The Trump administration has started canceling National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants, and the terminations are hitting Western New York.
Buffalo’s Torn Space Theater is one of the local organizations impacted. The group’s Artistic Director and Assistant Professor at Daemen University, Dan Shanahan, received an email late Friday notifying him that their NEA grant of $25,000 is to be terminated at the end of the month “in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.”
The money was to support a two-year project which opens with a digital multimedia performance, Friday. Shanahan said the agency has traditionally served a vital role for a wealth of different organizations.
"The NEA is truly a bipartisan funding agency," he said. "Their funding supports nearly every congressional district across the United States whether it be urban or rural environments. They support youth programs, they support projects that assist veterans, they support experimental theater like us, so it's a real wide gamut."
Shanahan added the performances will go ahead this weekend but that the rest of the project, which involved artist workshops and an artist residency, will likely be "scaled back."
An excerpt of the email received by Torn Space Theater reads: "The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities."
Shanahan was informed that Torn Space Theater's project "does not align with these priorities," and will be terminated at the end of the month.
Just Buffalo Literary Center received that same notification, Friday. Much of their NEA grant was slated to fund the organization’s flagship Babel Author Series, which brings four celebrated authors from around the world to Buffalo each year.
Executive and Artistic Director, Barbara Cole, said the cash also helps to provide free tickets for younger audiences and those who may not be able to buy one.
"If we don't have that funding - and not just us but any arts and cultural - that's going to mean that only an elite privileged class gets to go to arts organizations, or go to arts events, or go to the theater. We're creating potentially this huge divide where only certain citizens get to do certain things and only certain institutions will be able to survive," Cole said.
The emails were sent to hundreds of organizations across the U.S. according to NPR, and came just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency from the federal budget.
The NEA - which did not yet respond to BTPM NPR's request for comment - is among a group of "small agency eliminations" proposed by the Trump administration's 2026 Discretionary Budget Request, alongside the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
It is currently funded at $207 million, which represents 0.003% of the total federal budget according to an NEA fact sheet from 2022.
Just Buffalo Literary Center was due to receive a $10,000 Humanities New York grant which Cole said they are also not getting because it is housed under the National Endowment for the Humanities.
"So the ripple effect is actually much more complicated than a single number," she said.
"And the even greater concern is that we're not the only organization, so we're aware of how many of our peers are in the same boat. And what are we all going to be doing to try to fix the shortfall? We're all turning to individual donations. So this devastating decision is going to end up impacting everyday citizens who are already facing increased costs and inflation."
