South Carolina’s largest humanities supporter, a nonprofit that for 52 years has had its reach in “every nook and cranny,” including North Augusta and Aiken, is now facing an 80% budget cut after federal grant funding was cut for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
SC Humanities learned April 2 that the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had eliminated funding to the NEH, including all general operating grants and program-specific grants the NEH has historically awarded to humanities organizations nationwide.
SC Humanities has relied on about $1.1 million a year to sustain its own grant program, operations and lucrative partnerships like that it’s had with the Smithsonian Institute for almost half its life.
“We haven’t rolled over. We haven’t died yet,” Randy Akers, executive director for SC Humanities, said with weighted laugh – but it will be a matter of “navigating through murky waters.”
North Augusta hosted the Humanities Festival last fall, drawing an estimated 850 people and with the Arts and Heritage Center taking the lead locally in organizing artists, tours of historical homes and lectures from Aiken to Edgefield.
Akers confirmed that the Festival will continue (Lancaster is hosting it in October), as will the Speakers Bureau whose lecturers travel statewide to speak on topics as varied as South Carolina’s Equalization schools or the sudsy history of American Lager, even the Clemson v. Carolina rivalry.
But all grants from SC Humanities have been suspended, and “We remain shut down in the sense that government money is no longer available to us,” Akers said.
The Hampton Terrace Hotel exhibit opened as a permanent exhibit in the fall of 2023. It was partially funded by the nonprofit SC Humanities.
Both North Augusta and Aiken have received grants from SC Humanities in past. It’s these grants that have funded a permanent exhibit at the Arts and Heritage Center on the Hampton Terrace Hotel or, in Aiken, large-scale renovations at the Aiken County Historical Museum.
The Smithsonian partnership is also ending. It was this partnership that brought the traveling exhibit, “Spark! Places of Innovation” to Aiken, one of six host cities in South Carolina.
Reading programs promoting literacy, supports for K-12 teachers and students, book and cultural festivals and history programs around the United States’ Sestercentennial will also be impacted.
Akers said his big concern is for South Carolina’s smaller or more rural areas where even a small grant, “It gives them a little leverage to do something else, it brings in more people.”
Tony Riley gave a lecture on Edgefield pottery during the SC Humanities Festival in North Augusta Sept. 13.
The larger cultural organizations and big museums, like the Columbia Museum of Art or Charleston’s Gibbes Museum, won’t feel the hurt too much, he added, but the smaller ones, both those in South Carolina and some among the other 55 humanities councils nationwide, might not outlast the budget cuts.
“The humanities are for everyone. It’s not the elite, it’s not just intellectuals,” Akers said. “The humanities really, to me, help us understand ourselves better, understand our communities, our state. They’re demonstrated in many, many ways, whether in exhibits, in lectures, in documentary films. South Carolina is rich in history, rich in literature, rich in culture. We need to keep that alive.”
Akers said his and other like organizations have taken to social media, urging their supporters to contact their elected officials in Washington and press for some restored appropriations in the coming fiscal year.
“Hopefully, there’ll be enough outcry,” he said. Without the humanities, “A lot would be lost.”