(5 min read)

As an artist and arts administrator, I’ve sat on many selection panels and juries over the years to award grants and spots in competitive programs, residencies, and performance series. Serving in this role is considered an honor, but more often than not, it lays bare the flawed mechanisms within arts ecosystems. At some point there is always a panelist who fundamentally misunderstands something very clear and articulate in a proposal, or a very vocal person who is gunning for a candidate they know over a newer artist. Sometimes it’s quite clear a panelist didn’t even read an application. And yet decisions are made and awards are sent out and the message that some work is more valuable than others is cemented.

Sometimes sitting on a panel requires people like me to find graceful ways to navigate conversations around elitism and classism and opportunity for artists who may not have the same resume or work samples as those with resources and connections. Sometimes panelists can all be on the same progressive political page and the institution itself pushes back. Honey, it can be rough, and a lot of it mirrors larger value systems artists live under in this capitalist hellscape.

There is a joke amongst artists about the “rejection email.” It is sometimes warm and thoughtful and holds space for the vulnerability of being told no. It is a rite of passage, more common than the acceptance email, and generally leaves out the arbitrary details of how a decision was made. It’s cringey and performative and also usually written by a fellow artist with a day job in a cultural institution that doesn’t pay them nearly enough.

Even though I know a rejection email is fundamentally no indication of my worth as a person or as an artist, it still can sting. I have been thinking on why that is lately.

A fellow artist says we’re all clamoring for the same limited resources, so of course it hurts to be told no. In a country that does not fund the arts and actively pushes against their value, a rejection email for an artist can feel like salt in the wound capitalism has already cut into us. “Yeah, we all want it before art is illegal in two years,” I joked. 

There is a soft censorship that has been happening within the arts in the U.S. since the 1980s, when the NEA stopped funding individual artists during the puritanical rampage of the Reagan administration. Experimental work, art that challenged power (see: Ron Athey), work about AIDS and women and minorities, slowly began to be chipped away. The decision for what was funded and who made funding decisions slowly ramped up to where we are today.

Art and culture suffers when artists do not receive support to make their visions a reality. Learning how to play the game, artists began crafting proposals that would support the narrow standards of the funding institution, limiting experimentation and work that might “fail.” In 2025 we saw many arts institutions straight up have their funding cut from the NEA because their work did not fit the president’s focus. Honey, it’s arbitrary and fragile.

This subtle censorship is something we have to push against. A narrow valuing of something as subjective as art leaves an open void that can quickly turn authoritarian. In this current moment of rising authoritarianism, we must push back in spaces where we have even the smallest bit of power: at work, when dealing with institutions, on panels for even the smallest amount of funding. 

Sometimes pushing back against the myopia of the Art World and the Institution is as simple as putting value outside of their markets and standards. I have been thinking a lot about the power of gathering. Is it radical to gather people together to share art and ideas? Yeah, I think it is. Is now the time to resurge the salon, a gathering of working class artists and thinkers to share time, space, art, and ideas? Maybe it is. 

I have been thinking about why more people don’t gather across social groups. There is a siloing in this country that keeps different types of working class people separate. It is by design. We must push against this because we have so much to learn from one another, even and especially through our art and ideas for a better world.

As I’ve seen in the “panel economy,” the Institution will use the optics of diversity to make themselves look good while ignoring the whiteness, classism, and limitations of the Institution’s internal functions. There is a tokenization of “difference” instead of spaces to truly gather diverse perspectives and experiences together. Institutions will always choose optics that sustain their public perception and the good graces of their funders than they will focus on truly supporting the nuances of what it means to be an artist.

I have seen artist friends share their despondence upon receiving rejection emails that put a stopper on their practices. “If I had gotten that grant, I would’ve been able to afford to make this happen… to take some time off of work… to experiment.” The working class artist should not be clamoring for the crumbs of the Institution that does not reflect us or value us. We must gather and make our own systems of value, free from the claws of the oligarch collector or the Zionist Board Members. 

Our answer is not within the Institution. The revolution will not have 501(c)3 status. It will not be led by a Board of Directors. It will not be guided by a 250 word statement of contrived drivel that forces us to slut out our marginalized identities to make someone with power feel better about themselves. 

Artists are invaluable, not because we create value for a market, but because the way we see the world and our ability to imagine new paths is something that cannot be controlled by the arms of dictators. We must listen to those like us and those who are different, together, in the same room. We must gather.