As you’ve no doubt heard, Donald Trump wants to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ironically, Trump is cutting the arts because it’s great theater. It’s such an easy target: low-hanging fruit that’s also high visibility. The artists know how to put up a fuss that’ll get noticed, and he’ll look like a hero to that supposed rust-and-Bible-belt antiart constituency. A statement will have been made about what America does and doesn’t value.
I think the latter, because despite all the fuss, the federal contribution to arts organizations is, on average, too small a part of their funding for its withdrawal to deal a death blow (except, perhaps, for some programs in rural areas where private donors tend to be scarce). According to a 2012 study it came in at just 1.2 percent.
Trump has proposed two tax changes that would impact donors, especially large donors: he wants to lower the income tax rate for the wealthy and, at the same time, put a cap on itemized deductions. Each of these changes would reduce the incentive to redirect Trump’s kind of private wealth to the arts. v
