Fear and anxiety are swirling through the arts community as the Trump administration takes its latest swipe at the National Endowment for the Arts.
The congressionally appropriated fund has been zeroed out (again) in President Trump’s proposed budget amid a reshuffling of priorities at both the NEA and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where Trump elected himself president of the board of directors and removed members appointed by Joe Biden.
Last week, grants already promised to arts nonprofits were yanked by letter — in a move that looks quite like other recent federal grant revocations.
Cultural Arts Director for the Town of Normal Beth Whisman said, for now, they haven’t received one of those letters. The town received a $50,000 NEA grant for a mural in the eventual Uptown underpass.
“We’re bracing for it,” said Whisman on the possibility for losing the grant that would primarily impact community engagement tied to the project.
The only communication they’ve received from the NEA since January is a form letter noting the administration’s priorities for publicly-funded art, but they’ve been given no direction about whether that will impact the project.
Whisman said the funding was earmarked for educational partnerships with Illinois Art Station and McLean County Arts Center, plus an apprenticeship for a local artist to learn how to work with a mural cloth called polytab — a specialty technique withstanding wear better than painting on brick or concrete and allowing the mural to be preserved if repairs need to be made to the underlying surface.
Whisman said using polytab also allows the mural to be created off site, so the town should be able to move forward to meet its summer 2026 grant deadline despite delays that have stretched the project out for over a decade.
Getting money to the middle
More broadly, eliminating the NEA means precarious times ahead for state and regional arts agencies who receive, match and distribute federal dollars. And such a change could be especially dire for rural communities and small towns, who disproportionally rely on federal grants to catalyze arts and culture initiatives.
“I’m not sure the arts community does a sufficient job articulating the federal dollars from the National Endowment for the Arts that enter into rural communities,” said Todd Stein, president and CEO of Mid-America Arts Alliance.
The Alliance is one of six regional arts agencies across the country, formed with the specific goal of diverting arts funding from the coasts toward the middle of the country.
Arts Midwest is another, representing Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. Nearly three-quarters of Arts Midwest’s budget comes from government funding—with most of the Illinois grants handed out going to Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.
In McLean County, federal dollars are primarily accessed through grants matched and distributed by the Illinois Arts Council via the McLean County Arts Center’s Community Arts Grants. In total, that program gave $25,000 to 14 organizations in 2025 — nearly double the amount distributed last year.
Those seeking to cut the NEA say it’s an unnecessary expense as lawmakers look to balance the federal budget. But arts advocates say the line item is essentially change in the couch cushions. According to a fact sheet from 2022, the NEA is 0.003% of the overall federal budget, with $210 million approved by Congress for the 2025 fiscal year.
“The funding that the federal government provides for the arts is a rounding error, which is interesting, because the arts themselves have a return on investment of more than a trillion dollars,” said McLean County Arts Center executive director Doug Johnson, who serves on the board of lobbying group Arts Alliance Illinois. He spoke to WGLT for this story in that capacity.
The arts bring tourism to communities and catalyze spending at restaurants, shops, parking garages and other cultural attractions. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has cited Bloomington-Normal’s arts scene as one reason for deciding to launch the electric car manufacturer here, noticing the local artwork on display in Coffee Hound, Johnson said.
But the long-term vibrancy of that scene depends, at least in part, on available seed money from local, state and federal grants. As a recent example, the McLean County Museum of History received $11,514 from the Illinois Arts Council’s Creative Catalyst Grant to launch Sculpture on the Square in downtown Bloomington, beginning with the restoration of artist Herb Eaton’s 10-foot tall, tongue-in-cheek corn statue, Star-Crossed Pollinators.
“We had to demonstrate that this was something new and that we had a vision for its future,” said museum executive director Julie Emig. “Ongoing funding might come from the Illinois Arts Council however Arts Council funding is not guaranteed right now. Illinois Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts—all of these organizations that rely on federal funds—they’re in limbo, if not canceled.”
Cuts to the NEA’s sister agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities [NEH], resulted in an estimated $1 million loss for the companion state council, which funds cultural projects like the Smithsonian’s Museums of Main Street and Road Scholars initiatives.
The McLean County Museum of History recently lost a previously awarded $25,000 NEH grant earmarked for creating a future exhibit on the LGBTQ+ community in McLean County. A spokesperson said the grant was canceled by email, with no reason given.
“It’s incumbent on us to not only communicate why these initiatives are important to fund but also we will not give up,” said Emig. “We will seek ways to keep this initiative going. We’re very lucky that many people in the community support the arts, and culture, and history because they see it as an invaluable part of who we are.”
'It's all been down'
Throughout his five-decade career, Eaton has seen plenty of ups and downs in arts funding — mostly downs.
“There’s only been ups back in ‘70s,” he said. “There haven’t been any ups since then. It’s all been down. Part of the problem is Bloomington-Normal is too small to attract large foundation funding and things like that.”
In a passion-driven economy, artists get by. They tend to make art with or without funding. But Kansas is a cautionary tale.
So is Illinois. In 2011, the Kansas state legislature folded its statewide arts agency, which meant federal money from the NEA had nowhere to go. Organizations like Mid-America Arts Alliance got creative, partnering with the NEA and other agencies across state lines to find ways to funnel money to the state.
And Illinois’ budget stalemate during then-Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration incited a ripple effect throughout the culture sector, including a hold on all Illinois Arts Council grants in 2015.
“Rauner zeroed out the state museum in Springfield,” said Johnson. "That doesn’t just affect my friends that work there and have work on display there. It affected every rural school child in downstate Illinois who could no longer have the bus trip to attend that experience. And that made their world so much smaller.”
Lobbying from Mid-America Arts Alliance and others brought Kansas’ state arts agency back online, with a greatly reduced budget and a hampered cultural sector, Stein said.
Over time, increased federal investment has resulted in local buy-in from communities in that state. In Norton, Kansas, for example, the NEA sponsored a public mural in 2021 honoring the centennial of women’s suffrage.
“The town was so excited about the results of the mural, they’ve formed their own arts endowment to fund additional projects — which is just fantastic,” said Stein.
And Illinois eventually passed a budget. The state’s current governor has signaled support for the arts sector — if only through the pavilion named for his family’s foundation in the center of Chicago’s Millennium Park.
“In the end, all of us have to take ownership for the value of the arts and the value we present to our communities,” said Johnson.
