New NEA funding guidelines spell uncertainty for local arts organizations

Leaders of local arts organizations are expressing concern and uncertainty after learning that a grant program supporting the arts in underserved communities is going away.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced last week its funding guidelines are changing, including canceling its Challenge America grant for the fiscal year 2026, a grant that supports underserved communities. Elizabeth Auclair, the assistant director of public affairs for the NEA, clarified that the NEA “has not eliminated this grant program” but merely canceled the deadline for fiscal year 2026. “The change this year will allow better and more efficient use of staff resources,” she said.

Additionally, the NEA is substantially overhauling its Grants for Arts Projects program, which will now prioritize patriotic projects related to America250, a President Donald Trump administration initiative commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Organizations that have already applied for Grants for Arts Projects funding for fiscal year 2026 are being instructed to reapply under the updated guidelines.

“The NEA has been a massively important source of support for museums to do projects beyond their financial capacity,” said Andrew Connors, director of the Albuquerque Museum.

Last year, the museum received a $30,000 NEA grant to produce the exhibition, “Broken Boxes: A Decade of Art, Action and Dialog,” which showcased cutting-edge work by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) artists. He worries the new NEA guidelines could make it more difficult to produce similar exhibitions in the future.

“Any changes to NEA and NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) support will have a deleterious effect on our communities’ access to the most important art of our time,” he said.

Jacques Paisner, the artistic director of the Santa Fe International Film Festival (SFiFF), said the new guidelines were “so new that we’re not even sure what the requirements are.” An email he received from the NEA announcing the changes was short on details but promised that more information would be revealed in an NEA webinar scheduled for Feb. 18.

Although SFiFF has been receiving NEA grants since 2020, Paisner said he does not anticipate that the new changes will substantially affect the festival or its Indigenous Film Program.

Despite his cautious optimism, Paisner acknowledged that others in the film industry are less sanguine about the proposed changes. He referred to an email he received from the Film Festival Alliance (FFA) — a Washington, D.C., based umbrella organization of which SFiFF is a member — expressing “great concern for current grantees and the possibility of their grants being rescinded.”

In the face of substantial uncertainty, Barbara Twist, the executive director of the FFA, has encouraged all of its member organizations to satisfy the terms of their current grants as soon as possible, just in case their NEA funding is withdrawn.

Twist called the new guidelines “much more restrictive,” especially the requirement that grant applicants give an “assurance of compliance” that they will comply with President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting recipients of federal funding from promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, as well as what the administration calls “gender ideology.”

“What happens when being diverse is reflected in your mission statement?” Twist asked. “And why is that bad?” She said that singling out programming that supports diverse audiences and creators “feels targeted.”

“It’s potentially discriminatory and definitely censorial,” she said.

She is concerned, too, that the NEA may attempt to apply its guidelines retroactively to grantees who applied in February and July of last year under the old rules.

Like Paisner, Twist hopes the NEA’s webinar next week will provide clarity on how the organization intends to implement the new policies.

Elizabeth Auclair at the NEA promised, “The NEA will continue to support excellent arts projects of all kinds under Grants for Arts Projects, including those serving rural, urban, suburban, and tribal communities of all sizes, and those that engage with individuals whose opportunities to experience and participate in the arts are limited.”

This story has been updated to include new information, including statements from NEA representative Elizabeth Auclair.