Political Shifts and Cultural Stakes of 2025

Christopher Williams: Hey everybody, it’s Christopher Williams. Today on the podcast, we are welcoming back Brett Egan, president of the DeVos Institute of Arts and Nonprofit Management. Brett joins us at a critical moment for our sector. Recent political shifts in the United States, including executive orders, proposed agency closures, and changes to our federal funding guidelines, have placed cultural organizations at the center of a national conversation about how institutions uphold their values and navigate their role in a rapidly changing America. In this episode, Brett helps us navigate the latest developments, offering insight into the risks organizations face and the bold opportunities that might emerge from this turbulent time. We’ll talk about how to prepare for threats to our industry, like shrinking grant funding, increasing restrictions on our speech, and instability in higher education and international relations, but we’ll also explore a proactive outlook and rethink what resilience means for our industry moving forward. If you’re wondering how to lead with both courage and pragmatism when the ground keeps shifting underneath our feet, this conversation is for you. Without further ado, here’s Brett Egan. Brett Egan, welcome back to CI to Eye.

Brett Egan: Thanks, Christopher.

Christopher Williams: The last time you were here was five years ago, which that in and of itself feels like a crazy thing to say, but it was days after the March 2020 Covid shutdown. And you recorded an episode of the podcast with our founder Erik Gensler, which quite frankly holds up really well today when you go back and listen to it. It’s quite interesting. So there are things afoot in the world again today, and so here you are, hopefully back to give us some of your sage guidance.

Brett Egan: I appreciate that, Christopher. Some days it feels like it’s been like 35 years since that talk with Erik. Don’t we get — each Covid year was a dog year. We get seven years credit for each of those dog years.

Christopher Williams: Yeah, that is a very —

Brett Egan: It’s been 26 years since my discussion with Erik, and in some cases it feels like it was just yesterday. I mean, when the fifth anniversary of Covid blew by I guess almost exactly a month ago, it sort of left me breathless thinking that it’s actually been five years. Because a lot of the impacts have left traces and we’re still working through them. But yeah, that conversation with Erik came at a time when the world went sideways, and so whenever I feel distressed, I try to put together a plan. You might even call it a neurosis, and I suppose we find ourselves here in a different form of 50 shades of darkness looking for similar structure.

Christopher Williams: So what has brought us together is our combined desire to discuss what has been happening in the world, but more specifically what is happening to arts and culture as a result of the administration. And you have made quite a study of some of that so far, I know. I know that not everyone can stay on top of all of this. Some people very much choose to ignore it because it’s just more than they can handle. But can we start by just doing a broad overview of what has happened so far? And I should say we are recording this at 10:30 in the morning on Friday, April 25th, and I think everyone will understand that we have to say things like that these days because there are things that are constantly coming at us and changing. Depending on when you’re listening to this, it might be important for you to know the date.

Brett Egan: Well, here’s my response to that, Christopher. Thank goodness we have institutions like the National Council of Nonprofits and Americans for the Arts that are keeping tabs on this daily. I have grown to really rely on their synthesis and consult with their resources as often as I can, trying to make sense of the changes, make sense of what has been said and what this means for all of us. It’s a mess. It’s a total mess and there are huge areas of uncertainty and it’s exhausting to try to keep up with it. As of right now, the two executive orders 14173, which was illegal DEI, and 14168, which is gender ideology, those are the two that were issued early on that remain the most relevant executive orders, and we are still in a gray space as to whether or not those two executive orders are or are not going to have an impact on what the National Endowment for the Arts will fund.

The National Endowment for the Arts has said that it is undertaking a process of internal review and it will clarify its position in respect to whether or not those two EOs are going to be taken into account specifically within the assurance of compliance. And the question really is whether or not the NEA will be formally and finally changing its guidelines in response to those two executive orders. And I don’t have the answer to that. As far as I know, nobody has the answer to that as we sit here today. In principle, April 30, we’ll see. When this podcast is released, NEA is meant to produce some clarity there and there will be implications for programs and possibly speech that intersects with the at present definition of illegal DEI and gender ideology. I will remind our listeners, I’m sure folks are following along on this very closely, that is the subject of the current suit filed by ACLU in partnership with TCG, Theater Communications Group, group of theaters of Rhode Island… That is under injunction as well, at present. It is a tangle of issues, and there was another slate of executive orders, which just was released this week that pertains to the field of education, and I think people are still unpacking what the relevance of those are for arts and culture, but that’s — so far as I understand it — where we stand today.

Christopher Williams: What about our museum and library friends and things that are happening to IMLS and the NEH? What are your thoughts there?

