Make The NEA Conservative?

Last week in the New York Times, Emory professor Mark Bauerlein made a surprising pitch to President Trump: don’t kill the National Endowments for Humanities and the Arts—hijack them. Bauerlein argues that, rather than axing these bureaucracies that advance left-wing cultural activity, conservatives should seize their grantmaking abilities to instead champion MAGA‑friendly canon.

Bauerlein admits the agencies’ budgets tilt progressive, but thinks eliminating them would miss an opportunity for conservatives to advance in the culture war. MAGA lacks a “high culture” wing, so why not use these agencies to bankroll a celebration of American heritage–of Whitman, Twain, Fitzgerald and others? On arts, especially, Trump and DOGE shouldn’t limit themselves to curbing woke excesses through cutting egregious spending, he says. No, Bauerlein argues the administration should use the power of government to explicitly advance traditionalist themes.

This impulse is a prime example of how public funding for art inevitably ends up politicizing it. Essentially, Bauerlein is interested in preserving the NEA and so thinks the best hope of its survival is to pander to MAGA’s cultural preferences. As a libertarian, the idea of using federal dollars to advance the agenda of any political faction is distasteful. But even on its own terms, Bauerlein’s pitch to conservatives is a dead end. What happens when Democrats reclaim power? The NEA becomes their plaything—and the cycle starts anew.

Even without such a deliberate strategy, the agency already swings like a political pendulum—one good reason to abolish it. In 2009, President Obama’s White House tried to use the NEA to fund propaganda for the president, with a call with artists that spoke of specific asks and artists urged to “pick something, whether it’s health care, education, the environment” as themes to align with President Obama’s priorities.

Grant decisions under the Biden administration reflect some progressive cultural preferences as well. For example, the NEA is doling out thousands of dollars to “a convening focused on the intersection of art and climate” and “an exhibition that highlights disparities in the built environment.” In 2024, they gave a $10,000 grant to the Bearded Ladies Cabaret for an ice-skating drag show about climate change.

Since President Trump’s second election victory, we’ve already seen a swing in grant aims. The NEA recently canceled its Challenge America program aimed at underserved communities amid the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion projects. Instead, funds are reportedly being reallocated to patriotism-themed projects for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The lesson is clear: As administrations change, so do the NEA’s funding priorities. And art groups that want federal cash are left to adapt or lose out.

Politics thus already steers artists’ choices, at least to some extent. Bauerlein’s argument essentially urges the Trump administration to be much more explicit: lean in and aggressively use the NEA for your cultural ambitions. This will tickle the sensibilities of many national conservatives, who, rather than shrinking government, want to utilize it for their own ends. But it’s unjustifiable in principle and unconvincing in practice.

For one, missing in Bauerlein’s argument is any explanation for why taxpayers should be forced to pay for art which they ideologically disapprove of, or even perceive wasteful. As I show in my new briefing note (and other art experts acknowledge), there’s no strong economic case for federal arts subsidies. Government funding of projects people oppose does, however, violate their freedom of conscience.

And even from a tactical conservative perspective, using the NEA as a culture war weapon seems a dead end:

1. Democrats will win elections again, and when they do, the agency’s priorities will shift back. That’s the nature of institutions that become explicitly politicized.

2. The arts sector and bureaucracy itself is overwhelmingly progressive, and there is no indication of that changing.

3. Trying to overtly shape culture through politicized art subsidies will likely backfire. As Professor Michael Rushton argues, “any sort of art that is chosen as a vehicle for attaining specific cultural and political goals becomes debased as art and useless in fostering those goals.” The public will see through it.

As for those traditional icons—Whitman, Twain, Fitzgerald— they didn’t become (near universally) popular because of government grants. They were self made or self published individuals who are celebrated because Americans liked their output.

Bauerlein’s “conservative case” for keeping and harnessing the NEA is therefore pretty feeble. Yet even if it held water, it offers no moral or economic justification for forcing every taxpayer to bankroll one side or another in a see-saw culture war.

As I conclude in my briefing note: “The simplest resolution is for the government to exit the role of arts patron, leaving funding decisions to the pluralism of the private sphere, where no single viewpoint has coercive power over others’ money.”