Dear Mayor-Elect Mamdani and Arts & Culture Transition Team: As you work to transform New York City into a more inclusive environment, where working-class residents and immigrants can truly exert their influence, remember that arts and culture are vital tools in shaping our futures. It’s essential to ensure everyone in our community can engage in artistic and cultural activities and access local programs affordably.
Unfortunately, artists from all fields—visual arts, dance, film, music, theater, and writing—who get recognition and fair pay often emerge from affluent backgrounds. This is because the time and resources to pursue the arts are increasingly out of reach for working-class individuals. Therefore, the core changes you propose, like rent freezes, free buses, and universal childcare, will significantly benefit the cultural sector, especially for artists and cultural workers from working-class backgrounds.
We in the arts sector should recognize that what you propose constitutes cultural policy and support these changes. However, it is also crucial for you to implement a bold vision for the city government’s role in nurturing the arts and enhancing community culture. This vision should treat arts as a public good on par with education, healthcare, housing, transportation, and public safety. As a democratic socialist, you understand the importance of substantial public sector support for these essential public goods to ensure universal access and equity.
Examining the current discrepancies in public arts funding, highlighted in the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) budget, is urgent. The need for action is underscored by the Center for an Urban Future’s latest report, Creative New York 2025. Disparities exist when neighborhoods like central Brooklyn or southeast Queens do not enjoy the same access to quality schools, transportation, or hospitals as the Upper East Side. The same goes for arts funding, where some areas receive ample support while others receive minimal assistance.
We must vocally acknowledge that DCLA allocates more annual funding to the Metropolitan Museum of Art than to all cultural institutions in Queens and Staten Island combined. Manhattan’s per-capita DCLA funding is ten times that of Queens and five times that of Brooklyn, with 80% of the budget going to just 39 organizations, leaving the remaining 1,000 funded organizations with only 20% of the budget.