Brett Egan: The situation there is both of the agencies, for practical purposes, have been at least temporarily shuttered or destabilized to the point where they would have a very hard time functioning, including making grants. And I think that we all know that in the case of IMLS and in the case of NEH, previously made grants have in some cases been suspended or been recalled. We also know that, for instance, grants to state humanities councils have stopped, and this is really devastating to the state humanities councils. I fully expect and I think we will see that many of the state humanities councils, and in particular those who service more rural areas of the country, will cease to operate within a matter of months. There’s a crisis there for sure.

Christopher Williams: Yeah. What have you heard from your clients or friends in the sector as we’ve all sort of experienced what just basically generally feels like an attack over the last few months? What are you hearing? How are people feeling?

Brett Egan: Yeah, it’s a very confusing, vexing and overwhelming time for many, and I think that we are sort of as a sector grappling with two vectors of psychological activity. One: as I think generally sentient, conscientious, thoughtful people, we have a concern for our nation. We have a concern for our democracy. We have a concern for our institutions. We are questioning the core values of our nation, whether they’re shared, but then when we drop down and we go to our office and we sit in front of our computer and we’re looking in our inbox and we’re thinking about payroll and we’re thinking about cashflow, there are also the second layer of concerns about how that filters down into our business. And here there are a dozen vectors at least that we’re dealing with, and it’s a mess to untangle and it is overwhelming to think about.

Christopher Williams: Right. One of the experiences that I’ve shared with you is my front row seat to what has happened to the Kennedy Center. My organization has worked with that organization for a very long time. It is a daily trauma to sit next to. I don’t think any of us could have imagined that something like this would happen, and happen this quickly. And I have tremendous empathy for all of my personal and professional relationships that still exist inside of that organization. It’s definitely still happening to many people that a lot of us care about, and it’s been a complicated thing, I think, for the industry to engage with because it’s sort of like, to boycott or not? What does it mean to pull your support when those people are still there? It’s super complicated and you made the point in a previous conversation that all of this has put arts and culture back on the front pages, above the fold, and what does that mean for all of us? How can we actually take advantage of the fact that that is happening?

Brett Egan: Yeah. Well, when I look at what’s happened at the Kennedy Center, I share your concern and I share your compassion for the people who are affected by the change that’s taking place there. There’s a lot of suffering and there’s a good deal of contest and some litigation and that’s going to play out. And I think it is not a phenomenon that we necessarily would’ve chosen, that would’ve transpired in this way, but it is a phenomenon that the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities, the IMLS, CPB, the Kennedy Center, these massive pillars of American arts, culture, humanities, which for most of recent memory have not been headline items, are now headline items with consistency. I think the sector has a question ahead of it, which is, is there some use to make of the fact that the work that we do, that we have always felt is central to civil society, is critical to American democracy, is an essential tool for self-realization and the affirmation of the huge and incredible diversity and pluralism of identities in our country…

We believe these things and in a sense, the actions that have been recently taken affirm that. Not perhaps in the way in which we would want. Nonetheless, we’re here. I mean the spotlight that the administration has shown on the power of arts and culture, the power of arts and culture to help define the psyche of a nation, to facilitate ideas, to be a place of welcome and belonging or be a place of ideological contest. We have the opportunity as a sector to look at the changes that are taking place and say, well, does that produce any opening for us? Does it produce any opening for us to think in a different way or does it produce any opening for us to have a different type of conversation with ourselves or with the nation? I’ve started to try to come around to, how do we organize our thinking here?

And the framework that I’ve settled on is the following. There are certainly things that we cannot control. We are not going to be able to affect the global economy. We are probably not going to be able to affect the way in which global society views American decision making. We don’t have the power most likely to produce a megaphone that is going to outweigh the headlines that come out of the global press on a daily basis that are reflecting upon changes taking place in our country. And I think even though these concern us and they concern us deeply, we have to put those in one column and we have to build another column that says, okay, here are the things that we can control, areas that we need to defend ourselves and we need to defend our institutions. And then also areas where we might be able to make some progress. Or, what we might call defense and offense.

Christopher Williams: Let’s get into that. Where do we start? Offense or defense?

Brett Egan: We’re going to start with defense. So the first huge cluster obviously within the context of defense is the arts and culture sector’s relationship with the federal government, and the first focal point is the agencies. IMLS, NEH, NEA, CPB. One thing we can certainly do is rally to the defense of the agencies that are taking the lead, and I think it’s AFTA, AAM, the American Library Association, the National Council of Nonprofits, and there are others, and all of them have put forward frameworks for communicating with Congress. Second, for anybody who has received a grant termination, especially our friends in the humanities, working through the National Council of Nonprofits. They appear to be the tip of the spear in pushing back. Also in the defense category, I think we have to begin to consider that the money that we have received from the agencies… Unfortunately, I think at this point we have to consider it a nice-to-have, not a must-have as we move through.

