The Uniparty Arts Money Pit - A Work in Progress

 The acronyms in this diagram refer are:

NEA - National Endowment (euphemistically) for the Arts

NEFA - New England Foundation (euphemistically) for the Arts

DECD - [CT} Department for Economic Community Development (e.g. a special interest group run by and for casino gambling)

COA - CT Office (Euphemistically) for the Arts 

DRSO - Designated Regional Services Organization (CT is divided into "service" regions)

This topology of organizations manages to mismanage multi-millions of Federal, State, and local taxes in addition to funds donated to promote the Arts community (e.g. actual, living, breathing artists). This investigative series that started by simply attempting to understand if there was a single source, uniformly administered way to apply for an arts grant or fund to -gasp- make some more art.

By the time money is awarded to actual, living, breathing local artists the grand total awarded to a cohort of artists is equivalent to less than one single State of Connecticut bureaucrat (about $100,000 per year) with no benefits. The awards to individual artists is $1000, $3000, or $5000 dollars, the quivalent of a week's to a few week's pay of that same sample CT State employee - don't spend it all in one place.

The deeper I dig, the more obvious it is that this money is illegally being funneled into a single political party's narrative. An apolitical fine artist not only doesn't stand an honest chance of  consideration but is doomed to witness money intended for arts to be squandered maliciously on the corrupt and unethical subversion of that funding for illiberal political gain. 

Use this link to follow my investigative series into all of these organizations, their malfeasance, and their brazen criminal practices.

 

  

Connecticut Humanities Grants

Yesterday, I had a great conversation with Scott Wands, the Director of Grants at Connecticut Humanities.  This was a follow on of research I've been conducting involving how Arts and Humanities grants work.  

My first question was why CT Humanities (CTH), unlike the National Endowment for the Arts framework, was administered the way it is.  That is, no regional equivalent of the New England Foundation for the Arts exists for the Humanities AND, oddly enough in Connecticut the CT Humanities is funneled through the Department of Economic and Community  Development (DECD) -> CT Office of Arts (COA).

Scott explained the in the 1960s the Humanities were administered exclusively from Washington, DC and later through State affiliates. In Connecticut this was implemented through the creation of a 501c Non-profit - the CTH.  It's primary function is to distribute as equitably as possible grants for organizations that promote the Humanities and for local Community programs doing the same (this all includes Digital content as well).

So where does the money come from for Humanities grants?

One Source is Federal funds. Some of this incoming money is used for staff expenses but the rest is used exclusively (by law) for Connecticut community programs and Digital cotent that are listed in detail on the CTH website. 

The Second money stream comes from the State of CT itself and is, of course, dependent on State budget considerations. Some of this incoming money is used for staff expenses but the rest is used exclusively (by law) for Connecticut institutional grants. 

I questioned why NO grants to individuals were available and the answer is that this is how the State of Connecticut constrains, through governance, the dissemination of these funds.

I was a bit perplexed here. One of the advertised responsibilities for CT Humanities is that funding for Art Criticism should be administered through CTH. What gives? Scott's response was that any such grants to individual Arts Criticism writing would be found downstream from an institution receiving CTH state funded grants.

In other words, someone looking for an Art Criticism project grant should not waste time soliciting CTH and instead research candidate institutions.

The third source of funding comes from outside contributions. These funds get dedicated to lobbying.

Who gets lobbied? The State. I had examined their transparent spreadsheet of Tax Returns and had noticed the lobbying expense and it occurred to me that unless that expense was exceeded by the return it seemed like a waste.

Scott explained that the lobbying is necessary and of course cannot guarantee a return but ensures due diligence in soliciting for programs that benefit the State.

One such program, Summer at the Museum, offered free passes to CT museums during the summer months had been defunded post-Covid and remains and sorely missed program that continues to be lobbied for. 

In terms of my research into qualifying for Arts grants, CTH exercise its responsibilities on an institutional or Community Program scale.  The quality and metrics for determining the effectiveness or continued veracity of institutional grants is out of scope of my interests for the time being.

And the idea of cultivating arts and humanities patrons is a topic I'll return to.

A Penny for Your Artful Thoughts

 As I research government art funding, something (aside from the illicit use of taxpayer money) that is suspiciously curious is the difference in funding levels between different kinds of artists, writers, and so on.  This raises a true question of equitable funding - in other words, you're a writer, I'm a visual artist both seeking a grant to produce 'art' over the same period of time. Is the funding the same or different?  Let's take a look under the covers.

In the wake of the 9/11 victim death toll, the government had to determine a fair compensation to those whose loved ones were taken during that event.  A equitable fiscal calculation had to be made and it was.

Similarly, with recognizing that National Arts funding exists (and there is plenty to discuss about that fact), what is the value of a grant that will speculatively produce something of human societal value?  

The argument I will explore involves the difference between a visual artist and a fiction writer. Both artists need time to create their work and the first drafts or experimental prototypes may need refinement so an arts grant of, for example, $1000 just for subsidizing living expenses for a few weeks is equitable - a visual artist and a writer on a day to day basis have common expenses.

