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Arts Commissioners Are Concerned Mendelson is Undermining Past Reforms

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It’s perhaps fitting that D.C.’s main agency focused on funding local theaters (and other arts organizations) is surrounded by so much drama. But the frequency with which the Commission on the Arts and Humanities has courted controversy is still a bit hard to believe.

It was just two years ago, after all, that the commission, which controls a roughly $40 million grant budget to assist local arts organizations, was in the middle of a pair of bruising fights centered on thorny questions about racial equity in the arts. Two Council votes brought the temperature down on those debates temporarily, but Loose Lips hears that tensions have started rising once again in the run-up to the final budget vote Tuesday.

Specifically, the commission’s staff and some of its mayor-appointed commissioners have begun raising concerns that Council Chair Phil Mendelson is advancing legislation that they believe would undermine the changes to arts funding in 2021 intended to distribute grant money more equitably.

Arts commissioners specifically worry about two provisions backed by Mendelson: The first would set aside 9 percent of the commission’s budget (about $5 million annually) to seed a new fund aimed at paying for large capital projects for theaters and other arts groups; the other provision restricts organizations from using grants from the commission to account for the majority of their budgets.

“It just seems like a very cynical move, finding a backdoor way of turning back the clock,” says Natalie Hopkinson, an American University professor and former City Paper contributor who Mendelson tried (and failed) to keep off the commission two years ago. “It’s a slap in the face. The brazenness is just so shocking here.”

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