A Message to our FAWC Community

We reach out today to embrace our community. You are the partners, the creatives, the brain trust, and the patrons who sustain us: in joyous times and in the most challenging.

We learned this past week that in addition to terminating our outstanding Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) awarded contract of $50K, the administration has also withdrawn FAWC’s awarded National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant of $35K for the Fellowship Program, stating that it does not align with their current priorities and “funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.”

This funding for the fellowship is some of the most longstanding and consistent support that we receive.

In 1979, the Fine Arts Work Center was awarded our first National Endowment for the Arts grant. If we think about that in terms of the emerging artists and writers who have benefited from these NEA grants, there is no way to measure the true impact on American arts and letters.

What we can measure is the number of artists and writers that we have nurtured with time, space, and artistic freedom—more than 1,100 fellows have passed through the program in its lifetime.

We can measure the millions of audience members who have encountered the artwork of our fellows at museums and venues around the world, from the Venice Biennale to the Tate Modern, from MOCA Los Angeles to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We can measure the honors and awards that our fellows have achieved, including one Nobel Prize for Literature, two Poet Laureate appointments, five Pulitzer Prizes in fiction, six Pulitzer Prizes in poetry, four MacArthur Fellowships, and five National Book Awards.

Just this week, we celebrated that past fellow and FAWC Trustee Marie Howe was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her work New and Selected Poems, an incredible artistic achievement.

It is a privilege to lead a nonprofit artistic community that is so clearly shaping culture. It is also our duty to ensure that the Fine Arts Work Center thrives; it is our moral imperative to continue our mission in order for artists and writers to flourish.

The Fine Arts Work Center is not the only cultural organization that received notice that awarded funds are being terminated. We are part of a rich creative ecosystem that has been uplifted for decades by these important national agencies and their dedicated staff, now confronting enormous challenges.

At FAWC, we are facing a current decrease of more than $200,000 in federal revenue. This clearly has profound implications. But as we look forward, we remain committed to our values and protecting and nurturing artists. We know, with your support and friendship, we will not only survive the current moment, we will succeed.

Below are some ways you can lead with us. Giving is essential of course, and we hope with all that is under threat, we will be counted among your philanthropic priorities. We also have offered some additional advocacy resources to help in these times.