Where there is a difference however is in material expenses, visual artists (generally speaking) have expenses that writers (even digitally leaning) simply don't have. Browse the cost of paints, brushes, or home depot materials required to create something and this fact is obvious.  Yet there doesn't seem to be any recognition of this difference at any level of government arts funding at all. In other words, a request for arts funding should solicit the size of a requested grant AND an expenses stipend. 

In a previous essay, I commend the National Endowment for the Humanities for objectively soliciting, describing, and dispensing their funding.  But something else they do that is different from the operations of the Arts Funding apparatchiks is that their grants have a temporal duration.  In other words they fund humanities scholarship for months or even a year.  Its not the same as tossing a small lump sum at a writer and wiping the administrative dust off their hands.

The NEH can (if they desired) make an argument that NEH research writing is different from NEA fiction writing. Here I'm using NEH and NEA as a allegory for every ladder rung of administrative entity that funds their respective grants.

My counter argument (and I've been making art for over a half century) is that creating original work as opposed to curating, refining, and synthesizing existing research is every bit as time-consuming and exhaustive as research.  The NEH's grant framework makes perfect sense and the NEA has nothing comparable (at least in my survey).

To clarify the difference, an NEH researcher can solicit a $6k/month funding for whatever duration they choose within funding guidelines and NEA grants have no such funding option. To understand the insulting indignity of this difference compare and contrast the CT State artist grants of $5k, $3k, and $1k awarded here. Keep in mind that NEFA has NO visual artist options to even apply for a Regional grant at all. NEFA launders national arts funding to exclude everyone aside from special interests from accessing those funds. 

The State of CT's cluster muck of arts, humanities, "development", and "tourism" entanglement is an administrative masterpiece of wasted energy, money, and legitimacy. Somebody, somewhere/anywhere really needs to audit these mofos.

In previous essays I questioned how a dead artist, Sol  Lewitt somehow managed to become a statewide money sink for arts funding.

Then there's the evaporating wall mural on the Lewitt building in New Britain.

So imagine my surprise when I'm looking up the individuals responsible for handing out the funds.

Presumably, anyone with conflicts of interest recuse themselves from participation but I can't help but feeling that ensuring accountability in CT is as difficult to grab hold of as a greased pig. 

  

Federal Art Funding Done Right

 In the 1960's Major League Baseball expanded and added back another New York team, the New York Mets.  Needless to say as an expansion team the talent was razor thin and their colorful and entertaining coach Casey Stengel quipped, "Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?"

That sense of humor is not lost on any artist attempting to locate and apply for a arts grant or other funding opportunity from the State of CT, the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), and to some degree the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Aside from the clusterMuck of confusing and misleading website and - cough- "portal" interface problems, it is a full time chore for anyone who is not already associated with a mainstream arts organization, a University, or otherwise inside track to simply navigate, recipe-wise, 'how do I apply for the damned thing and how can I be sure my application will be treated fairly'?

I'm chipping away at making sense of this stuff in a series of essays and inquiries that I hope will concise road map that any artist can follow.

What has caught my attention and has answered the question of "Can the Federal government do a good and truly honest job of creating opportunities for creatives whose instructions are reasonable, whose solicitations are free of cognitive and political bias, and who advocate and practice an even handed evaluation process?"

The improbable answer is YES.

In researching arts funding you will inevitably encounter cross references to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sometimes that cross-reference is misguided.  In a couple of cases, an arts administrator or political advocate for funding wants to co-opt or deflect responsibility for funding something having to do with writing or related matter for funding as a Humanities project. NEA and NEH serve two autonomous and unique cohorts that only co-incidentally share some of the same creative juices that applicants are looking to exercise.

On the NEH website there's a webinar that's been recorded with tons of very useful, specifics about who the Humanities serve and what the scope of that stuff is as this slide shows;

Taken at face value, artists such as myself can claim some of that territory as our own but what NEH makes clear throughout their material is that the generation of art is out of scope - that stuff belonging to the responsibility of the NEA, NGOs, and private parties

Again, as an artist, I find comfort in this kind of clarity. This means that funding opportunities for stuff I do or hope to do is in the scope of the NEA and not here.  HOWEVER, my expectation as an artist is that everything that applies to the Humanities in terms of an expected field of neutrality WILL apply at the NEA.

Let's compare and contrast what i found in the NEA budget and performance plan:

Wait, WHAT?

I'm going to analyze the NEA's malfeasance in this regard in a separate essay. Obviously, every single form of psychological intimidation appears to be "the plan" at the NEA.

But this post is about doing it right and for the sake providing how its done right let me provide additional references and links from NEH that conclusively prove that government can work responsibly and fiscally soundly.

The NEH grants webpage is a breath of fresh air - lots of truly well-developed recipes for successfully submitting an application for the funding you hope will be chosen.

The YouTube channel for NEHgov is rich with additional videos that make life easier for funding applicants.

see: Connecticut Humanities Grants