NYSCA Update

A few weeks ago I posted about the likelihood that the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) was going to have $7 million taken away from it for this current fiscal year, impacting over 500 arts organizations across the state and eliminated hundred of grants (including two to Open Letter).

Well, on Tuesday, this cut became official—the money is gone and all the grants from the Nov/Dec funding cycle have been eliminated. This is really unfortunate, and will probably impact the FY10 NYSCA budget as well. Supposedly, organizations that got stiffed this time around will be first in line to get grants next year, but as a whole, NYSCA will probably have less money to grant and there are probably a number of organizations that won’t make it that long.

Not a particularly good day for news about public arts funding . . .