Despite the decades-long attempts on the right to paint the N.E.A. as rarefied snobbery welching off the state, forty per cent of N.E.A. activity happens in high-poverty areas. Thirty-six per cent of its institutional grants help groups working with disadvantaged populations. And a third of grants serve low-income audiences. The N.E.A. also helps military veterans, a decidedly non-urban élite population. The agency recently added four clinical sites to its existing seven; these sites provide “creative-arts therapies for service members, veterans, and families dealing with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.”