Talking Heads's David Byrne Joins Push To Boost Cultural Funding

NEW YORK — David Byrne is worrying about the government. The acclaimed musician of Talking Heads fame joined a Tuesday rally urging Mayor Bill de Blasio to increase public funding to support arts and culture, not cut it.

"Culture helps your whole city, your whole community, even if you don’t partake in it," Byrne said outside City Hall, flanked by dozens of advocates.

De Blasio's executive budget for the 2020 fiscal year inclues about $133 million in city funding for cultural programs and institutions, according to a City Council briefing paper. That's more than $59 million less than the roughly $192.8 million included in last year's adopted budget.

The cuts would hurt organizations that often struggle to stay afloat despite contributing to an industry that contributes to the city's economy, advocates and Council members said.

Byrne argued that cultural institutions lift up communities across the city, saying that research has linked their presence to lower crime and obesity rates and higher test scores.

"Culture has this incredible knock-on effect on all these areas," he said.

The cuts are included in de Blasio's proposed budget for the Department of Cultural Affairs, which is about $55 million smaller than last year's adopted budget.

The Council gave the agency a one-time $13.7 million funding boost in last year's adopted budget, but the de Blasio administration has not added that to its baseline funding as the Council recommended, according to the briefing paper. The Council has also recommended putting an additional $10 million in the department's budget.

The budget cuts could especially hurt black and brown cultural organizations, which struggle more than others to find support, said Rob Fields, the president and executive director of the Weeksville Heritage Center. Fields's center at the site of one of Brooklyn's first free African-American communities recently avoided closure thanks to a crowdfunding campaign.

"To Weeksville, budget cuts to culture impact our ability to bring our programs to an already under-resourced community in Crown Heights," Fields said. "Our budget challenges have meant that we're not open every weekend like we should be."

A spokesman for the Department of Cultural Affairs stood by de Blasio's support for cultural organizations as the city faces a tough fiscal outlook.

"We have made unprecedented investments in our cultural sector under this Administration, money we’ve put to work in communities across the city by bringing greater equity to how funds are distributed," the spokesman, Ryan Max, said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing conversations with the City Council about support for the city’s cultural community, in light of the current fiscal reality."

The 2019 adopted budget for cultural institutions included revenue from the city's admissions agreement with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with money from a Council program that's typically put in when the budget is adopted, the department said.

The debate comes as de Blasio, a Democrat, starts his presidential campaign. Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer suggested that giving cash to cultural organizations is in line with the mayor's stated mission of making New York the nation's fairest big city.

"If you care about being the most progressive, the most fair city, in this country, you must believe in culture and the arts," said Van Bramer, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Council's Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations.