By Sara Mohr, Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow
Cultural institutions across the United States—regardless of type or size—are facing unprecedented uncertainty, which is challenging long-standing models for communicating the value of arts and culture, for supporting these institutions, and for collaborating across the sector. To help address this uncertainty, the Academy held three virtual roundtable discussions in the fall of 2025 that brought together leaders from the arts and culture sector to reflect on these challenges and begin to outline strategies to move forward. To encourage open and candid dialogue, the discussions were held under the Chatham House Rule, so neither participants nor their comments can be identified in any materials related to the roundtables.
Drawing on themes developed in an exploratory meeting on Cultural Spaces and Their Communities convened by the Academy in Chicago in March 2025, the roundtables focused on how the Academy can best leverage its strengths and resources to support cultural spaces as anchor institutions in upholding American democracy. From these conversations, several key themes emerged. Participants agreed that cultural institutions play an important role in fostering shared forms of engagement that can translate into civic participation. One participant noted that cultural institutions provide vital opportunities for socialization and help people from different cultures and perspectives develop shared cultural norms.
Each group reflected on what it means for a cultural institution to identify as a democratic institution, highlighting the importance of creating spaces that welcome everyone and encourage individuals to engage in dialogue with other groups. To further emphasize the participatory nature of democracy, one participant underscored the need to promote co-creation in arts and culture, inviting people to be active participants in their cultural institutions rather than passive consumers. Many participants emphasized the power of the arts and the humanities to build community by helping us understand our differences, bridge those differences, and recognize our shared humanity.
Storytelling emerged as a central theme in all three conversations. As one participant noted, interacting with any art form is essentially listening to someone’s story—so limiting artistic creativity is, in effect, silencing someone’s voice. Another participant connected this idea to the way that the public humanities have shifted their messaging in recent years to place more of an emphasis on storytelling as a primary means of engagement. All three of the discussions explored how to create and sustain viable platforms for sharing these stories, especially given their role in recognizing our shared humanity in the face of rapid dehumanization from artificial intelligence, social media, and the current political climate. Several participants agreed that much of the civic value of culture is its ability to bring people together around shared stories despite their differences.
In each of the conversations, participants expressed concern about how the public perceives the value of cultural institutions. One participant stated that the current moment compels us to confront basic questions about why cultural institutions exist and why they are worth supporting. Another participant noted that cultural spaces should offer places for people to gather and find inspiration. Participants agreed about the importance of providing these opportunities and pointed to public libraries as a particularly successful example and model. One participant commented on the responsibility cultural institutions have to their communities, often by responding to needs at the neighborhood level. By creating spaces where people can gather and have their material needs met, cultural institutions foster mutual presence, which can encourage, in turn, mutual participation.
Despite broad agreement that arts and culture have intrinsic value in public life, the general consensus is that cultural institutions need to rethink how they articulate and communicate that value. One challenge is the continued reliance on metrics such as the economic impact of funding arts and culture. Several participants suggested that it was time to reconsider this approach, noting that focusing on economic outcomes can obscure the full range of contributions cultural institutions make to their communities. One participant added that these metrics tend to drive competition, pitting institutions against each other when they should be collaborating. That participant encouraged the development of new measures as well as having cultural institutions invite artists and community members into the conversation, asking what they value most in their cultural institutions and using that information to assess and compare programs.
All participants agreed that clearly communicating the value of cultural institutions is essential to securing the funding that they need to thrive. In today’s political climate where cultural institutions struggle for support, the roundtable discussions focused on how we should rethink what we choose to support. Several participants urged an increased focus on supporting a new generation of leaders. Funders tend to trust people more than institutions and often value a willingness to take risks and learn through innovation. One institutional leader shared that they are seeing a growing interest in leaders who make difficult decisions through consensus-building and strong moral principles. Another participant added that building support for this kind of human infrastructure often starts by bringing more funders into institutions so they can see these leaders in action firsthand.
Ensuring that cultural institutions are supported depends on their ability to remain relevant to the communities they serve. Several participants noted the importance of not only welcoming people into their institutions, but also integrating their institutions more fully into their communities. They highlighted public libraries as examples of institutions that consistently ask what they can do to serve community needs, use community feedback to inform future programming and services, and serve as a “third space” (after home and work) where people can have their needs met. One participant stated that truly meeting community needs requires institutions to intentionally seek out what those needs are, instead of just acting on the institution’s own assumptions about what the community needs. Cultural institutions should move away from transactional relationships and consistently ask themselves, “what does it mean to be an authentically good neighbor?”
Throughout these conversations, participants repeatedly emphasized that cultural institutions can only be good neighbors and partners in their communities when they learn from past collaborations, challenge traditional narratives of power, and create more opportunities for shared space. Many of the participants noted that our largest cultural institutions are often less connected to their local governments and communities than they should be. While they have partnered with smaller institutions, they have rarely evaluated those partnerships to understand what worked and what did not.
To make these partnerships more effective, one participant pointed out that large institutions must be willing to relinquish some of their power, recognize that artists can create independently of these institutions, and allow the community to lead in forming truly democratic cultural spaces. For example, one participant suggested that cultural institutions should be more present at important community events, even those unrelated to their own work, to build trust and connections that transcend generations and institutional silos. Other participants noted that the built environment can hinder effective community partnerships. They emphasized the importance of creating open architectural spaces that encourage conversation and multiple uses, as well as intentional urban design that brings together people from different backgrounds and co-locates arts and culture spaces with housing and other community resources. When institutions share space with the communities around them, they build stronger and more meaningful connections.
While all the roundtable participants were eager to explore creative ways to reengage communities, share resources, and reaffirm the value of arts and culture in public life, the challenges of today’s political climate remained a constant concern. Several participants noted the importance of naming and addressing these specific challenges so that institutions can respond to them. One participant emphasized the need for cultural institutions to work together so that conversations like these can continue, but also to ensure that no individual or group faces a challenge to their mission alone.
The discussions were also practical, examining the pros and cons of various funding sources, considering legal defense options, and speculating about the implications of potentially losing an institution’s nonprofit status. One participant stressed the importance of explaining to funders the basic infrastructure needs of cultural organizations. Overall, the participants agreed that collaboration is the best way to remain strong when not everyone sees the value of supporting cultural spaces.
These roundtable discussions and other conversations with leaders of cultural organizations have highlighted the vital civic role that cultural spaces play as places for gathering, participation, and community pride. These roundtables are informing a new Academy initiative on Democracy, Arts, and Cultural Spaces that will explore how cultural spaces can serve as anchor institutions in their communities, uphold democracy by encouraging civic engagement, and develop strategies to help these spaces remain resilient in the face of current challenges. Over the next five years, the project will draw on expertise from a diverse group of organizations—including museums, performing arts centers, government agencies, advocacy organizations, and libraries—to chart a path forward for the sector.
For more information about the Academy’s work on the arts and humanities, please visit the Academy’s website.