This weekend, artists are speaking out across the country
On Friday and Saturday, artists across the country are participating in Fall of Freedom — an undertaking which they say represents creative resistance to authoritarianism. More than 600 events of all sizes have been announced across more than 40 states, from Alaska to Florida.
"I think the reality is that both artists and institutions right now are feeling this fear, and we're feeling unmoored about what we are supposed to do. And the fear, I think, of being silenced starts right here, starts in our heads," said Eric Gottesman, a visual artist based in Washington, D.C. He is also co-executive director of For Freedoms, an arts organization that promotes civic engagement.
Gottesman and other artists around the nation say that many of their peers at cultural institutions are feeling scared and isolated, following sweeping grant cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts, the firings of programming staff at the Kennedy Center and an executive order from President Trump requiring an audit of Smithsonian museums. In August, Trump posted on social media that museums all over the country are "the last remaining segment of WOKE."
Gottesman added that many large cultural institutions seem to be stuck. "I think in this moment, when arts institutions are paralyzed by the real fear of suppression and retribution for ideas that seem critical to the kind of freedom that democracy promises, they're not able to support artists in the way that artists usually expect arts institutions to provide support . . .and so this creates a gap."
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/21/nx-s1-5609005/nationwide-artists-protest-fall-of-freedom
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Trump is trying to control art & culture just like Hitler did.
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