The New York Times: In one of the first signs of collective pushback to the Trump administration’s arts initiatives, several hundred American artists are calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to roll back restrictions on grants to institutions with programming that promotes diversity or “gender ideology.”
2 comments:
So this is scary to me because I can sort of kind of understand where anti DEI people are coming from by saying it “gives minorities an unfair advantage” or whatever. Like there IS a shred of logic in that argument, but truly just a shred. It’s highly ignorant and uneducated. However, that argument does NOT hold water for restricting expression in the arts! The arts should be allowed to say whatever they like, isn’t that the point of arts? Once freedom of expression is restricted in this way, that’s the first step to something even worse. Sure, restrict businesses and people’s livelihoods all you want, I guess, (stupid argument) but leave the arts alone! The arts should be able to comment freely on the social economic and political climate of its own nation and the world. We cannot allow art to be censored. We have to be a voice for people
First of all, I wasn’t expecting a throwback to the NEA Four, but it makes unfortunate sense. Second of all, these new restrictions on grants are ridiculous. It reminds me almost of the Hays Code - artists found ways around it, despite it, and innovated because of it. The difference is that the Hays Code directly prohibited certain things as a self-enforced code by the film industry to avoid governmental involvement, while the Trump administration’s efforts work through endowments to restrict free speech financially. The administration’s efforts to erase transgender people and to suppress people of the global majority are futile, disgusting, and harmful. The artists are asking the NEA to go against the administration, but I worry they, as a national organization that needs federal funding and organization, will refuse - as is stated by the representative in the article. Artists are aware of what’s happening, and the letter is right: obedience in advance feeds authoritarianism.
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