Help Support Mass Review in this Moment of Crisis

On Friday, May 2, at 9:48 p.m., the Massachusetts Review (along with hundreds of other art groups across the U.S.) was informed that its most recent National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) award had been terminated. We had been given a $15,000 grant to support the publication and promotion of a special issue featuring incarcerated writers and their families. The administration’s letter rationalizes their illegal impounding of previously committed funds as an effort to realign agency goals to match those of the White House. The plan is, it states, to “focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President.”

Certainly great art has been created in other times, following other models of funding. There has not always been an NEA. Renaissance playwrights like Shakespeare wrote and performed in the shadow and patronage of English monarchs, French neoclassical dramatists Molière and Racine basked in the light of Roi du Soleil. The new oligarchs surely have something similar in mind. Remember, they believe that art should “reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President.” What one must need do to earn the patronage of this President is obvious, whether it will result in art rather than Soviet-style adulation is another question entirely.

This year the Massachusetts Review will—come what may—still publish its special issue on incarcerated writers and family, because work like this is what we do. We won’t bow to please a king, and we won’t make our art alone. As has been true of all our work, we’ll do it with your help. Thank you for your support.