Helen Frankenthaler and Andy Warhol Foundations Rally to Assist Arts Projects Affected by NEA Funding Losses
162May 9, 2025
The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation haveteamed upto offer a total of $800,000 to cultural programs that lost funding from the National Endowment for the Arts in February after Trump administration cuts forced the agency to eliminate its Challenge America grants. The grants had historically gone to small and midsize cultural programs in underserved regions, including rural areas and communities comprising vulnerable populations. Eighty such programs across the US will each receive $10,000. Among the grant recipients are ConnectAbility, Inc. in rural Dahlonega, Georgia, which offers free photography workshops for people with and without developmental and physical disabilities, and the Burlingame, California–based Kids & Art Foundation, which provides healing arts workshops for pediatric cancer patients and their families.
“The Warhol Foundation recognizes the essential contributions that small arts organizations make to our cultural lifeblood by giving artists in every corner of the country a platform from which to be seen and heard,” said Warhol Foundation president Joel Wachs in a statement. “We want them to know that we see the extremely difficult circumstances under which they are operating and we value and appreciate their work. We are committed to providing some semblance of stability and continuity during this time of unprecedented upheaval.”
“In times of crisis—whether in response to natural disaster, global pandemic, or financial disruption—foundations do their best work when they come together to assert shared values,” said Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the Frankenthaler Foundation, in a statement. “We at the Frankenthaler Foundation are pleased to partner with the Warhol Foundation to support the health of visual arts organizations by stepping forward to assist with these vital and timely funds. While our missions focus support on the visual arts, our shared hope is that this effort may inspire peer funders to support Challenge America grantees working outside of the visual arts, who remain in urgent need of assistance.”
News of the grants arrives just days after the Mellon Foundation revealed that it was committing $15 million to humanities councils in all fifty US states and six jurisdictions after the National Endowment for the Humanities canceled most grants following a review by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.