MacDowell’s Chiwoniso Kaitano On Why America Can’t Afford to Underfund the Arts

Nestled in the woods of Peterborough, New Hampshire, is a cornerstone of American cultural life most people have never heard of. MacDowell, an artist residency program, was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. For more than a century, the program has supported over 9,000 artists through nearly 16,000 awarded fellowships granted to visual artists, interdisciplinary creatives, architects, filmmakers, composers, playwrights, poets and writers. Among them are scores of people whose work has shaped the national canon: Thornton Wilder, Toni Morrison, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Joan Didion, David Lynch, Nan Goldin, Robert Frank, Sonny Rollins, Alfredo Jaar and Yoko Ono, to name just a few.

MacDowell residents have gone on to win more than a hundred Pulitzer Prizes, thirty-three National Book Awards, thirty-one Tony Awards, thirty-four MacArthur Fellowships, eighteen Grammys, nine Oscars and nearly one thousand Guggenheim Fellowships. The prestige is a draw. More important, however, is the space the residency provides artists to think, experiment and build work that resonates across disciplines.

In February 2023, MacDowell welcomed Chiwoniso Kaitano as its new executive director. A vocal champion of artist residencies, Kaitano also recognizes their limits: they are integral to our cultural support system but cannot be the whole of it. She believes that for the arts to flourish and for society to benefit, larger structures of support are required, and she is a fierce advocate for integrating artists into the engines of policy and innovation by funding their work.

According to Kaitano, when we fund and empower artists, we drive not just expression but economic vitality, social cohesion, educational growth and cultural tourism. Artists, she argues, should be present in every room where solutions are being shaped, whether the issue at hand is climate change mitigation, A.I. ethics or lifting up economically vulnerable communities. And yet funding for the arts is often the first budget line item on the chopping block.

Earlier this year, the National Endowment for the Arts terminated hundreds of grants to arts organizations across the country—despite the NEA’s budget comprising just 0.003 percent of federal spending in 2022. For the communities that rely on these organizations, the cuts don’t just represent a loss of programming—they threaten vital infrastructure. These institutions act as cultural and economic anchors, creating jobs, attracting tourism and catalyzing neighborhood renewal. Residencies like MacDowell are vital incubators, Kaitano told Observer, but without sustained, meaningful public investment, we risk starving the broader ecosystem—and sidelining artists at the exact moment their insight is most needed. Our conversation, lightly edited for clarity, continues below.

There’s loads of data showing that the arts contribute billions to the U.S. economy, yet funding remains scarce—particularly now, with politics being what it is. Why do you think that disconnect persists?
In the most recent year for which the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis has provided data, 2023, the arts and culture sector added $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy. That’s 4.2 percent of the total and more than agriculture and forestry, more than mining, more even than the transportation sector. It’s difficult to fathom why the disconnect exists, except to say that the arts have been treated like an extra in this country—like a bonus that exists outside of the day-to-day. I think there are many reasons for this, and most of it boils down to education, communication and what we place value on in our society. It’s clear this is the case, given that in crunch times the arts are one of the first things cut from public school budgets.

We need to educate our children and our civic leaders about the endless benefits a rich arts and culture education and environment can contribute to everyday life. And by everyday life, I don’t just mean an individual’s personal enjoyment of a painting; on a national scale, a strong arts culture can lead to tourism in culturally rich cities and regions, can improve cities where theaters are struggling, cross borders and oceans and lead to communication among world leaders who might share nothing but an appreciation of classical opera or architecture. This may seem impossible in today’s political climate, but our easy dismissal of the arts is at the very least short-sighted and at most a hindrance to nations and citizens who could benefit greatly from cultural exchange.

How can we help civic and business leaders better understand the role artists play in job creation, tourism and geographic revitalization?
We need to give them tours of local success stories in places like Miami, Denver, Portland, Maine and even Keene, New Hampshire, where public support has combined with private funding to create dynamic cultural spaces and often completely revitalized neighborhoods. We need to invite them to convenings where they can learn about the economic benefits of artistic support directly from arts administrators, program directors and researchers. They can support their constituents by attending and amplifying local concerts, openings, readings, performances and other experiences and, in so doing, benefit from direct access to and engagement with artists. And we need to get them to think both locally and globally about arts and culture so they develop the vision for a comprehensive cultural economy.

Can you make the case that funding or otherwise supporting residencies like MacDowell is not just cultural philanthropy but smart economic policy?
Yes, certainly. While most of us who work for artist support organizations dedicate ourselves to this industry out of a love for the arts, it’s clear that giving time and money to organizations such as MacDowell pays off economically. An example: every year, the population of the small New Hampshire town of Peterborough, where our residency operates, grows by an average of 300 MacDowell artists who spend their money in town. Each year, we also open our doors to the public for Medal Day, our campus’s only annual open studio, when about 1,500 people from around the country attend, filling hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, buying lunch and dinner and spreading the word about us locally and back home. This contributes directly to New Hampshire’s strong tourism industry.

