The last decade or so has seen substantial growth in many Texas cities, and with that has come growth in city funding of the arts. However, over the last few months we’ve seen arts organizations in Houston, Lubbock, and Fort Worth affected by city government decisions (or in one case, indecisions). All of which have led me to the question: Who loses when arts funding is cut? 

Last month Houston’s City Council voted to remove $10 million in funding from its public art contract with the Houston Arts Alliance. At the end of July, Arts Fort Worth, an organization that administers city grants, oversees Fort Worth Public Art, and has operated the Fort Worth Community Arts Center (FWCAC), announced that it would vacate its building amidst the City’s stalled efforts to decide on a renovation plan and move forward. Also in late July, the Lubbock City Council voted to cut $25,600 in funding for the First Friday Art Trail, a monthly program organized by the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, over supposed LGBTQ programming. Weeks later, the Council voted to reinstate $5,000 of those funds, specifically toward security efforts as Mayor Mark W. McBrayer voiced concerns that the event may be the target of protests because of the Council’s July decision. 

For many cultural workers and artists, these funding issues raise a larger concern. Over the summer, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed about $950 million of the state’s 2024-2025 budget, which had been approved by its Republican-controlled legislature. Included in the cuts was the entire $32 million arts budget. The decision affected more than 600 organizations, some of which lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many small organizations lost major percentages of their operating budgets. 

Cutting all funding for the arts is particularly surprising when you look at the economic impact of the arts in Florida. A 2022 study completed by Americans for the Arts in partnership with the Division of Arts and Culture and Citizens for Florida Arts, Inc. indicated that the state’s arts and cultural industry generated $5.8 billion in economic activity, and that activity supports 91,270 full-time jobs. So, why cut all arts funding from the state’s budget?

During a press conference on June 27, Governor DeSantis stated that tax dollars should not go to programs like, “the Fringe Festival, which is like a sexual festival.” He went on to note the importance of maintaining roads, funding education, and preserving natural resources and stated, “I can’t sell the Fringe Festival to taxpayers, nor would I want to try to sell the Fringe Festival to taxpayers.” 

In a statement released the following day, Tampa Fringe commented, “This is a gross mischaracterization of what the Tampa International Fringe Festival is, and what Fringe Festivals all over the world do.”

Why am I pointing to Florida cutting its arts budget? Because over the last few years, Texas and Florida have been neck and neck with some of their most controversial laws. In 2021, following the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the subsequent suspension of former President Donald Trump’s social media accounts by platforms like Facebook and Twitter, both states passed laws to restrict social media companies from banning political posts and users. There were nuances to these laws, while the Florida law prohibited platforms from removing politicians’ accounts, the Texas law attempted to limit censorship by prohibiting platforms from removing content based on the author’s viewpoint. Shortly after the laws were passed, they were challenged. The cases have worked their way up to the Supreme Court and this summer the Court returned both cases to the lower courts. Additionally, in May 2023 both Florida and Texas put into place laws banning public colleges and universities from spending money on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. In both states, the laws have resulted in the loss of hundreds of jobs as well as programs and training related to DEI initiatives.

Still, the idea that Texas might cut funding for arts may seem far-fetched. However, the Republican party has been actively calling for the defunding of the arts since the 1990s, and just this past summer Oklahoma Congressman Josh Brecheen proposed amendments to the Fiscal Year 2025 Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act that would have decreased the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) budgets by a total of $48 million, nearly 25% of the original proposed budgets. In July, U.S. Representatives voted 269 to 147 to keep the funding intact. This could be seen as a continuation of former President Trump’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2018, which sought to eliminate NEA, NEH, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

While Project 2025, a detailed initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation and outlining priorities for the next Republican President, does not directly address arts funding, The Heritage Foundation website offers a 1997 report citing reasons to defund NEA. Along with reasons like “the arts will have more than enough support without the NEA” and “the NEA is welfare for cultural elitists” are specific claims that “the NEA will continue to fund pornography” and that “artistic efforts [are being] evaluated by race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation instead of artistic merit.”

Specifically, this claim about the NEA funding pornography points back to the infamous 1992 National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, or NEA Four, court case as a reason to “force Congress” to defund the organization because “the NEA can subsidize whatever type of art it chooses.” The case involved performance artists Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes, who had their NEA grants vetoed by then-Chair of the NEA John Frohnmayer, who had been appointed by President H.W. Bush in 1989. Though the artists won in District Court, in 1998 the Supreme Court ruled that the law requiring the NEA to consider “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public” did not interfere with First Amendment rights or violate the constitutional vagueness doctrine. As a result of this ruling, the NEA ceased funding to individual visual artists, currently the only grants available to individuals are in the area of literature.

What Happened in Lubbock?

