The National Park System’s Lesser-Known Role as Patron of the Arts

August 28, 2026 / Sophie Clearwater /

Dawn Waters Baker, Mist and Shadow. Oil on canvas. Baker has participated in residencies at at Big Bend National Park in Texas, Gettysburg and Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. Courtesy the artist

The Trump administration has repeatedly announced its intentions of abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts but, in fact, Congress passed—and President Trump signed—the fiscal 2026 budget that allocated $207 million for the independent agency in a seeming win for culture. Yet as part of Department of Government Efficiency cuts to the federal workforce in 2025, 13,000 employees (or 20 percent of the total) from the U.S. Department of the Interior were let go (or given opportunities for voluntary early retirement), which included over 1,000 full-time staff (or 24 percent) at the National Park Service, with seasonal hires down to 4,500 from the usual 8,000. What’s that got to do with the arts? That reduction in funding has affected the operations of the National Park Service’s artist-in-residence program, which permits artists (a category encompassing visual artists, performers, composers and writers) to live and work at these sites, as well as provide demonstrations and talks for members of the public who visit America’s national parks.

The lack of staff has meant that a number of national parks are unable to host artists, including the Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, Death Valley National Park in California and Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska. At Glacier National Park in Montana, prospective artist-in-residence applicants read on its website that “Due to staffing shortages, applications for new residencies are temporarily on hold. Check back for updates.” The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in Iowa has also mothballed its Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program “due to staffing levels,” according to an employee still working at the site.

Still, artists continue to take part in national parks artist-in-residence programs, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior: “The number of artist-in-residence programs naturally fluctuates from year to year and this year’s number is in line with past years. In recent fiscal years, the number has ranged from 40 to 58, consistent with historical variation, with around 50 programs in 2025.” These programs trace their ideological roots to the late 19th Century, when painters and photographers documented the landscapes of the American West, helping to convince Congress to establish the first national parks. Their vivid works inspired the public and lawmakers to protect the wilds of the West before the National Park Service was founded in 1916.

A woman sits on a rocky coastline holding a drawing board, facing the sea beneath a heavy overcast sky. — Nancy Silvia has also participated in artist-in-residence programs at multiple national parks. Courtesy the artist

These residencies vary in length from a couple of weeks to several months or longer, although most are on the shorter side. Each is unique, with most, but not all, providing accommodations—those that don’t typically permit artists to set up camping sites and cook their own meals—while others may offer meals and a stipend. Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, for instance, lets artists (and their families) stay at a house just outside the park boundaries and provides a $4,000 stipend for its three-and-a-half week residency. The Fort Union National Monument in New Mexico offers a $1,000 stipend and housing for individual artists and couples, but notes that the site is “isolated on the high plains of New Mexico, 30-40 minutes from nearby towns, with spotty cell phone service and no or limited WiFi available.” The artist-in-residence program at Death Valley National Park offers a $3,000 stipend, as well as a room in a “modern air-conditioned hotel” in Stovepipe Wells Village that includes “all hotel amenities and daily food from the Toll Road Restaurant.”

The principal requirement for artists in these and other AIR programs is to do some sort of public event while in residence and to donate at least one artwork—or piece of writing, for writers, or video of a performance, for performers—to the specific park for its collection.

Ian Grieve, a painter in Nashville, Tennessee, was an artist-in-residence at the Weir Farm National Historic Park in Wilton, Connecticut, this past May, receiving a $400 stipend, in addition to accommodations at the caretaker’s house and use of the studio where J. Alden Weir, an American Impressionist (1852-1919), had worked. Grieve was not particularly familiar with Weir’s work and, “as a figurative painter, I arrived expecting to spend a month surrounded by extraordinary landscapes, but initially struggled to understand how my work fit the place. I felt a certain pressure to respond directly to them, yet landscape painting is not my usual language.” The park’s curator, Elizabeth Poland, proved to be helpful, showing Grieve objects from the park’s own collection, including a painting of Evelyn Nesbit that Weir had torn up. “After the murder of his close friend, architect Stanford White, by Nesbit’s husband, Harry Thaw, Weir ripped the painting into four pieces,” he said. Those four fragments were kept and were individually framed, and Grieve found that they possessed “a strange beauty that differs from the original painting. As someone whose work often develops through layering, revision, fragmentation and visible traces of change, I knew I’d found my connection. I decided to paint Evelyn Nesbit myself, responding to Weir’s fractured portrait.”

