Department of Cultural Affairs

The annual budget dance between the Bloomberg administration and New York City’s publicly-funded art institutions has become something of a sad tradition. “There were several years where things were much easier,” NYC Arts Coalition chairwoman Norma Munn recalls to AFC. But “things have gotten much worse” this year, Munn says, as the mayor’s office has attempted to slash the budget of the Department of Cultural Affairs, the government agency responsible for city support of the 34 Cultural Institution Groups and hundreds of nonprofit arts groups that Munn represents. For many of the arts’ largest supporters, this year’s budget dance is more than just a fight to restore funding to the DCA. The process itself has become the enemy, and its threat to New York’s homegrown art has become all too real.