As of this writing, it is not yet clear exactly what the effects of the current budget showdown in Washington, D.C., will be on arts funding. Last week a sneak attack on the National Endowment for the Arts that would have targeted the agency for $10.6 million in cuts was defeated in the House of Representatives. But if the past is any guide, the arts will almost certainly have to swallow severe cuts. The NEA has seen its budget hacked away in recent budgets, even before the current budget-cutting mania and debt ceiling crisis set in.

Even if federal arts funding escapes drastic cuts, however, sharp reductions at the state level are likely to hobble the nation's cultural infrastructure. Most notoriously, Kansas governor Sam Brownback completely terminated support for arts in his state earlier this year. A recent report by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) tracks the overall state of arts funding, depicting it in perilous decline across the board.

Overall, the combined total appropriations for the arts in all 50 states add up to $259 million in 2012. This is down from $275 million this year, and from a recent peak of $355 in 2008.

In their 2012 budgets, states like Texas and Wisconsin have seen particularly dramatic drawdowns in arts support, by 77 percent and 67 percent respectively. Meanwhile, states that are nationally known for the arts are some of the hardest hit: Illinois sees a 26 percent cut (from about $12 to about $9 million), New York a 13 percent cut (from $42 to $36 million), and Florida faces an 11 percent reduction (from $6.4 to $5.7 million).

Across the country, state arts agencies have been hit with major restructuring schemes and mergers with other agencies, or have had to fight to stave off complete termination of state support. Though Kansas remains alone in annihilating its agency, lawmakers in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota considered eliminating theirs for the 2010 budgeting period, and similar attempts were made in 2011 in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. In budgeting for the 2012 fiscal year, states including Washington and South Carolina debated complete termination. (The NASAA has published a useful roundup of developments.)

What impact will the attacks on funding have? Can't private donors step into the void left by government support? The ongoing contraction of state-level arts funding is likely to be felt most keenly by small organizations, who benefit most from the modest grants offered by regional arts agencies. In an article about state arts cuts earlier this year, NASAA CEO Jonathan Katz explained that state-level agencies focus their grant-making on the unglamorous "operating support" that corporations, foundations, and individual donors find less attractive.

"That's one area where state arts agencies are distinctive in their giving," Katz said. "If you took them away as a funding entity, lots of organizations would notice it, but the mid-sized and smaller ones would notice it the most, because the grants make up a larger portion of their budget."

In case it wasn't clear, arts advocate and Kennedy Center chief Michael M. Kaiser makes plain the specifics of what this means in a New York Times piece on state arts cutbacks: "When any form of government funding is cut, the organizations that tend to get hit the most are rural, organizations of color, avant-garde institutions — those that have a harder time raising individual and corporate money."

In other words, the fallout of the contraction in state funding is likely to make the arts less inclusive, less diverse, less experimental, and, for lack of a better word, more conservative.