Holly Hughes Speaks on Trump Administration Plans to Defund the Arts

Stamps Professor Holly Hughes, one of ​“The NEA Four,” recently wrote an editorial for the Los Angeles Blade on the Trump administration’s plans to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Do we mean it when we say that art is central to the human experience? Then we must connect our arguments for the NEA to our opposition to these other policies. It’s lovely to spend an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but if we can’t locate the value of that experience in some relationship our defense of public health care and public education; and our larger ideals such as our support for open borders, for our desire to foster social justice in a diverse society, our art habits seem like escapist luxuries.

Holly Hughes strikes back at Trump’s defunding of the arts | Los Angeles Blade