Impact of the 2020 crises on the arts and culture in the United States: The effect of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement in historical context

Abstract

This article discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement on the arts and cultural sector in the United States, placing the 2020 crises in the context of the United States’s historically decentralized approach to supporting the arts and culture. After providing an overview of the United States’s private, locally focused history of arts funding, we use this historical lens to analyze the combined effects of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement on a single metropolitan area – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We trace a timeline of key events in the national and local pandemic response and the reaction of the arts community to the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that the nature of these intersecting responses, and their fallout for the arts and cultural sector, stem directly from weaknesses in the United States’s historical approach to administering the arts. We suggest that, in the context of widespread organizational vulnerability caused by the pandemic, the United States’s decentralized approach to funding culture also undermines cultural organizations’ abilities to respond to issues of public relevance and demonstrate their civic value, threatening these organizations’ legitimacy.

Local philanthropy and the transformation of culture in Oaxaca, Mexico

“…14 Other scholars have added to this picture, pointing out that Mexico has the smallest nonprofit sector in Latin America, with most human services provided by the government in a state-centric 5 Ostrower 2004. 6 For recent perspectives on philanthropists' influence on regional culture, see Katz and Reisman 2020;Silberman 2021. 7 DiMaggio 1982 DiMaggio 1990.…”

“… Ostrower 2004. 6 For recent perspectives on philanthropists' influence on regional culture, seeKatz and Reisman 2020;Silberman 2021. …”