Madison Opera, Prairie Music & Arts and Li Chiao-Ping Dance lost key funding following the Trump administration’s recent pullback of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), The Capital Times reports.
The news comes as President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating the NEA completely, along with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEA is one of the nation’s largest arts funders but among the smallest federal agencies, funded at only $207 million, or 0.003% of the total federal budget.
Among the cancelled NEA grants was $25,000 for Madison Opera to support a world premier next spring. It’s more than the opera receives from all other government entities combined. Prairie Music & Arts had already spent thousands to pay its teaching artists and was expecting to be reimbursed by an NEA grant. Li Chiao-Ping Dance, meanwhile, had been granted $15,000 over two years for one of its productions that no longer qualifies for funding.
