State funding for the arts is funneled through the New York State Council on the Arts—NYSCA for short. The majority of the arts groups in East Harlem receive funding from NYSCA.

According to the Arts NYS Coalition, over the past four years, that funding has been consistently reduced—by a total of about 30%. With the additional 10% cut proposed by Governor Cuomo for fiscal 2012, the agency will have $31.6 million for grant awards, or 36% less than it did in 2008. The proposed 10% cut is the largest reduction in the budget of any state agency and goes far beyond the 2% reduction that the Cuomo administration says it proposed for most state agencies. In fact, no other state agency faces a 10% reduction in its allocation.

We understand that the state faces a huge budget shortfall, and we know we cannot expect full restoration of NYSCA funding—even to the 2011 level. But we are asking for the reduction to be 2%, not 10%.

It is easy for elected officials to single out the arts for cuts because of the short-sighted notion that the arts are a luxury. But the arts actually matter. They bring enormous economic benefits to the state, the city, and to individual communities. The only economic sector that has remained bright in New York City during the current recession is the tourist industry. The arts not only attract millions of people to New York City, but they also employ hundreds of thousands of people.

In East Harlem, the arts attract tourists, provide a stabilizing force in the community, and give the people opportunities to experience history, art, literature, dance, music, and poetry that they would otherwise not have. NYSCA funding supports these opportunities for the people of the community and beyond. NYSCA support is also important to East Harlem’s arts organizations because it can be leveraged to attract funding from other sources.

The proposed cuts in the New York State Council on the Arts Budget will have an impact on individual arts organizations in East Harlem as follows:

El Museo del Barrio
El Museo del Barrio has experienced a significant decrease in NYSCA funding in Fiscal Year 2011. Our multi-year grants have been cut back considerably and our one-time performing arts grants have been cut entirely. These cuts have forced El Museo to curtail our free summer programming from 10 to 3 performances. Also as a result of theloss, we were not able to fill two current vacant positions at this time.

The proposed Fiscal Year 2012 budget cut of 10% to NYSCA will compound the loss of foundation and corporate grants. Coupled with sharp decreases in City funds for general operating expenses, El Museo finds itself in the very difficult position of trying to offset losses in public and private funding and not having the resources to provide for earned income opportunities.

Arts institutions in East Harlem continue to do much more with far less, but we don’t know how much longer we can continue to sustain that trend.

Museum of the City of New York
The Museum of the City of New York has a unique role among New York’s cultural organizations—one of the tiny number providing historical content about New York City. That this content is sought after is attested to in our growing attendance—250,000 last year—with many visiting East Harlem for the first time. Through our schools programs, some 4,000 students from 38 elementary and middle schools in the area participated last year in activities of the Frederick A. O. Schwarz Children’s Center.

But the Museum is struggling. The perfect storm of decreases in funding from private, city, and state sources has forced us to lay off curators, educators, and programmers. We have been unable to refill those positions. And the roughly 10% annual decrease in NYSCA funding over the past few years—to say nothing of the proposed further cuts for 2012—seriously threatens our ability to serve our growing constituency and our East Harlem neighborhood. The result of these reductions will signify more layoffs throughout the institution.

PRdream.com and MediaNoche
If, indeed, it is the creative use of technology that will guarantee America’s success in the future, then arts and cultural organizations such as MediaNoche and PRdream.com, that are technology-based in their essence, and community-minded in spirit, must be supported and encouraged to flourish. PRdream.com, the pioneering, award-winning website on Puerto Rican history and culture launched 12 years ago and was one of the first, if not the first, online, bilingual informational resource on Puerto Ricans.

MediaNoche, which is a project of PRdream.com, is a new media or technology-based art gallery serving Spanish Harlem and the broader New York City public for the past 8 years. MediaNoche is unique among technology groups in being rooted in community. By creating an international exchange among new media artists, we provide a global platform for our artists and community that blurs all lines of marginality.

Our work at PRdream.com and MediaNoche is directly threatened by the current economic climate. The new round of proposed cuts to the New York State Council on the Arts seriously impacts our programming and services. While it is true that we could retreat to a virtual space on the internet, we believe that having a physical presence in Spanish Harlem serves the community directly and significantly adds to its prestige and quality of life. We urge Assemblyman Rodriguez and our other representatives to restore funding to NYSCA which early on provided support to our fledgling organization and had the vision to encourage our growth.

Taller Boricua
Taller Boricua /Puerto Rican Workshop, Inc., is an artist-run nonprofit art gallery and multidisciplinary cultural space in El Barrio. Taller Boricua’s significance in the cultural life of East Harlem is clearly reflected in its visual arts programs exhibiting and encouraging new work by emerging and under-recognized Latino and artists of color. The proposed NYSCA cuts will not only affect our artists, but our community as a whole since it will impact on the many free programs we offer to East Harlem. These cuts will have an impact on the social, cultural, and economic development in our community inwhich we serve over 37,000 visitors annually.