National Endowment for the Arts NEA

President Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act on September 29, 1965, creating the National Endowment for the Arts and its sister agency for the humanities. The law declared that support for the arts, while primarily a matter for private and local initiative, was also an appropriate concern of the federal government. The NEA is led by a Chair confirmed by the Senate and advised by the National Council on the Arts.

The NEA awards grants to theaters, orchestras, museums, dance companies, literary presses, folk arts programs, and arts education projects in every congressional district, generally requiring matching funds from other sources. By law, about forty percent of its program funds go to state and regional arts agencies, which make their own grants. It also gives lifetime honors such as the National Heritage Fellowships and Jazz Masters awards, and its annual budget of roughly two hundred million dollars is a small share of total American arts funding.

The NEA has been a frequent target in culture-war battles. Controversy over grants indirectly supporting provocative art in 1989 led Congress to require the agency to consider general standards of decency, a provision the Supreme Court upheld in 1998, and in 1996 Congress cut its budget sharply and ended most grants to individual artists. In 2025 the administration proposed eliminating it, canceled many existing grants, and redirected priorities toward projects tied to the nation's 250th anniversary. Supporters of the agency say federal grants leverage private giving and reach small towns, while critics argue taxpayers should not fund the arts.