Trump may eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts — here's why that matters for architecture

Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned.

The changes they propose are dramatic.1

The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.

The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition.

Similar proposals have in the past won support from Republicans in the House and Senate, who believe they have an opportunity to truly tackle spending after years of warnings about the rising debt.

Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. The RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.

  • 1.

    What kind of projects are supported by the NEA? AIA conferences, for one. But also: design competitions; architecture exhibitions; designs and plans for new cultural buildings as well as districts, neighborhoods, public spaces and landscapes; community workshops for design projects; neighborhood planning activities; residencies; socially-oriented design initiatives; adaptive reuse of historic buildings; historic and community preservation projects; conferences and symposia; educational initiatives; and much, much more.

    Groups like the American Architecture Foundation, the Architectural League of New York, Architecture for Humanity, the Association of Architecture Organizations, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture rely on NEA funding to support their programs. And architects depend on these organizations to cultivate discourse, professional networking, and the advancement of the field more broadly.

    Source: Archinect