And we have to deal with it. It’s emotional, it’s unfair. Aspects of it may be on contestable legal grounds, the speed is shocking, but really it’s not surprising. So should we rally to the defense of these institutions? Of course we should. Absolutely. Is it going to make a difference this time with this congress? I don’t know. Time will tell. The odds look a bit worse today than they did in previous cycles, so how do we think about money in our own budgets? It’s different for sure moving forward. The other big thing obviously that we’re contending with on the defense side is speech. This one is tough. EO 14173, which was the quote illegal DEI EO, and then 14168, which is gender ideology — both of these, obviously, they have funding implications in so far as they intersect with the agencies, but they also have clear speech implications and the fights that are going on in the courts in respect to the two of these are referencing first amendment and speech issues. But we are in a gray zone right now.

We’re in a gray zone right now about how this might be enforced and upon whom. Now the big question is, do we remove our language now from our website? What does it mean to acquiesce? What does it mean to push back? And what are going to be the implications of those two courses? I don’t think there’s a standard. I think these are individual debates that somehow we have been pulled into that we have to settle at the organization level. But then again, I also really ask organizations to think, what is the exact pressure? What is the exact pressure that we’re facing to change our language? Is there a specific grant at this point that we’re not going to get, we feel we should get and we won’t get unless we do it? Did we receive a letter? Are we worried that we might receive a letter and are we acting too soon?

I’m not advising any of my colleagues, certainly not the ones who do not rely upon big grants from the federal government, to make any changes at all if they still hold the same values. In fact, I am seeing certain organizations actually double down on their language and their commitments in particular principles of DEI and doing quite well with individual donors who agree with them and foundations that agree with them. I just want to ask people to discern between, is there a direct catalyst that forces action and do you wish to take action or do you wish to tell the catalyst we don’t need you if you can afford to do that? Another thing really on my mind, Christopher, is universities and university-based arts programs.

And as we start to see our universities imperiled in many cases — in many cases, it’s not like the administration is saying, we’re cutting arts funding to the universities. We know that’s not the case, but when you see universities losing a billion dollars here and $6 billion here in research money and you realize that inside of that research money, a significant chunk of it pays for administrative overhead and facilities, of course it’s going to trickle down. And so in the university context in particular, one thing that I think donors can do, and one thing I think administrators can do, is start to have this conversation now and talk about what impacts may be coming next fiscal and to prepare for that. And then the other sort of big thing as it pertains to the federal government is just international relations and impacts for US arts organizations and artists, for any arts organization or artist who has enjoyed a sense of global community. Sadly, the position of the US in the global discussion is changing, and I think it’s going to have an impact on touring, on international cooperation, and in many cases, the money that arts and cultural organizations based in the US derive from international participation.

Christopher Williams: Yeah. I’ve literally heard from a number of organizations already stories about international artists saying, ‘We are not comfortable coming to the US’ and pulling away.

Brett Egan: Yeah, there’s, do people want to come here? The list is endless, right? I mean, let me move on to the economy for a minute. There’s obviously the tariffs, the impact on 401Ks, the uncertainty. That’s not good for us, right? We’re definitely looking out at fiscal ’26 with conservative contributed revenue projections. We’re absolutely recalibrating. We are anticipating the possible impact of a recession. When we think back about which recession is most likely to resemble the one that’s coming up if we have one, I think unfortunately it’s 2008, which was the hardest. But during that time, foundations were most reliable. Individuals were second most helpful. Government historically had been pretty supportive, but I wouldn’t count on that this fall or early ’26, especially not for arts and culture. And then corporate, sadly, in every recession, arts have been cut first. So I would say sort of as we approach this upcoming fiscal season, on the defense side, obviously there’s a huge cluster about the relationship with the federal government. There’s a cluster around the changing economy, and I think there’s one cluster around continuing to deal with audiences, the potential of recession and sort of ongoing distraction that they have as well.

And this leads me to think if we can a little bit more assertively about getting off our heels and onto our toes.

Christopher Williams: The defense of all of this is fairly overwhelming, and I know you have some great ideas about how we can make moves offensively, and I would love for you to take us up if we can.