I go down this rabbit hole to come back to Lubbock, where LHUCA lost $20,000 in funding for a program that attracts thousands of visitors to Lubbock’s art district each month. This type of grant is recommended by the Cultural Arts Grants Program (CAGP) committee based on criteria outlined by the City of Lubbock and Civic Lubbock, Inc., a 501(c)3 organization that partners with the city to administer the Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue that is used to support local arts programming. The committee recommended LHUCA be granted the funds for its First Friday Art Trail (FFAT), noting that the program “has strong artistic merit, creates great exposure for participating venues and artists, [has] a good marketing plan for advertising outside the region, [and has] strong corporate as well as state and local foundation grant support.” But, during the July 23 City Council meeting, City Councilman David Glasheen requested that the grant for the FFAT be removed from the grants to be approved that evening, stating that during Pride Month  FFAT promoted LGBT programming, including a drag show and, “The intention is to offer full drag performances on Art Trail in the next year.”

A decision was made without consulting LHUCA about the events that occurred and the City funding was pulled. In a statement, the organization noted “The programming in question was not held on LHUCA property but rather at a separate entity in control of their own creative programming.” But what really happened? What was the event that Mr. Glasheen was referring to?

It is likely that he was referencing a program that took place during the July FFAT event, a one-day art exhibition at the Charles Adams Studio Project’s 5 & J Gallery. The exhibition Madres Radicales, curated by Leslie C. Sotomayor II, Katy Ballard, and Sophia Villalobos, had a performance component that was canceled an hour before the event, by Chad Plunket, the Executive Director of CASP. The curators told Glasstire that Plunket spoke with Ballard and informed her that because of the drag performers included in the three-hour performance showcase, that element would need to be cut and canceled from the show. They said that Plunket cited “an undefined law (later clarified as SB12)” and stated he was worried the show could lead to a $10,000 fine for CASP. Plunket noted that CASP had recently hosted a drag show by Lubbock PRIDE and did not support the censorship of queer art. Despite these words, Ballard felt that what they were being asked to do was to censor artists. 

While these discussions were playing out, one of the performers was in contact with Brigitte Bandit, who was part of the group that sued the state over Senate Bill 12 (SB 12) resulting in the finding that the bill was unconstitutional. This new information and an article pointing to the court decision was shared with Plunket, however, he stood by the decision to curb the performance. According to the curators, Plunket was under the impression that SB 12 was currently state law and he explained he was attempting to ensure the safety of all participants. (Plunket and CASP have declined to confirm details of the events or make further comment.)

As the group of performers considered their options, Ballard suggested that they could go on with the performance, de-robe, and go along with the same actions they had planned without the element of drag. In a statement to Glasstire, the curators explained, “This would show how ridiculous it is that in one moment it is problematic to perform and in the next acceptable.”

The curators stated that following the event Plunket later had conversations with some of the collaborating artists from the Madres Radicales program but that he did not have direct conversations with the curators. They also took note with the CASP contract which clearly states that the organization “does not censor artwork.” While this is accurate, it is important to point out that the contract does give CASP “the right to do a walk-through of the exhibition prior to opening [to] determine whether a ‘mature content’ sign should be placed at the gallery’s entrance.”

Miscommunication, misunderstanding, and misinformation shaped events that transpired around Madres Radicales. Where the curators felt they had been clear in their proposal that their show would include LGBTQIA+ perspectives and narratives and would incorporate performative works, CASP was unaware of the drag performance element until just before the start of the event.

Regarding the need to disclose that the performance included drag, the curators provided the following statement to Glasstire: “We are situating narrative and performance work as inclusive embodied creative practices and expressions —therefore, we are not segregating LGBTQ+ from the arts. We believe it is crucial to not continue to reproduce the binary thinking and structure that somehow under-represented and under-served artists are to be excluded or in this case, highlighted as a particular kind of artist and performance work.

In the same way that we can discuss artists as white, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, woman, non-binary, other, and NOT have to point to any other marker for an artist, we position ourselves in this conversation intentionally as curators for an art exhibition that contains performance work. Why does it need to state drag performance? Did we need to state that the other performances in the art exhibition were mother and child performances? BIPOC poetry? Sound performance? All white male performances? Women doing domestic art performances? Mothers protesting genocide performances? No, we did not. They were all simply artists in a large collaborative inclusive art exhibition show together. Should we have divided up all of the types of artist representations of the show and explained this ahead of time? Was it asked of us? No, it was not.”

I think it is fair to say that CASP’s actions were motivated by fear due to the political climate in Texas. And the result? Despite the fact that a drag performance did not take place as part of FFAT, City Councilmembers made assumptions about what happened and acted quickly, without consulting LHUCA, the organizing entity of FFAT, and seemingly without referring to the criteria by which the funding is granted. 

