Arts organizations in New Mexico have long depended on federal dollars to help them survive. Last year, a major source of that funding, from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), was nearly zeroed out by the Trump Administration. While Congress restored the budget, the money now comes with a caveat.
Last September, New Mexico arts organizations were told if they wanted to receive federal funding from the NEA, they'd have to sign an agreement from President Trump to “not operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
Various organizations in the state refused to sign, like the Railyard Park Conservancy. Executive Director Izzy Barr says the wording of the agreement felt intentionally convoluted.
“So much of what's happening is intended to create chaos and confusion, so when this document arrived, I looked at it and it literally looked like somebody had just used the snip tool and stuck it in the middle of this document in a way that didn't make any sense,” Barr said.
Some who refused to comply say the language used in the document was too vague, leaving room for misinterpretation.
Rose Eason, Executive Director of gallupARTS, an arts council serving Gallup and McKinley County in Northwest New Mexico, also refused to sign.
“It's not just that with your grant funding, you cannot do X, Y, Z. It's if you are funded as an organization in your entirety, you cannot promote diversity, equity and inclusion,” Eason said.
When reading the agreement, Eason couldn’t understand why this insert was necessary.
“As a nonprofit, we've always had to, you know, uphold the Civil Rights Act and affirm that we don't illegally discriminate and there's no reason to impose a new standard if the goal is just the basic standard,” Eason said.
By not adhering to the new federal guidelines, Eason’s program is among at least nine in New Mexico that will have to forgo NEA grants this year and next.
Under the NEA, some 40% of its budget is distributed to state arts agencies. In New Mexico, that amounts to more than $888,000 this year. Those funds are then distributed by New Mexico Arts, the state arts agency.
While some, like Eason and Barr, found the agreement too unpalatable to sign, others saw the confusing guidelines as an opportunity.
Case in point: April Chalay, executive director of 516 Arts in Albuquerque.
“It's not correct, nor would it stand up in court I think for them to actually say flat out, ‘you can't use funding for certain kinds of content or people,’” Chalay said. “That is against the law pretty firmly. So they're trying to go around it in vague terminology.”
And with that “vague terminology,” Chalay signed the agreement and is still doing the work that her organization was founded on.
Matthew Chase-Daniel, co-founder of Axel Art in Santa Fe also signed to accept the funds.
“We're basically doing what we would do anyway and not paying a lot of attention to it,” Chase-Daniel said.
Chase-Daniel said he did a thorough read of the agreement and, like many other organizations, found the terms contradictory— and saw the agreement as an intimidation tactic.
“So that, in itself, curtails free speech just by having a chilling effect, even if it's not direct it, it scares people, intimidates people, and they speak out less, and I think that's a very insidious, dangerous path to go down for our country,” Chase-Daniel said.
And not all organizations who lost funding were presented with this agreement. Back in May of 2025, eight arts groups had their funding pulled, seemingly out of nowhere.
This action was part of President Trump’s so-called “small agency eliminations” which included the NEA, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Institute of Museum and Library Sciences and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Free speech advocates are fighting the NEA certification requirements but the matter is still tied up in federal court.
To Rose Eason of gallupARTS, refusing to sign the agreement is to take a stand against an omenous trend.
“I think the attacks on free speech and the attempts to kind of rewrite history and create a singular perspective on American art and American history are pretty clear,” Eason said.
Choosing to not accept the terms will cost organizations and artists across the country, gallupARTS will lose almost $5,000 this year. But that won’t stop them from creating.
"We are faring very well. We have an incredibly supportive community that really stepped up in light of our decision," Eason said.
