Hundreds of American artists are calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to reject a new edict from the Trump administration stating that arts organizations cannot use federal funds to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “gender ideology.”
More than 460 visual artists, dancers, and poets signed a letter in protest of the requirements for grant applications accepted by the NEA this month in compliance with President Trump’s latest executive order, one in a growing list intended to shape what art is made and displayed in America.
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Grant applicants are required not to operate any programs promoting “‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws” and must pledge adherence to an executive order signed in January stating that American policy is to “recognize two sexes, male and female,” which has been widely decried by human rights groups as an attack on transgender people.
According to its organizer, 2019 theater director and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Annie Dorsen, the list of names is private. In a document reviewed by ARTnews, artists demand the NEA “reverse” its direction, writing that “abandoning our values is wrong, and it won’t protect us. Obedience in advance only feeds authoritarianism.” The letter was sent to NEA officials on Tuesday, per the New York Times.
“Trump and his enablers may use doublespeak to claim that support for artists of color amounts to ‘discrimination’ and that funding the work of trans and women artists promotes ‘gender ideology’ (whatever that is),” the letter continued. “But we know better: the arts are for and represent everybody.”
ARTnews has contacted the NEA for comment. A spokesperson for the NEA told the Times that it is a “longstanding legal requirement” that all federal grant recipients comply with “with applicable federal anti-discrimination laws, regulations and executive orders.
“The N.E.A. is continuing to review the recent executive orders and related documents to ensure compliance and provide the required reporting,” the spokesperson added.
During his first administration, Trump spearheaded a failed attempt to eliminate the NEA, which survived with bipartisan support and today has an approximate annual budget of $200 million. The endowment is currently led by Mary Anne Carter, who oversaw its operations during the first term. Its chair since 2021, Maria Rosario Jackson, resigned the day of Trump’s second inauguration. In her parting statement, she wrote that America “cannot live up to our promise as a nation of opportunity and justice without the full and intentional integration of the arts into all aspects of our lives,” and “all areas of policy and practice.”
Earlier this month, the NEA announced the elimination of its “Challenge America” program, which gave grants to small organizations that “extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups/communities,” among a slew of other programming changes. The NEA’s website now suggests organizations apply to the Grants for Arts Projects program that encourages “projects that celebrate the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity by honoring the semiquincentennial of the United States of America.”
These changes arrive amid a major upheaval of the capitol museum landscape. The Smithsonian Institution has ended its diversity, equity and inclusion programs and frozen all hiring in accordance with Trump’s anti-DEI directive. Just days prior, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, having only recently launched an initiative to increase diversity in its programming, announced the closing of its office of belonging and inclusion.
His demonstration has reinstated a policy that favors “classical” and other traditional architecture for the designs of federal buildings and monuments. Officially titled the Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture executive order, it mentions by name Brutalism and Deconstructivism, two movements born in the United Kingdom and Europe, respectively, and founded on subverting aesthetic conventions.
Prior to the inauguration, the Trump administration introduced a bill that grants the Secretary of Treasury the power to designate nonprofit organizations “terrorist organizations” and strip them of their tax-exempt status. The bill was met with immediate pushback from American human rights groups who argued that it provided a tool to curb the promotion of diverse, dissenting perspectives. Per the bill, the government would not be required to disclose any material evidence against nonprofits, leaving such organizations with little recourse to win its case and consequently, save its funding.
Artists and activists are increasingly mobilizing against Trump’s arts campaign. On Monday, a protest outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a leading performing arts institution in the country, drew attention to its leadership change. The venue maintains a private-public partnership and receives a portion of its funding from the federal government. Its traditionally bipartisan board was recently replaced by Trump appointees.
In New York City, protestors rallied outside the Stonewall National Monument on Christopher Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village after the the National Park Service (NPS) removed from its website all references to the transgender and nonbinary individuals who led the eponymous riot in 1969, including the “T” and “Q” in the LGBTQ+ acronym. The NPS online description of the historic event now reads, “Through the 1960s almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was a violation of law, rule, or policy.”
Stonewall became a national monument in June 2016 under the Obama administration. The NPS is a federal bureau within the Department of Interior; it has not responded to an ARTnews request for comment. A joint statement posted to Instagram by the Stonewall Inn and the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative called for an “immediate restoration” of the word “transgender” to the site’s description.
“This blatant act of erasure not only distorts the truth of our history, but it also dishonors the immense contributions of transgender individuals — especially transgender women of color — who were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots and the broader fight for LGBTQ+ rights,” the statement continued.
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