After slashing critical grant programs for cultural institutions and placing the majority of its staff on leave, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is now seeking artist submissions for statues to include in President Trump’s “National Garden of American Heroes.”
An application page on the NEH’s website says the agency is looking to commission statues of “famous American statesmen, visionaries, and innovators” on a Trump-authored list of 250 individuals ranging from the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Samuel Colt, known for mass producing the revolver; to Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, National Football Coach Vince Lombardi, and Helen Keller. Successful applicants will be commissioned for up to three statues at the rate of up to $200,000 each.
The NEH slashed 85% of the agency’s grant programs serving libraries, museums, and other cultural organizations earlier this month, reportedly agreeing to reappropriate some of the funds to build Trump’s sculptural project.
Alongside its sister agency the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the NEH will contribute $34 million to building Trump’s sculpture garden, which was first proposed in 2020 for the United States’s semiquincentennial, according to a press release today, April 24. On his way out of the White House in 2021, Trump issued an executive order requiring the NEH and National Endowment for the Arts to direct one-twelfth of discretionary funds to the project. When Biden took office, the garden plans were quickly halted, but within mere days of returning to office, Trump reinstated the project in a January executive order.
A spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees Local (AFGE) 3403, the union representing NEH employees, expressed concern that the agency is “being used as a propaganda pipeline to promote the president’s brand of patriotism instead of preserving and celebrating the full American experience.”
Over 60% of NEH staff have been cut, the union spokesperson said, and over 1,000 grants have been canceled as part of the Trump administration cuts. Last week, the agency introduced a new “Celebrate America!” grant program, which will award $25,000 to projects focusing on the “exceptional achievements of the United States.”
The NEH statue commission application uses similar laudatory language and asks prospective artists to detail how their sculptures will honor American history.
“NEH funding has celebrated the best of America,” the AFGE 3403 spokesperson told Hyperallergic. “Now, it’s being used to build a vapid tribute. Americans deserve much better.”
Of the funds flowing from the sister grantmaking agencies to create the garden, $30 million will go directly to the construction of statues, which are to be made from marble, bronze, granite, copper, or brass.
“It is absurd to think that grant dollars that were being used to do things like publish President George Washington’s writings, restore Mark Twain’s artifacts, and support civics education are instead being directed to commission statues,” the union said.
The union said it was concerned that Trump’s list of “heroes” was made in haste, with little reflection or review. NEH staff, the spokesperson said, have the expertise to “provide historical context about these individuals and their impact,” but the agency does not have the purview to commission these artworks.
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