US President Donald Trump's 2017 budget includes the elimination of federal funding for the arts, humanities and public broadcasting. These are the people and entities who stand to lose.
Image: picture-alliance/Godong/C. Leblanc
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Axing the arts and public broadcasting in the US: Who is affected?
US President Donald Trump's 2017 budget proposes the elimination of funding for the NEA, NEH and CPB. Here's what these institutions are and who stands to lose.
Image: picture-alliance/Godong/C. Leblanc
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Funding arts and cultural projects in all 50 US states particularly in rural and minority communities, the NEA promotes local creative activity in the pictorial arts, literature, dance, theater and music. Threatened budget cuts could endanger or eliminate much of this.
Music, dance and art exhibitions
From 2007-2016, the NEA supported opera performances to the tune of $11 million (10.4 million euros) as well as free ballet training. In the visual arts, grants have gone to renowned and little-known artists and to war veterans undergoing art therapy. The NEA also funds music lessons for minority students, poetry reciting competitions and jazz musicians on tour.
Image: Fotolia/KABUGUI
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Museums and archives, libraries and universities, public radio and TV as well as individual scholars have received NEH support. A particular focus are the languages and cultures of Native Americans and documentation of the civil rights movement. Digitizing these artifacts is an ongoing project. Adjusted for inflation, the NEA budget has already declined by 70 percent between 1979 and 2014.
Books, documentaries, scholarly editions
7,000 books have been published with NEH help in 52 years; 16 won Pulitzer Prizes. 38 million Americans viewed Ken Burns' documentary "The Civil War" and 63.3 million pages of historic newspapers have been preserved. The NEH funded the first comprehensive autobiography of Mark Twain and the papers of ten American presidents. Ten out of 44 previous presidents: clearly, there's more work to be done.
Image: PBS
Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors
Veterans of US military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq have often found it difficult to talk about what they've experienced - but the program encourages them to write about it. Beyond the therapeutic value, the 74 essays in this collection have fostered community building among war veterans.
Image: Getty Images
Dictionary of American Regional English
Do you know what a garboon, a gardaloo or garget is? You can look it up in this dictionary, compiled through NEH-funded field research since 1971 to collect the many odds, ends and quirks of the American language. The dictionary is complete, but a lexicographer's work is never done.
Image: Belknap Press
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
The largest source of funding for non-commercial radio, television and related online and mobile services, the CPB supports over 1,100 radio and 365 television outlets. Dozens of stations in smaller markets depend on the CPB to fund their operations. The corporation also encourages content development through grants, shielding stations from political influence or commercial considerations.
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
The network provides 1,200 hours of programming per year - primarily children's, educational and cultural broadcasts - but also news. Live from Lincoln Center has transmitted classical music and jazz concerts for over 40 years - and DW News as well as the Deutsche Welle programs Focus on Europe and Euromaxx can be seen on hundreds of PBS stations.
National Public Radio (NPR)
Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the network's signature programs, but there are many others from news to jazz and classical music. NPR and PBS receive little in federal funds but could hardly exist without the public television and radio infrastructure supported by the CPB.
Image: NPR
Public radio stations
Individual public radio stations in the US produce 40 percent of their content locally. The rest comes from national sources like NPR and international producers including Deutsche Welle, whose news and information programs Inside Europe and World Link and its classical music series DW Festival Concerts can be heard on stations coast to coast.
Image: Fotolia/Manuela Klopsch
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Although it may not be very well known outside of the United States, funding via government institutions, on the national, state, county and municipal levels, is one way the country supports its artists. For the time being at least.
Arts and humanities in the United States have received financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) since 1965. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which subsidizes non-commercial radio and television programming, was founded two years later.
All three institutions will be on the chopping block, however, if the Trump Administration's proposed budget is passed by Congress.
The cuts would eliminate a number of projects that could not exist without federal funding. Click through the pictures above to find out more about the kinds of activities that are threatened.
