Figure

IV-08b: Amounts Appropriated by States for Their Arts Agencies, Per Capita, by State and the District of Columbia, Fiscal Year 2015*

* Includes both base legislative appropriations and line items. The values for the District of Columbia and the state of Minnesota have been excluded from the map as they are so much larger than those for all other states that they have a distorting effect on the visualization. See the bar graph below for information about the appropriations for those jurisdictions.

Source: National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Annual Appropriations and Revenue Survey Data. Population data used to calculate per capita figures are the estimates for July 1 of each year produced as part of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program.

When Congress established the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 1965, it required the agency to direct a portion of its funding to any state that established its own agency to promote the arts. Today every state has such an agency, and, although the NEA continues to fund them, the bulk of these agencies’ revenues comes from state legislatures (in contrast to state humanities councils, which are funded largely by federal dollars). These data are also of interest because a portion of arts agency funding is used to subsidize activities that are within the scope of the humanities as they are conceptualized for the purposes of the Humanities Indicators. For example, in 2012 the state arts agencies distributed $8.5 million to humanities projects, according to an analysis by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. The arts agencies also make awards for a wide array of other projects that benefit the humanities, such as preservation of and access to materials and collections and direct support of humanists for their work.

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