found anywhere.  Oh, yes, we can fill out a complaint form here and there - more pain in the ass than they are worth.  And that form will get sucked into an administrative shedding machine that for the past forty years of NEFA's existence could not see what's obvious to anyone that looks.

NEFA needs a wholesale reorganization - all new administration and all new definition of art in New England.