Talk to anyone in the local arts world and they’ll tell you: Wisconsin is among the worst states when it comes to funding the arts.
The Badger State spends about $0.18 per capita on arts funding, placing it at 49th in the country, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. It’s a big contrast from neighboring states Minnesota and Illinois, which spend $10.07 and $2.71 respectively.
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“This is not a new conversation,” says Christine Hojnacki, executive director of Imagine MKE, a nonprofit advocating for arts and culture in Milwaukee. Going back to the turn of the last century, Milwaukee arts groups have relied more on private contributions and earned revenue rather than public money to stay afloat. Historically, the strength of local philanthropy in Milwaukee is partially responsible for the robustness of the arts and culture offerings here.
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But now, with both of those streams dwindling, our arts and culture sector is desperate for every funding source available to sustain itself. Inflation, increased production costs and ticket sales that are still rebounding after the pandemic are among the financial challenges that arts groups are facing. Meanwhile, the rising cost of living as well as the high cost of studio spaces are creating challenges for artists of all types.
At the same time, competition for dollars from other nonprofit sectors has increased. And the National Endowment for the Arts’ recent withdrawal of federal grants pushes the situation to a breaking point. With all these factors at play, arts advocates are looking for every dollar they can find, and that includes state funding.
What’s their pitch to state lawmakers?
That Wisconsin’s arts and culture sector could be an economic boon to the entire state.
According to a study conducted by Americans for the Arts and Imagine MKE, Milwaukee’s nonprofit arts sector alone generated an estimated $334.6 million in economic activity in 2022. (Statewide, the sector generated $933.3 million.) Anne Katz, executive director of Create Wisconsin, a statewide arts advocacy group, argues that investing in the arts and culture sector is vital to strengthening the state’s changing economy and competing with other regions.
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For years, Create Wisconsin has made a persistent push to increase funding for the Wisconsin Arts Board, the state agency that distributes arts dollars. This February, Gov. Tony Evers included a measure to boost it to $0.68 per capita in his 2025-27 state budget proposal, along with one-time funding for a Rural Creative Economy program and a film office with tax incentives.
The proposals faced an uphill battle with a Republican-led Legislature keen on cutting rather than spending. In the months after the proposal, Create Wisconsin, Imagine MKE and others lobbied lawmakers to see the value in arts investment.
“The government is never going to be a major portion of anybody’s budget,” says George Tzougros, executive director of the Wisconsin Arts Board. “It wouldn’t be appropriate anyway. What it does do is it really can catalyze things.”
For arts groups, public money can be a more reliable income stream – awards are granted by an independent board based on criteria, rather than the whims of a particular donor or philanthropy officer. And that vetting process makes philanthropists more likely to further support a publicly funded project or organization.
When the arts are thriving, they draw people out of their homes and subsequently into restaurants, bars, hotels and more, Tzougros says. “The arts are not a black hole [for public funds]. It’s actually helping to pay back and making a community a place where people want to live, work and play.”
This isn’t Tzougros’ first arts funding crisis. In 2011, then-Gov. Scott Walker proposed eliminating the Wisconsin Arts Board entirely. Advocates argued the state would lose matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, which requires each state to have its own arts agency. Instead, Wisconsin kept the board but cut its staff, downsized the state’s monetary contribution and moved it under the Department of Tourism. WAB’s budget was halved, and it’s stayed the same since.
Ultimately, the state budget signed in July only marginally increased arts funding – still considered a success compared to cuts in other states. But uncertainty with the National Endowment for the Arts has only upped the urgency. The agency rescinded hundreds of federal grants from arts groups nationwide in May, including at least nine from Milwaukee, and the Trump administration has called to eliminate the NEA entirely. “If there are no longer any [NEA] funds, are state lawmakers going to feel compelled to provide any money at all?” says Rob Henken, executive director of the Herzfeld Foundation and past president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum. “It’s conceivable that the situation gets even worse.”
Polly Morris, executive director of Lynden Sculpture Garden, says pursuing state funding is a red herring. “If they’re willing to cut day care for working families and all that education money, why are they going to fund the arts?” She argues that solutions might lie municipally, such as a dedicated revenue stream like real estate or hotel tax going to the Milwaukee Arts Board, of which Morris is vice chair.
But the Milwaukee Arts Board is restricted in scale and scope, funding groups mostly through small operational grants. Joel Cencius, executive director of Arts @ Large, says there are other creative ways arts groups and artists can work with the city. He cited a recent project in Walker’s Point, for which Arts @ Large was approached by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and city officials to create a community art project using city and private dollars. Government funding makes up little of Arts @ Large’s budget – 2% in total, Cencius says – but “if we had a larger guaranteed amount of money from the state, it helps reduce the stress of having to make it up from somewhere else.”
Because of this, increased state support would allow groups more flexibility and the chance to plan out further. But Henken says it would only help, not solve, the acute challenges facing arts groups. Evers’ initial proposal of an additional $2.95 million would have been spread across all of Wisconsin’s 72 counties and only move the state to 38th in the country, if it had passed. Katz says no matter what, Create Wisconsin will keep pushing to fill the bucket for the arts as it continues to drain.
Since joining the Herzfeld Foundation, Henken says he’s spoken to many arts groups and looked at their finances. “The depth of the challenge has become more pronounced to me,” he says. “It has become more alarming in terms of what the overall ecosystem is going to look like five or 10 years from now if things don’t change.”
