Andi Mathis, the state and regional specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts, found a post-apocalyptic landscape when she arrived in the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricanes Maria and Irma decimated the region in 2017. There were heaps of scrap metal by the side of the road. Many buildings had their roofs blown off, leaving them open to the sky. Normally bustling public areas were eerily empty, and people seemed haggard and battle-worn.

Mathis had traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as Puerto Rico, to facilitate the National Endowment for the Arts’ relief efforts following the devastating storms. It was part of the Arts Endowment’s long history of responding to natural and man-made disasters, and using the arts to promote healing following community trauma.

After Hurricane Maria, the National Endowment for the Arts carried out a multipronged relief effort, awarding emergency funding for re-granting to the affected state arts agencies—the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP) and the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts—and as a member agency in the federal Natural and Cultural Resources Recovery Support Function (NCRRSF), working in coordination with other federal agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of the Interior to help address recovery for the arts and cultural sector.

“The National Endowment for the Arts has played a key role in ensuring that the arts and culture is represented in the Economic and Disaster Recovery Plan for Puerto Rico after the impact of the hurricanes,” said Carlos R. Ruiz Cortés, executive director of the ICP. “The support has helped artists and the general population.”

In an example of interagency collaboration, representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services reached out to the Arts Endowment for advice on the cultural aspect of a behavioral health campaign in Puerto Rico to combat post-hurricane increases in alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide. The NEA connected the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña with the project, and with NEA support, the ICP employed the female art collective Moriviví to develop a mural with the residents of Cataño, a community that has suffered from high substance abuse and suicide rates since the hurricane.

As Chachi González, an artist with Moriviví, noted, “Healing is about not denying the situations we’re in and forgetting them, but turning them into stories of what we are able to do and what we can overcome.”