Brett Egan: Yeah. I’m going to go back for a minute to our relationship with the agencies and reiterate that I think our first step is to defend these investments, but I think that we also have to contemplate an intermediate, if not near term, potential reality that these agencies may not be the same or they may not exist at all. That would be a seismic shift, and I think we are faced there with a gap. If you combine how much grant money was distributed by the three agencies in fiscal ’25, or I should say budgeted to be distributed, it was about 450 million. About a 135-137 million from the NEA, 110 and change from the NEH, and about 200 million from IMLS. There’s about 150 million or 152 million taxpayers in the United States. So on average, about three bucks a person who pays taxes has made its way into the government and made its way back out to the ecosystem.

In the event that we wake up on some Thursday morning and read that the NEA, the NEH, and IMLS have effectively been either defunded or decommissioned… on the one hand, we have a extremely distressing and sad event. On the other hand, we have an American public that we know values its museums, its libraries, and its arts entities, and I do think that if a critical mass of our national advocacy organizations committed to work together to tell this story, there’s enough demand in the American psyche for arts, culture, museums, libraries, performances… to get a campaign that would result in — whether we look at it as 152 million taxpayers each contributing $3 each, whether we look at it as QR codes on every library card in America that link to a campaign page, whether we look at it as a 25 cent or 50 cent contribution tied electively to each ticket purchased for each performance. I think that if Americans for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the TCGs and the Dance USAs and the Opera Americas and the Chorus Americas and the League of American Orchestras, AAM, AAMD, American Library Association, the State Arts and Humanities Councils, the Trust for Historical Preservation, grant makers in the arts, DeVos Institutes… I think if these leadership organizations came together and said to the American public, we’ve lost this. Together, we can build this.

I think we have perhaps a once in a generation opportunity to have a conversation with the American public about the role of arts and culture in America that could result in the unprecedented elective contribution in lieu of money spent through the federal government on arts and culture to a national campaign to replace those budgets. And I might think of it as something along the lines of a Citizens Alliance for Arts Libraries and Museums.

Christopher Williams: CALM.

Brett Egan: Yeah. I want to be really clear, this is not my favorite outcome. My favorite outcome is that the agencies are affirmed as pillars of a necessary civil society. Hopefully that will be the outcome. If it’s not, I think we have an opportunity. We have the opportunity to think about enhanced cause-based fundraising. For every dollar that we lose, perhaps in a relationship with the government, go for a reverse match with individual donors who care about your cause and your issues, especially if we’re saying electively that we’re not going to pursue federal funding because the guidelines have changed and they are incompatible with our values. I think that there are plenty of ways to work with individual donors to think about how we can replace that. I think that this is a time that really calls for pushing aggressively with what we would call institutional marketing, telling a story about why our mission, why our impact matters.

I think we’re going to need to be thinking about cross sector relationships. In particular, I think the Arts Impact Explorer that AFT has pulled together gives us really beautiful ways to think about partnering with some of the other hard hit sectors: Meals on Wheels or areas that receive Title 1 funding or environment or education. We have a whole variety of frontiers now on which we can show our value and really function as an elevated problem-solving partner. I think there’s a lot of possibility there where we can appeal not only to arts funders, but also to other funders who might see they can spend the same dollar twice funding an arts and culture nonprofit and helping to improve outcomes in the environment or in education. Obviously this is not a new idea, but I think that front is going to be increasingly vibrant for us over the course of the next five years.

I think we can anticipate that our local arts agencies and our state arts councils and our regional arts councils are going to become even more essential in advocating for the role that arts and culture can play, particularly within the Title 1 area, and particularly as that money makes its way into state education agencies and the local educational agencies truing up those relationships between our arts advocates and state and local education agencies. I think there’s an opportunity for us there, but I think safe, ethical AI is something we have to pay attention to. We can increase our productivity by whopping amounts, 30%, 40%, so we have the equivalent of an extra employee for every three employees using AI well. It’s not ‘wave a wand and it happens.’ It has to be done carefully. We have to make sure we function in a way that’s humane and is respectful of the work that artists could do and only artists could do, but I think that there’s a lot of gain that we can make over the course of the next few years in this area.

So Christopher, if we start to break things down into what we need to do in order to defend ourselves and defend our advocates and defend the pillars that we believe in, and we think about maybe some of the openings, maybe some of the openings that we didn’t choose. We didn’t choose this moment, but it’s here. We’re being acted upon and we need to think of more areas in which we can react with action and not confuse statements and essays and analysis for action. That’s not to say I don’t think calling congresspeople is worthwhile. We have to do it. Of course we do. We have to fight that fight. At the same time, are there steps that we can take to recreate or rethink? We are being rethought. I think it’s time we have to rethink as well.

