New York Approves Record $323.8 Million for Culture as Santiago Ferrari Retrospective Is Canceled
New York City has approved a record $323.8 million in annual funding for culture, a move that gives the city’s arts agencies a larger budget even as other public institutions elsewhere face cuts. The package includes a new $10 million Cultural Stability Fund for struggling cultural organizations, and it raises the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ allocation to $323.8 million, up 7 percent from last year’s $299.6 million.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Council backed the budget, which also exceeded the council’s initial proposal by more than $100 million. In a statement, Mamdani framed the increase as part of an effort to keep artists in the city. “A crushing affordability crisis has threatened to drive out the very artists who have long defined life in this city,” he said.
The announcement lands in sharp contrast to developments in Chile, where a retrospective devoted to the late Argentine artist León Ferrari (1920–2013) was canceled at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago after budget cuts by the newly installed far-right government led by José Antonio Kast. The exhibition had been scheduled for June and was being developed over three years as an adaptation of the 2023 Buenos Aires exhibition “Recurrencias.” Andrés Duprat, who was organizing the project and directs the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Argentina, said the museum was told it could not afford to stage the show. “It is a great shame,” he said. “Everything was already in place: the list of works, the transport and insurance budgets, and the exhibition layout.”
Chile’s Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage budget was cut by nearly 10 percent. Ferrari’s work, which confronts state violence and authoritarianism, has long carried political force — a fact that makes the cancellation especially resonant in the current climate.
The same report also notes a broader strain on cultural institutions in Europe, where many Jewish museums have seen attendance fall since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack in Israel. Janus Moller Jensen, director of Copenhagen’s Danish Jewish Museum, said some visitors appear to avoid Jewish institutions because they associate them with Israel. For museum leaders, the pattern reflects not only changing public behavior, but a more troubling atmosphere around Jewish life in Europe.