A stylized white rabbit-shaped vase filled with yellow daffodils against a vivid red background. — Lori Larusso, *Bunny Vase and Daffodils*. 24×24 in. Painted during Larusso’s time at the Weir Farm residency. Courtesy the artist

Another artist who found a connection to the site where he was in residence was Stephen Towns, a painter and fiber artist living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. “Most of my work is inspired by historic events and people and examines how it influences contemporary society,” he said, making the Gettysburg National Military Park, where he had a one-month residency in 2019, an ideal choice. In his role as artist-in-residence, he had access to the museum, museum archives and tours of the battlegrounds. He had been doing his own research on the Civil War, so “touring the museum and grounds and viewing the archives provided first-hand accounts of the time period I had been exploring in my artwork. It also provided source material for work. I used it to create figures and backgrounds for my paintings and quilts.” His accommodations on the site consisted of a small historic cabin on the battlegrounds, where he also set up a studio to make smaller works.

“The site also had a book where each artist wrote about their experience participating in the residency. This was very helpful. Artists were generously providing information about local resources and places to eat and find entertainment in such a small town. I also remember one artist explaining all of the unusual noises you would hear in the cabin and what caused them. This helped alleviate fears of ghosts or the supernatural.”

Yet another artist who had a particular connection to the parks where he applied to the residency was William “Chip” Beck, a former combat artist with the U.S. Navy who spent time at both Gettysburg and Manassas National Battlefield parks. “To prepare for the residencies, I researched and read as much as I could about the parks, their historical significance, and geography,” he said. “At each park, the park ranger lectures and tours were also invaluable. The goal of the artist, at least this artist, was to create a piece of art that was more than just a pretty picture. It had to speak of the history and the people who populated those areas in key periods of history. That’s not to say that I didn’t also portray landscapes, historical buildings, ruins or re-imagined events as well. In Gettysburg, I used the statuary and my photographic skills as ‘models’ for my set-piece paintings.”

A lone figure seen from behind stands in shallow reflective water beneath a dramatic orange sky, holding a long object as dark clouds glow along the horizon. — Chip Beck, *Destiny Awaits*. 2×3 feet. Portrait of a Union Soldier stepping off the “High Water Mark” on Cemetery Ridge to meet Pickett’s Charge. Courtesy Chip Beck

The National Park Service permits artists to do more than one residency, and quite a few have applied to and been accepted at numerous sites. Dawn Waters Baker, a painter in Dallas, Texas, has been at Big Bend National Park in Texas, Gettysburg and Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, enjoying each for “the feeling of being very small in something very vast, and the National Parks remind me of that in thousands of ways every single day I was in them. These wild spaces with heartbreaking stories and uncontainable beauty can change us if we let them.” On the other hand, Lori Larusso, a painter in Louisville, Kentucky, said that she would have preferred residencies at Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida or Glacier National Park “but, last time I checked, they do not offer studio spaces, and my work requires a more traditional studio work space,” so she took Weir Farm instead.

Artist residencies, of course, exist not only at national parks but at museums, universities, privately funded artist communities and foundations and even hotels. Nancy Silvia, a plein-air landscape painter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who has been selected to be an artist-in-residence at three national parks (Acadia in Maine, Aztec Ruins in New Mexico and Cape Cod National Seashore), one state program (Alaska State Parks in Juneau) and two artist communities (Ucross in Wyoming and Ragdale in Illinois), noted that they were all quite different. Her accommodations at Aztec Ruins consisted of an RV parked outside the national park, while in Juneau she was housed in a cabin where the facilities “were an outhouse, and bears were all around all the time.” At Ucross and Ragdale, on the other hand, bedrooms and studio space were plentiful, and artists were given three meals a day. Still, she said, “they all provide a wonderful way to have dedicated work time.”