The 2024 Guidelines and Procedures document for the CAGP does not state that funds cannot go to programs that support LGBTQ events or performances. Moreso, City Council fell into the familiar rhetoric that government funds should not be used to support “sexual” programs. This term, just like The Heritage Foundation’s use of the term “pornography” to describe performances by LGBTQ artists is a broad generalization that does not take into account any of the nuances of these programs. During the July City Council meeting, Mayor Mark McBrayer also alleged that drag performances are of a sexual nature and are inappropriate for children. According to the Human Rights Campaign, a national organization dedicated to LGBTQ+ civil rights, drag is simply “a performance art that uses costumes, makeup, and other tools to present exaggerated forms of gender expression.” Mayor McBrayer also said, “This is not whether you are gay or straight, it is about a sexualized performance in a venue that is meant to be family-friendly.” 

Family-friendly is a curious phrase that also does not show up in the 2024 Guidelines and Procedures for the grant. Friendly to whose family? Who decides what is appropriate for families? As a mother, I would suggest that there is a spectrum, and what one family deems inappropriate, another may find perfectly fine within their belief system. And, since the City Council made judgements that did not align with the stated criteria in the official Guidelines and Procedures for the grant program, I am curious to know if all of the other grantees offer programs that are “family-friendly” and do not have a “sexual nature.” When I reached out to the City of Lubbock with these questions, I did not receive a response. 

Public Art in Houston

Public Art in Houston has been a major topic this year, both in regard to city funding and the content of some public art. At the beginning of the year, the Public Art of the University of Houston System (Public Art UHS) announced it had co-commissioned an artwork by Shahzia Sikander, which would be displayed temporarily from February through October. Though, quickly the installation faced protests and Public Art UHS canceled the opening reception and artist talk. The pushback against the sculpture Witness came from Texas Right to Life, a Christian, anti-abortion nonprofit organization. The group claimed that the artwork featured “satanic imagery” and “honor[ed] child sacrifice.” The cancelation of the opening events sparked concerns among students and professors that the university might not support them if their work were deemed offensive and that the mishandling of the situation could make it harder to recruit future students. Just as things seemed to be cooling down around the sculpture, in July as storms brought on by Hurricane Beryl hit Houston, an unknown assailant beheaded Sikander’s sculpture. University of Houston Police Department surveillance footage revealed that the vandalism took place around 3 a.m. on July 8. Per Sikander’s request, the beheaded sculpture remains on view through the end of October. 

Though this specific issue does not relate back to city funding of the arts, it does raise important questions about public art, such as: Who should get a say in the content of an artwork? What does education around public art look like? What is the best way to protect public art? It is a seemingly impossible task to ensure that everyone in a diverse city with varying perspectives will find common ground in regards to art. The beheading of Sikander’s sculpture brought to mind vandalism of Confederate monuments and even statues of historic U.S. figures criticized for their roles in colonialism and slavery. One might ask, Why is it okay to vandalize some sculptures and not others? For me, the answer lies in the purpose of the piece. Whereas sculptures of figures like Christopher Columbus are signifiers of power and many Confederate monuments were erected as forms of intimidation, Sikander’s work was intended to speak directly to the historic underrepresentation of women and people of color in public works and includes imagery associated with various religions and cultures.

In July, just 9 days after the beheading of Witness, Houston’s City Council voted to reduce the original allocation of the contract agreement between the City and the Houston Arts Alliance (HAA) from $25 million to $15 million. This contract covers a wide range of work related to Public Art in Houston, including new commissions and conservation of existing artwork. Prior to the vote, the conversation among Councilmembers pointed to the decision being made to be able to invest more funding in infrastructure needs. This sentiment echoes some of Governor DeSantis’ reasoning for cutting the arts as well. However, it ignores the potential larger impact on the economy of cutting funding to the arts. A recent study by the Texas Cultural Trust noted that the state’s Arts and Culture Industry has “grown more than 30% over the decade, generating $6 billion for the Texas economy and nearly $380 million in state sales tax revenue.”

As someone living outside of Houston, I have seen from a distance that it is a city that has strong support for the arts both through the government and the private sector. It was surprising to me to see such a large cut for a beloved program that supports many public art initiatives, including major public art projects at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Just last year, Janavi Mahimtura Folmsbee’s The Aquarius Art Tunnel at the airport received a People’s Choice award from CODAworx, a national organization that supports the commission of artworks to transform environments. Does this cut in public art funding from the City foreshadow bigger arts funding cuts to come? Councilmember Julian Ramirez told Glasstire that Houston’s Civic Art Ordinance is out of line with the Texas Local Government Code Section 444.029 and the percentage of construction projects that can be used for the arts should be decreased. What happens when a city known for supporting the arts begins to pull back its support? Is the government hoping, like 1997 The Heritage Foundation report states, that private funding will be more than enough support for the arts?

