Alabama arts leader: Trump freeze is ‘Existential threat to our organization’

Turmoil generated by the Trump administration’s abortive attempt at a broad freeze on loans and grants has generated a fiery response from the head of one Mobile arts institutions, who decries it as part of an attempt to pull the plug “on any microphone or platform that uplifts voices that are otherwise unheard.”

The missive from elizabet elliott, executive director of the Alabama Contemporary Art Center (ACAC) in Mobile, follows chaotic developments in federal funding. As reported by the Associated Press, on Monday the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo saying that federal agencies “must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

According to CNN, the memo specified that the pause would not affect Social Security or Medicare, or “assistance provided directly to individuals.” And a White House press secretary said it was “not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs.”

However, its apparent breadth and abruptness generated both concern and lawsuits. On Tuesday a federal judge stayed it until at least Monday, and on Wednesday the Trump administration rescinded the specific memorandum, though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “The Executive Orders issued by the President on funding reviews remain in full force and effect and will be rigorously implemented by all agencies and departments.”

RELATED: Trump rescinds federal funding freeze that set off panic, confusion

Amid Wednesday’s developments, elliott issued a call to action titled “I believe in what we do.” Aimed at the ACAC’s base of supporters, it encouraged them to donate to the center, to help protect it from funding cuts, and to contact state and local officials with their concerns.

“The impending freeze on National arts funding is an existential threat to our organization and the local arts community,” elliott said in the message. “In the coming weeks we will find out whether or not we must cancel $100,000 worth of project spending that was scheduled to support artists who’ve been working on projects for two years already. There is a further $250,000 annual injury between federal and State managed arts funding as the impact cascades through our community. We depend on these resources and have always worked to bring resources into this community that are otherwise inaccessible. On multiple fronts our leaders are divesting the cultural agency of small communities. They are pulling the plug on any microphone or platform that uplifts voices that are otherwise unheard and they are doing so to keep unaccountable power intact.”

“We believe our community deserves investment in the arts,” elliott said in her call. “We put that belief into action everyday and we build new paths forward for our community’s most talented and innovative thinkers. We facilitate risk and support grand new ideas, we lean into not what is, but what is possible. … The world I want to create is as complex and varied as the folks in it, and sees quality of life as a shared responsibility that cannot be divided up into private interests. I make the world for you, and you make it for me. The world I want to create lifts up art for the sake of lifting up what we love, what we hope for, and who we aspire to be to each other.”

Elliott said that given the uncertainties of the proposed freeze, she simply doesn’t know whether her institution will lose critical funding, or if it already has. The Alabama State Council on the Arts recently shared the news that 12 Alabama institutions had received direct funding from the NEA totaling more than a quarter-million dollars. Amid the allocations for organizations including the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and the Kentuck Museum Association was $40,000 for ACAC.

“As of today the NEA award we announced on the 15th still hasn’t been reactivated,” said elliott. “The rescinded order should mean that it will, but these are not agile systems, and arts funding that otherwise seemed reliable might reverse course.”

“Like with the pandemic, the full extent of the harm isn’t immediately apparent,” said elliott. “There are ways that this, and the decisions to follow in the next few weeks, are going to fundamentally re-shape the arts funding landscape underfoot. Private foundations aren’t immune to political discourse, and the economy is deeply affected by our expectations of the future, it rises and falls with our ideas about what happens next. That’s all to say i won’t know how this fully affects us until later.”

She said she anticipates the effort to slash funding will continue.

“The arts are a favorite scapegoat for anyone looking for one,” she said. “Part of this is the arts are culturally seen simultaneously as a luxury for the elite, and a bastion for revolutionaries and radicals. Simultaneously having no relevance and too much relevance. Either of these ideas fail to map art’s role and felt experience in communities like Mobile. If the political agenda is to silence diverse voices, as it pretty clearly articulates, the arts are a primary vehicle for those voices.”

Beyond that, she said, shriveling arts funding may well create a brain-drain problem for cities the size of Mobile and for less wealthy states such as Alabama.

“Because we built the system based on the idea of ’trickle down economics’ the failures will trickle down,” she said. “If the NEA contracts, the regional agencies are next, then state level then local. The only organizations that will survive are those that are free-standing on a trust or endowment. We’ll see all arts and cultural opportunities shrink back into major cities with major donors, and we will hemorrhage all talent in our workforce and in our community harder than we do currently. Although we produce culture (music, visual art, writing) at a rate as high or higher than other places, the Deep South doesn’t have the economic muscle to fully leverage the cultural assets we create. We won’t even be able to export them and all benefit of cultural production in the South will be extracted by folks and places with means.”

At the moment, she said, it’s hard to even develop plans for a worst-case scenario.

“Lord, man,” she said. “I don’t know that there is a contingency plan that survives a long-term total freeze on arts funding.”