And really the last thing I would say, Christopher, I hope that the next season, political season, let’s call it the next three years, next three or four years, I hope that this will be an opportunity for our sector, arts, culture, humanities, literary, and adjacent fields to work with a capacious sense of grace and tolerance toward each other. There is an extraordinary and I think quite beautiful spectrum of diversity of thought and diversity of background and diversity of hyperlocal circumstance in our country’s arts and culture ecosystem. Urban, rural, affluent, historically underinvested, racial, economic, belief system. I mean, the diversity is enormous, and there are major flashpoints coming up. Just this week, the Trump administration issued a call for 250 sculptures. They’re offering what looks like $200,000 per commission to create a Garden of American Heroes. Artists are being called into action to create a Garden of American Heroes.

There’s a lot of money behind this. Certain artists are going to look at this and say, I can’t abide that, and that’s not something I’m going to do. Certain artists are going to look at that and say, I’ve lost a lot of other opportunities. I need to look at this in order to keep my practice going. And there’s going to be a fault line there. There’s going to be a fault line about who wants to continue to work in institutions like the Kennedy Center, who wants to go there and perform and who says, I can’t abide it. There’s going to be a fault line around who continues to retain the use of words like diversity, equity, and inclusion, and institutions that say, for one reason or another, we need to find other language. There’s going to be a fault line around organizations that apply for NEA funding and organizations who say, we don’t align anymore. There’s going to be organizations that choose to participate in the semi quincentennial — Has everyone learned this word yet? I know it took me a while. Semi quincentennial — and organizations who say, I don’t want to be part of that even though it pains me because I would love to celebrate our nation, but I’m not sure I can get with the way in which it’s being done.

These fault lines are here. They’re going to get more exacting. And I think that we have an opportunity as a sector as much as possible to be tolerant of different perspectives and assume goodwill while holding rigorous discussion and debate, while holding each other to account, while showing a respectful listening posture. Also really leaning in and trying to understand the truth that others experience, but remaining aware of the fact that if we stand any chance of getting people outside of the sector, especially those who feel like our work isn’t for them, to pay attention to us, we’re going to have to be able to listen to each other first. And I think that this next four years is going to present us with plenty of opportunities to splinter and plenty of opportunities to step back and breathe and recognize the humanity in each other. And even if we disagree, to understand and assume goodwill, because I think in four years or five years, if we start to see the change or maybe the return to principles that I think most of us hold very dear, the best chance that we have is with a sector that has embraced its own diversity and has tried to keep as many doors to conversation open as possible.

And I think this is a strength of ours, and if we can recommit to this over the course of the next four years, we will stand a chance as a sector that is extremely diverse, but unified in an essential sense. And that doesn’t mean unified in all ways of thinking, and it doesn’t mean not holding ourselves to account, but it does mean operating with a sense of tolerance and goodwill toward each other that we will be able to make a difference in the world beyond the sector that I think many of us seek.

Christopher Williams: Well said. Brett, thank you so much for being here.

Brett Egan: Christopher, you guys are the best. Thanks for the work you do. See you on the other side.

Dan Titmuss: Hi, everyone. Dan here. So before we sign off, let’s do a quick round of CI-lebrity sightings where we celebrate CI clients making headlines. First up, big news from Juilliard. They’re launching a $550 million fundraising campaign to make their programs completely tuition free. According to the New York Times, it’s a bold step towards making a Juilliard education more accessible for future artists. We love to see it. Over in Kentucky, the Sentinel News highlighted the incredible reach of the Louisville Orchestra’s In Harmony tour: free community concerts that have already brought music to more than 34,000 people across 43 counties. What an inspiring way to share classical music far and wide. And in California, San Diego Theatres is getting ready to celebrate the Civic Theatre’s 60th anniversary with a major renovation. Broadway World reported that upgrades will include a refreshed lobby, modern restrooms, and new plaza amenities, all aimed at creating a more welcoming, accessible experience for guests. Cheers to that! Snaps to all these organizations for making the arts more open, inviting, and inspiring. Got a story that deserves a shout out? Well, tag us on social and let us know.

Thank you for listening to CI to Eye. This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss. Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CI to Eye’s designers and video editors, and all work together to create CI’s digital content. Our music is by whoisuzo. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to rate us or leave a review. A nice comment goes a long way in helping other people discover CI to Eye and hear from experts in the arts and beyond. If you didn’t enjoy today’s episode, pass it on to all of your enemies. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok for regular content to help you market smarter. You can also sign up for our newsletter at capacityinteractive.com so you never miss an update. And if you haven’t already, please click the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, stay nerdy.