At 7:44 p.m. on Friday night, OZ Arts CEO Mark Murphy got an email: The National Endowment for the Arts was withdrawing the nonprofit arts organization's $45,000 grant.
“I've been dealing with getting and managing NEA grants for almost 40 years,” Murphy tells the Scene, “through the culture wars in the ’90s and through the previous Trump term and several presidents and congresspeople who said they wanted to gut the NEA. But nothing like this has ever happened.”
“The whole thing reeks of DOGE,” he says. “First of all, I mean, I don't believe for a moment that anyone in the NEA wrote that email, right? And it came from an email [address] that the NEA has never used to communicate with us as grantees. And it doesn't say anything about cost savings or efficiency or economic justification. It really just says it's because of changed priorities.”
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Funding from the NEA, per the email, is being “allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.” This new direction will prioritize projects that, among other things, “foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities.”
Murphy plans to appeal the grant withdrawal, but doesn’t feel optimistic about OZ’s chances — especially after receiving another email the following day announcing the resignation of the head of this NEA granting program, as well as resignations from the heads of the NEA's dance and theater programs.
“So I don't know who would be there to even read or process these appeals,” Murphy explains. “It really is quite devastating, and that makes me even less optimistic that the NEA will ever recover from this.”
What does this mean for OZ’s upcoming programming?
“Well, we are not going to change any of our programming priorities,” Murphy says. “What we're trying to do is find ways to replace that funding.”
“I mean, I remember during the culture wars [of the 1990s], I used to use this example: If the federal budget was the front page of a newspaper, the NEA would be smaller than a comma.”
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Murphy continues: “I try to be an optimist, so one thing I've been reminding myself of is that, in many countries in the developed world, arts organizations like ours are funded by the government to the tune of 80 or even 90 percent of their budgets, so that if a government decides to unfund or defund an organization, they're completely out of business. So the one bright side of the fact that the United States has so little support for the arts is that they cannot shut us down.”
“I wouldn't be surprised if some of this money gets reallocated to this giant military parade, or something like that,” Murphy says. “The NEA and the NEH have both been required to authorize or to allocate $17 million each towards a Garden of Heroes, [which is] basically a sculpture garden that Donald Trump has proposed to be located in Washington, D.C., or somewhere in the D.C. area, with up to 250 sculptures of people like Alex Trebek, the game show host.”
Other figures proposed to be sculpted for the Garden of Heroes include William F. Buckley Jr. and Johnny Appleseed.
The text of the full email from the NEA — provided by Murphy — is below.
Pursuant to the Offer letter, the tentative funding recommendation for the following application is Withdrawn by the Agency and the National Endowment for the Arts will no longer offer award funding for the project.
Applicant: OZ Arts, Inc.
Application #: 1936192-54
Period of Performance: January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025
Tentative Funding Recommendation Amount: $45,000.00
The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities. The NEA will now prioritize projects that elevate the Nation's HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities. Funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration's agenda.
Your project, as noted below, unfortunately does not align with these priorities:
Purpose: To support multidisciplinary artist residencies.
Appeal: You may appeal this determination within seven (7) calendar days of this notice if you believe your project meets one of the agency's new priorities. Email grants@arts.gov and provide documentation that your project supports one of the specific priorities set forth above.
Sincerely,
The National Endowment for the Arts
