You might know that data from the census is used to draw congressional and state legislative districts, determine the number of House seats a state has, and distribute federal funds for things like Medicaid, schools, and emergency preparedness. (That last one’s particularly relevant now.) But you might not know that getting an accurate census count is also important for the arts. Census-related funding in Illinois helps put foreign language curricula in schools, supports the careers of local artists in every discipline, and assists with keeping museums like the Block and the National Museum of Mexican Art free of charge.
Federal arts funding is directed to states by the National Endowment for the Arts. By law, 40 percent of the NEA’s annual budget is allocated to state and regional arts organizations. For the 2018 fiscal year, NEA’s programs budget was $121,650,000, so $48,322,000 was directed to arts organizations across the country. Illinois’s federal funds go to the Illinois Arts Council Agency, which then disseminates that money to artists, museums, and arts organizations across the state. State organizations are required to match that federal funding at least one to one. In 2018, the NEA granted $850,800 in federal funds to the IACA, which contributed an additional $9,471,730. Population is an important factor in calculating how much grant money the NEA gives to each state and regional arts organization.
“Everything always costs much more than anticipated,” Soto says of her work. “It’s not only the fabrication but the installing, transporting. Insane. People don’t understand how much it costs to do that, and how you have to always patch things, however the money comes in.”
Corrin says that without that $350,000 NEH grant, the “Caravans of Gold” exhibition, which broke the museum’s attendance records and opens this year at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, wouldn’t have happened. “Caravans of Gold” was the first major exhibition to use artworks from the medieval period to highlight the importance of Saharan trade and the networks between West Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe from the eighth to 16th centuries. It featured loans from Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria—many of which had never left their home countries; the cost of shipping and installing these works was not insignificant. “You need the resources to be able to realize a show that museums of that caliber want to bring to their own communities,” she says.
Tortolero can understand why some immigrants may be hesitant to fill out the census form. “I think the Trump administration’s tactics against immigrants, you know these SWAT teams coming out and stuff, and the citizen question—they just did it to scare people,” he says. “But you know what, I think it’s going to work with some people. I think if I didn’t have papers and I get something from the government about census forms to fill out, I’d be kind of leery to fill it out, I’ll be honest with you.”
According to data from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, art and cultural production accounted for 224,102 jobs in Illinois in 2017, and generated more than $30 billion for the state’s economy. A report from the NEA shows that at least one-third of artists are self-employed, compared to 9 percent of all U.S. workers, which typically means they make lower wages than regular full-time workers and have little or no benefits. From 2010 to 2014, self-employed artists “earned an annual median income of just under $42,000, about $14,000 less on average than earned by full-year/full-time artists on payroll.”
