The federal government’s four primary arts and culture organizations (the NEA, NEH, IMLS, and CPB) funnel over $1 billion every year into projects that do not align with—or actively undermine—our founding principles, distort and superficially judge the American historical experience, and, in many cases, promote obscenity and indecency antithetical to Judeo-Christian values held by the majority of Americans.

Millions of taxpayer dollars have gone to projects that promote tribalism; identity politics/CRT; progressive, revisionist history; gender ideology; and obscenity.

For example:

  • The NEA funded Robert Mapplethorpe’s infamous “The X Portfolio,” seven photographs with extremely graphic sexual content. Two of the photos feature unclothed children.
  • In 2019, a children’s show aired on PBS—funded by the CPB—featured a drag queen and author reading from his book titled The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish. The show was geared towards children ages 3-8.
  • In many cases, taxpayer money has simply been wasted on ridiculous initiatives—such as a $95,000 NEA grant to stage a Shakespeare play with no words.

Because these cultural organizations make up a very small percentage of the federal government’s budget, they tend to be overlooked. However, their participation in state grant-matching programs that multiply funding, and their reach into libraries, schools, museums, and homes give these organizations an outsized influence on culture, education, and the arts.

For decades, funding from these organizations has been used to push American culture, from public libraries to community theaters and museums, away from a shared vision of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and towards an understanding of America as a dark, fractured society of warring tribes.

Drawing on its nationwide network of scholars, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) has published a comprehensive plan for how the incoming administration could reverse this trend. By making strategic, influential appointments to the four, major federal arts and culture organizations conservative leaders can promote a vision of America that builds on our historical strengths and charts a unified, constructive path forward for our country.

These appointments will direct the flow of more than $1 billion of federal funds each year away from progressive ideologues and towards culture-creators who are working to create art grounded in the true, observed reality of our world, our shared human nature, and the Judeo-Christian values at the heart of the American ethos.

Appointments at the top of these organizations, along with strategic appointments at mid- and lower levels, will have nationwide effects on the art and culture content available in public libraries, on radio stations and television programs, and within American museums, theaters, and art galleries.

Read the full report here: Download PDF.