An Arts Organization with No Home in Fort Worth

In North Texas, issues around arts funding have culminated in a major shift of the Fort Worth art scene. Arts Fort Worth, an organization that administers city grants, oversees Fort Worth Public Art, and has operated the Fort Worth Community Arts Center (the former home of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) has been in a holding pattern with the City for two years. In 2022, an architectural firm determined that the building was in need of $26 million in repairs, though now that amount has grown to $30 million due to inflation. Following that determination, the City started a process to assess the best steps forward and ultimately issued a request for proposals for the site to be redeveloped. The original timeline expected the redevelopment contract to be signed in January 2024, however, as of this summer the City had rejected both of the finalists’ proposals. 

This stalled effort has put Arts Fort Worth in a precarious position. They have been operating out of a building that, according to the 2022 assessment, has asbestos present throughout, water damage from repeated flooding due to the presence of groundwater below the building, an outdated and damaged fire alarm system, outdated mechanical and plumbing systems that need to be replaced, does not meet current ADA accessibility requirements, and a loading dock that lacks stormwater drainage and waterproofing leading to significant water leakage. With plans for redevelopment still in the air, and no updated timeline shared by the City, ultimately Arts Fort Worth made the decision to vacate the building. Wesley Gentle, Executive Director and President of Arts Fort Worth, told Glasstire, “[The organization] cannot afford to operate the FWCAC beyond the planned timeline.”

The heart of the issue is that as part of its agreement with the City, Arts Fort Worth was tasked with upkeep of the already aging building when it took it over in 2002, but the organization has always operated on a nimble budget. It echoes the story of the Mexic-Arte Museum, which through an arrangement with the City of Austin, has been operating out of a dilapidated building for decades. In Mexic-Arte’s case, it entered a contract with the City to acquire the space by providing services to the City for 50 years to total the $740,000 cost of the building. Under that arrangement the City expected Mexic-Arte to upkeep the already failing building. Was that a fair expectation? If a small arts organization does not have the funds to outright pay for a space, how can they expected to pay for massive repairs? It seems that in both scenarios, each city set up these organizations to fail. Through the tireless efforts of Sylvia Orozco, Mexic-Arte has received approximately $20 million in bond money to renovate the building. The organization will temporarily relocate at the end of this year and the building renovations are expected to be complete in 2027 or 2028. 

But what will happen to Arts Fort Worth and how will it affect the local arts community? The organization has already started to taper off programming and close its galleries. Artists with exhibitions that were set to take place at FWCAC in 2025 have had their shows canceled with very little notice. That building was home to seven galleries that rotated every 6-8 weeks, so dozens of artists have been left scrambling looking for other venues to show their work.

The question here is what does the city owe to artists and arts organizations? And the answer depends on the value it finds in the arts. The 2023 Texas Cultural Trust assessment of the impact of the arts has shown that the arts have a broad impact, including bolstering the economy, supporting the emotional well-being of citizens, and improving educational outcomes for learners.  Another way to pose this question is Should artists and arts organizations be dependent on government funding? The answer to this is nuanced. As we saw with Florida’s decision to abruptly cut its art budget, it can be dangerous for organizations and individuals to rely on government funding. But, funding for the arts is an investment and society should be able to expect that the arts would be among the various things that government funds support.

So, Who Loses?

As we’ve seen this summer, a lot can be lost with defunding the arts, including artist voices, a city’s identity, physical spaces for the arts, and local income generation. It seems the first to be affected are artists from and arts programs supporting historically marginalized communities. LGBTQ artists and initiatives seeking equity for artists of color, women artists, and other historically excluded groups, have been in the crosshairs of defunding the arts for over three decades. And while, yes, private organizations like The Wallace Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, and others have stepped up to support these artists and organizations, we as a democratic society should be able to expect that our government would invest in the arts in an equitable and fair manner. And though the artists who are currently being directly targeted through defunding efforts are from the specific marginalized groups listed above, a move to defund the arts more broadly will have other ramifications. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies have found that while private funders make up the largest contributions to U.S. cultural institutions, state and federal programs ensure that rural communities are also funded. 

For people who do not identify as part of a marginalized community, it may be easy to disassociate when these artists’ and programs’ funding is cut, but it truly affects us all. It narrows creative endeavors and limits what art is accessible to the public. We are all worthy of having representation and support. So, how do we combat this drive to defund arts, which is being led through a “moral” lens? 

In education we talk about the need for “windows” and “mirrors” in curriculum, an idea developed by Emily Style in 1988. Mirrors being opportunities to see ourselves and our experiences reflected back to us and windows being a chance to peer into someone else’s experience and learn from that. From book bans to banning drag story time performances and more, it seems that some are set on keeping curriculum and the arts as mirrors for themselves and their beliefs. But what we truly need is a balance between mirrors and windows. Mirrors are reaffirming and windows provide space for the development of empathy and understanding, which is most certainly what we need in these ever-divisive times.