The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has canceled grants to several organizations in the Northern Berkshires, including the Williamstown Theatre Festival (WTF), the Clark Art Institute, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).
The NEA’s termination of such grants is part of an effort to pursue projects that more closely align with the Trump administration’s priorities. The move comes on the heels of the president’s proposal to eliminate the NEA as a whole.
In a statement posted to Instagram last week, WTF announced that a $15,000 grant it received from the NEA to develop a new play had been terminated. “While we have drawn down our grant and currently have the funds, the termination pushes the timeline of execution of the commission forward by ten months, from March 31, 2026 to May 31, 2025,” Kit Ingui, managing director of finance and operations at WTF, wrote in an email to the Record. “We effectively need to compress ten months of artistic development work into three weeks or be at risk of returning the funds.”
The Americans for the Arts Action Fund, a nonprofit arts advocacy network, recently published a list of emergency guidance on NEA grant cancellations that suggests that organizations which had already received and spent the grant are not at risk of having to return the funds, so long as the paperwork has been finalized.
The email notifying WTF of the grant cancellation indicated that their proposal for the play’s development no longer matched the NEA’s funding criteria, Ingui said. The NEA’s new guidelines were announced on Feb. 6, barring federal grant applicants programs from promoting “‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ that violate any discrimination laws” or “gender ideology.”
“We strongly believe that arts and culture, and theatre in particular, are vital for a healthy society, and contribute toward America’s health and well-being,” Ingui wrote. “It [is] also difficult not to see this wave of cancellations as a strategic move to weaken the NEA and clear a path for eliminating it. We are one of so many with this story that it’s hard to say [if] it was because of our specific mission or application.”
Ingui wrote that the reversal will not negatively impact the festival events planned for this year, and WTF does not currently have any federal funding beyond the cancelled grant. Ingui emphasized that, in the face of these terminations, WTF continues to work towards financial sustainability. Some of its funding strategies, she wrote, include creating new partnerships and designing the festival to draw a wider audience to the Town each summer.
“Working in the arts is precarious,” Ingui wrote. “We always anticipate more cuts, shifting priorities, and someone wanting to try and stop or change what we do. Even so, we remain committed to supporting artists who are taking bold risks so that audiences may experience groundbreaking work. And we work in partnership with many different kinds of entities, including individuals, local businesses, private foundations, state and local governments, other arts organizations, commercial theater producers, and the like, so that we might all be able to show up for each other and collaborate in these moments of challenge.”
The Clark Art Institute also received notice of the cancellation of a $30,000 NEA grant supporting their Ground/work 2025 exhibition, which opens on June 28.The exhibition will showcase outdoor installations by six international artists over the next year before closing in October of 2026.
Ground/work 2025 will open as planned, according to Vicki Saltzman, the Clark’s director of communications. In order to make up for the lost federal funds, the Clark intends to look toward individual donors, foundations, and other state and regional funding agencies as other sources of funding for the exhibition, Saltzman explained. The Clark has no other federal grants currently pending.
The Clark was informed that the grant had been cancelled because it did not align with the NEA’s new funding priorities. The notification from the NEA sent to the Clark states: “Funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.”
Saltzman emphasized the value that the Clark places on its curatorial independence. “As always, we make curatorial decisions based on the significance of the concept and its potential contributions to furthering the public’s appreciation of art,” she wrote in an email to the Record. “This is separate and distinct from any decisions that are made to pursue funding from any source.”
“We consider all decisions on whether to pursue funding for grant applications against the criteria for funding and would not apply for a grant that would seek to influence our curatorial decisions,” she added.
MASS MoCA was notified of the termination of an Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) grant as well as a $50,000 grant from the NEA, which was approved in 2023 to cover expenses for the ongoing Jeffrey Gibson exhibition POWER FULL BECAUSE WE ARE DIFFERENT, according to Jen Falk, director of communications and content for the museum.
According to The Berkshire Eagle, the $101,000 IMLS grant was not for a specific artist or exhibition. “Our IMLS grant submission was to cover technical training for our staff and not related to any specific exhibition,” Falk wrote to the Record. “We are in the process of appealing both NEA and the IMLS termination.”
In a May 6 statement announcing the grant cancellations, MASS MoCA director Kristy Edwards reaffirmed the museum’s commitment to its artistic mission. “These actions in combination with their rhetoric are unnerving, and are but one of many challenges at hand and to come,” she wrote. “MASS MoCA is a not-for-profit contemporary art museum that supports the visionary work of artists in all disciplines and cultures. We warmly welcome everyone as audience members and visitors and will continue to do so.”
Other Berkshire County arts organizations — including Becket-based Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and North Adams-based Tupelo Press — have been affected by NEA grant cancellations, according to statements posted on their respective Instagram accounts.
