What America's Biggest Arts Party Can Teach Us About Cuts
A review published on 7 October 2026 says pulling money out of the arts helped fracture civic life in the United States.
The review, 'How Defunding the Arts Wrought Civic Disintegration', appeared in ARTnews in New York under its Art in America banner ARTnews. It centres on 'What Was America?: Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era', a book about the United States bicentennial, described as the country's most ambitious cultural project.
For anyone new to the term, a bicentennial is a 200th birthday. In this case it meant exhibitions, performances, festivals and local history projects staged across the country. The book revisits the art, culture and politics around that effort, and the review uses that story to ask what is lost when shared support falls away.
The numbers are stark. The National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, the federal agency that awards grants to artists and arts organisations, started cancelling grants under the Trump administration. Hundreds of arts groups of various sizes were affected, according to reporting by NPR, the US public broadcaster NPR. President Donald Trump's proposed budget called for the elimination of the agency, the Associated Press in New York reported Associated Press.
The agency's own budget papers trace the shift. The President's Fiscal Year 2025 Budget requested US$210.1 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. Its FY 2026 Congressional Budget Request states the FY 2026 Budget provides US$29.0 million to begin the orderly process for the agency. Its appropriations history lists US$207,000,000 for 2026. Earlier, in January 2025, the agency had said it would award 1,127 grants totalling US$31,825,500 for arts projects across 15 artistic disciplines and fields.
What makes this stand out for a general reader is the contrast. One era poured money and attention into free shows, exhibitions and street parties meant for everyone. The other cut grants relied on by small theatres, galleries, orchestras and community groups. You do not need to follow art-world politics to feel that difference in a local calendar.
