The Trump administration sure got busy defunding art and culture programming. Among other cuts, it gutted the National Endowment for the Humanities—which, for the state, means the loss of 75% of Nevada Humanities’ annual budget.
It has been widely rumored that the National Endowment for the Arts is next on the chopping block. As of press time, no news has been released on this front, but with a significant part of Nevada’s arts and culture programming already slashed, it’s as good of a time as any to consider what arts spending means for communities.
As a longtime arts reporter, I’ve heard many people express a belief that arts funding seems wasteful. But consider this: The money that governments spend on arts and culture programming does not evaporate into thin air. It gets invested right back into communities, and it generates a substantial amount of tax revenue.
Arts organizations spend money to produce events; patrons spend money to attend events; and many people spend money on related costs like eating out before a show. Together, these generated $156 million in Nevada in local, state and federal tax revenue in 2022, according to a study by Americans for the Arts—not bad when compared to the $2 million-plus that has been allocated to our state’s two major arts agencies in recent years.
For countless people, the arts make life better in one way or another. (And in Nevada, there were almost 9 million visits to art events in 2022—not bad for a state with a population of 3.2 million.)
Who out there doesn’t have a movie, a song or a book that has spoken to you, or even spoken for you, that has kept you holding on in hard times? But even if you don’t, the arts industry actually puts a lot of food on a lot of tables in this state—and investments in the art resonate far and wide in the form of public revenue.