Clearly, we benefit our local region, but consider that artist residencies in that same New Hampshire town gave DuBose and Dorothy Heyward the time to write Porgy and Bess, or Leonard Bernstein the space to write Mass and other works, or, more recently, Richard Danielpour to write Margaret Garner. It takes production staff, actors, singers and theater workers to mount those productions. It takes a host of crew to create the motion pictures written at MacDowell. Tickets are sold, restaurants serve dinners and hotel rooms are booked. Think about how many times Our Town, the classic play Thornton Wilder wrote while at MacDowell, has been produced all over the world and how many people have been involved in those productions, working in front of and behind the stage, printing posters, writing reviews.
Visual art hangs in galleries and museums and architecture is sought out by visitors, readings in bookshops draw lovers of literature, music lovers attend concerts and satellite businesses benefit from that traffic. The economic impact of supporting artistic endeavors is endless and the cultural impact is almost infinite.

MacDowell Fellows have won more than a thousand Guggenheims, 106 Pulitzer Prizes, nine Academy Awards, thirty-seven Tony Awards and a Booker. That’s a lot of theater tickets, jazz albums, book sales and streams. When you support an organization that provides the ideal working conditions for a creative person to make a piece of work that then goes out into the world where it is appreciated by countless others, you can’t help but have a positive impact on the arts economy.

How do we shift the perception of the artist from entertainer or decorator to essential public thinker? What are the biggest challenges to getting artists a seat at those proverbial decision-making tables?
What a great question. For many of us in arts administration, it’s a given that great works of literature, theatre, film, music, architecture or visual art often inform society’s view of itself, reflecting civic and political beliefs. But clearly, not everyone holds that view. Artists aren’t often regarded as public thinkers unless they have some level of notoriety and success, and even then, they are sometimes not taken seriously.

Presenting institutions like museums, galleries, theaters and bookstores must forge closer relationships with their communities and invite artists to present and talk at free events. Residencies can do this as well.
At MacDowell, we host national public programming where artists present and discuss art and process and the thinking and purpose behind the work. Discussion forums where civic leaders, editors and producers attend can start to shift perceptions so the new Toni Morrisons, James Baldwins and Frank Zappas of the world can’t be ignored and are invited to debate civic matters. We—all of us from artists to art institutions—must increase our efforts at communicating and educating the public, the media and government leadership about the great ideas and deep insights that our best artists possess.

You shouldn’t have to be a great essayist to be considered to have something important to say. Composers, painters, video artists, choreographers, novelists, poets, architects and performers all have critically important insights. We, including those in the fourth and fifth estates, need to repeat that message and make it obvious that artists deserve a place at the table when decisions about public life are made.

In your view, what would a truly supportive artist economy look like in the U.S., and how far are we from realizing it?
To begin with, if we can’t establish a cabinet-level department of arts and culture where a federal policy on arts is developed and implemented, supporting arts creation throughout the U.S. and promoting its export overseas, then we should at least have a robustly supported National Endowment for the Arts that is funded in a way that shows the federal government understands the arts are vital to local and national economies.

We are a long way from that goal, and in the current political climate, it may be a Sisyphean task to get the NEA, NEH and arts programs in other federal departments the support they deserve, but administrations and priorities change. Art organizations like MacDowell have endured for many years. We are prepared to stay the course, unwavering in our mission to support artists across disciplines with time, space and freedom to create.

Support for the arts without constraint on free expression is smart economic and cultural policy and a sign of a strong democracy. With smart and relentless communication and education of voters and officials, a truly supportive artist economy does not have to be far off. Until we get there, arts institutions will continue raising private funds and may find partnerships between like-minded organizations worth the effort.
Secondly, strong federal and state support for the arts in public schools could catalyze and solidify a future route to a supportive artistic economy. Arts programs should never be cut from public school budgets. A well-balanced education includes instruction in and the making of art. Art appreciation follows naturally. Keeping art education strong in primary and secondary schools is key to our children’s futures, their ability to compete globally and the health of the economy.

There are far more talented artists than there are residency opportunities. What can be done to increase the number of programs or expand access to existing ones? Is there a role for government at the municipal or federal level in building new artist residency infrastructures across the country?
I’ll answer the second part first because it informs the first. A smart government that values all aspects of a town’s, state’s or country’s economy and culture can certainly help build residency infrastructure, from endorsing programs to developing funding mechanisms without raising taxes. Creating a federal department of arts and culture that works with local chambers of commerce and economic-development bureaus would be a perfect jump-start.

Expanding access is key; that’s something we are keen on at MacDowell. Nonprofit partnerships could allow residencies that want to expand to create satellite campuses or collaborative spaces. Incubation residencies could help new programs start without going it alone. Existing residencies might partner with urban renewal groups to create studios or work with shared-housing developers to include art spaces in new projects. It takes relentless work, new connections, good communication and fresh thinking.

Since joining MacDowell in 2023, how have you reimagined what artist support can look like? Are there shifts you’re proud of?
Artist support at MacDowell has always been comprehensive, from free studio space and housing to travel grants and three chef-prepared meals a day for two to six weeks. But we are not resting on our laurels and have done a lot of reimagining in just over two years. While MacDowell has always attracted a global community, our outreach to underexplored corners and underrepresented communities could be deeper. We are also doing more on our own continent among artists and potential supporters alike, so we’ve begun a multi-pronged outreach program to meet artists and supporters where they are. I’m proud of how our staff has embraced these efforts.

With our place at the proverbial table comes responsibility. A central question in our internal dialogue is whether we are using MacDowell’s century-plus of cultural power as a force for good. Are we supporting artists, the sector and other arts organizations in the way we should? We’re excited to lean into this story and help amplify arts, artists and the artist-support sector at a time when it is needed most.

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