The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation have announced a $800,000 fund to be distributed among 80 visual arts programs at small and mid-sized organizations across the country.
According to a joint announcement from the foundations, each recipient had previously received funding through Challenge America, an National Endowment for the Arts initiative designed to bring art to underserved communities. That initiative was recently suspended by the Trump administration.
Grantees through the foundations’ initiative will be awarded $10,000 each to further projects stalled by the rescinding of federal funding.
The new initiative comes efforts to upend federal arts funding by the Trump administration, which has proposed the elimination of the NEA. Cultural organizations across the nation’s visual arts, publishing, and performance sectors have been forced to postpone or end programs due to the abrupt cancelation of NEA grants that had already been distributed, as well as some outstanding grants awarded under the Biden administration.
Though the organization provides essential funding to many cultural outfits, in particular those dedicated to marginalized perspectives, the NEA accounts for only a fraction of the total annual federal budget—$207 million in the 2024 fiscal year compared to the gross government spending in the same period, $6.75 trillion. All 10 directors who manage grant distribution at the NEA departed the agency earlier this week, including the officials who led the Native arts program and grants for Challenge America.
Among the organizations that have received funding reversal notices are are n+1, a Brooklyn-based arts and cultural publication, and SculptureCenter, which was preparing for an exhibition of work by the artist Edra Soto, as well as the permanent installation of her artwork in Cleveland’s Puerto Rican neighborhood.
Queer Art, a New York–based nonprofit that serves LGBTQ+ individuals across the creative disciplines, said that it had received an email sent from an unmonitored NEA email address that cited the “furtherance of the Administration’s agenda” and claimed that Queer Arts mission did not “align with Trump’s priorities.” The organization added that it was “alarmed by the extent of ideological control the government is attempting to exert, and of course disheartened by the loss of critical support for thousands of artists.”
A.I.R. Gallery, a storied Brooklyn feminist collective that regularly shows for women-identifying and nonbinary artists, including those hailing from underrepresented communities or regions in conflict, also received notice that its 2025 NEA grant had been terminated due to “misalignment” with the administration’s values. According to a statement from the gallery, the outstanding $30,000 was intended to support the debut solo exhibition of the six artists participating in its fellowship for emerging and underrepresented creatives.
The statement ended with a call for donations as its leadership works to “overcome” the loss of federal funding: “No matter what the current powers might say, our mission…is more a priority than ever.”
Since assuming power, the Trump administration has prioritized the realignment of the United States arts and cultural landscape along its interpretation of American values. In April, scores of state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails notice from the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk–led agency effectively dedicated to budget slashes, that their funding was pulled. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the foremost federal funder of creative endeavors in the country, also rededicated a portion of its funding to realize the president’s projects, such as the National Garden of American Heroes, which has been on his agenda since the first administration.
Arts and culture foundations are increasingly stepping up to mitigate the damage dealt by Trump’s budget slashes. In April, the Mellon Foundation, the largest non-federal funder of the arts and humanities in the US, announced $15 million in emergency funding to the Federation of State Humanities Councils (FSHC) in lieu of the NEH. The funds will be distributed to state councils in all 50 states and six jurisdictions.
In a statement, Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander said that at “stake are both the operational integrity of organizations like museums, libraries, historical societies in every single state, as well as the mechanisms to participate in the cultural dynamism and exchange that is a fundamental part of American civic life.”
