National Endowment for the Arts
Encyclopedia
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current Chairman is Broadway theatre
producer
Rocco Landesman
. The NEA has its offices in the Old Post Office building, in Washington, D.C.
It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre
in 1995.
Between 1965 and 2008, the agency has made in excess of 128,000 grants, totaling more than $4 billion. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Congress granted the NEA an annual funding of between US$160 and US$180 million. In 1996, Congress cut the NEA funding to US$99.5 million as a result of pressure from conservative groups, including the American Family Association
, who criticized the agency for using tax dollars to fund highly controversial artists such as Robert Clark Young
, Barbara Degenevieve
, Andres Serrano
, Robert Mapplethorpe
, and the performance artists known as the "NEA Four
". Since 1996, the NEA has partially rebounded with a 2004 budget of US$121 million. For FY 2008, the budget is US$144.7 million. For FY 2009, the budget is US$155 million. For FY 2010, the budget reached the level it was at during the mid-1990s at US$167.5 million but fell again in FY 2011 with a budget of $154 million.
, local arts agencies, media arts, museums, music, musical theater, opera, presenting (including multidisciplinary art forms), theater, and visual arts.
The NEA also grants individual fellowships in literature to creative writers and translators of exceptional talent in the areas of prose and poetry.
The NEA has partnerships in the areas of state and regional, federal, international activities, and design. The state arts agencies and regional arts organizations are the NEA’s primary partners in serving the American people through the arts. Forty percent of all NEA funding goes to the state arts agencies and regional arts organizations.
Additionally, the NEA awards three Lifetime Honors: NEA National Heritage Fellowships to master folk and traditional artists, NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships to jazz musicians and advocates, and NEA Opera Honors to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to opera in the United States. The NEA also manages the National Medal of Arts
, awarded annually by the President.
The NEA is the largest grantmaker to arts organizations in the nation.
and Joseph Coors
, discovered "the needs involved and benefits of past assistance", concluding that continued federal support was important.
of the American Family Association
held a press conference attacking what he called "anti-Christian bigotry," in an exhibition by photographer Andres Serrano
. The work at the center of the controversy was Piss Christ
, a photo of a plastic crucifix submerged in a vial of an amber fluid described by the artist as his own urine. Republican Senators Jesse Helms
and Al D'Amato
began to rally against the NEA, and expanded the attack to include other artists. Prominent conservative Christian figures including Pat Robertson
of the 700 Club and Pat Buchanan
joined the attacks. Republican representative Dick Armey
, an opponent of federal arts funding, began to attack a planned exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe at the Corcoran Museum of Art that was to receive NEA support.
On June 12, 1989, The Corcoran cancelled the Mapplethorpe exhibition. Museum director Christina Orr-Cahill said she did not want to imperil the NEA's future funding allocation. Orr-Cahill was criticized and picketed by artists, civil liberties activists, and gay leaders for her act of censorship; she later apologized.
Though this controversy inspired congressional debate about appropriations to the NEA, including proposed restrictions on the content of NEA-supported work and their grantmaking guidelines, efforts to defund the NEA failed.
, Tim Miller
, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes
, were performance art
ists whose proposed grants from the United States
government's National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June 1990. Grants were overtly vetoed on the basis of subject matter after the artists had successfully passed through a peer review
process. The artists won their case in court in 1993 and were awarded amounts equal to the grant money in question, though the case would make its way to the United States Supreme Court in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley
. The case centered on subsection (d)(1) of which provides that the NEA Chairperson shall ensure that artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which applications are judged. The court ruled in , that Section 954(d)(1) is facially valid, as it neither inherently interferes with First Amendment rights nor violates constitutional vagueness principles.
of 1994 cleared the way for House Speaker Newt Gingrich to lead a renewed attack on the NEA. Gingrich had called for the NEA to be eliminated completely along with the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
. While some in Congress attacked the funding of controversial artists, others argued the endowment was wasteful and elitist. However, despite massive budget cutbacks and the end of grants to individual artists, Gingrich ultimately failed in his push to eliminate the endowment.
that then-Communications Director Yosi Sergant
had participated in an August 10, 2009 conference call that allegedly directed artists to create works of art promoting President Barack Obama
's domestic agenda. "I would encourage you to pick something, whether it’s health care, education, the environment, you know, there’s four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service," Sergant said on the call, making reference to the four areas of focus earlier outlined by Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for United We Serve. Suggested areas of focus mentioned in the call included preventative care, child nutrition, community cleanups, trail maintenance, reading tutoring, and homelessness. At another point he said, "This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally. We're still trying to figure out the laws of putting government websites of Facebook and the use of Twitter. This is all being sorted out. We are participating in history as it's being made, so bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely. And we can really work together to move the needle to get stuff done." Some journalists speculated that this was evidence that Sergant was aware of the possibility he might be crossing the line into advocacy. At the time of the call, the federal government was drafting new policies concerning federal agencies' use of social media; these were released the following month.
The NEA countered the allegations by asserting that Sergant had acted unilaterally and without the approval of then-Acting Chairman Patrice Walker Powell, and that the call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda but rather to inform members of the arts community of an opportunity to become involved in volunteerism through the United We Serve program. They also noted that the call had nothing to do with grantmaking.
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
producer
Theatrical producer
A theatrical producer is the person ultimately responsible for overseeing all aspects of mounting a theatre production. The independent producer will usually be the originator and finder of the script and starts the whole process...
Rocco Landesman
Rocco Landesman
Rocco Landesman has been a long-time Broadway theatre producer. In August 2009 he became chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts...
. The NEA has its offices in the Old Post Office building, in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre
Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre
The Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre is a non-competitive award created by the American Theatre Wing in 1990. They are presented to institutions, individuals and/or organizations that have demonstrated extraordinary achievement in theatre, but are not eligible to compete in any of the...
in 1995.
Background
The NEA is "dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education".Between 1965 and 2008, the agency has made in excess of 128,000 grants, totaling more than $4 billion. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Congress granted the NEA an annual funding of between US$160 and US$180 million. In 1996, Congress cut the NEA funding to US$99.5 million as a result of pressure from conservative groups, including the American Family Association
American Family Association
The American Family Association is a 501 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, pornography, and abortion, as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free...
, who criticized the agency for using tax dollars to fund highly controversial artists such as Robert Clark Young
Robert Clark Young
Robert Clark Young is an American author of novels, essays, short stories and journalism. Recurring themes in Young's fiction include the relation between alcoholism, the abuse of power, and institutional dysfunction in American life, while his nonfiction has recently focused on eldercare topics...
, Barbara Degenevieve
Barbara Degenevieve
Barbara DeGenevieve is an interdisciplinary artist currently living in Chicago, who works in photography, video, and performance. She lectures widely on her work as well as subjects including human sexuality, gender, transsexuality, censorship, ethics, and pornography...
, Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
, Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
, and the performance artists known as the "NEA Four
NEA Four
The "NEA Four", Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes, were performance artists whose proposed grants from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June 1990. Grants were overtly vetoed on the basis of subject matter after...
". Since 1996, the NEA has partially rebounded with a 2004 budget of US$121 million. For FY 2008, the budget is US$144.7 million. For FY 2009, the budget is US$155 million. For FY 2010, the budget reached the level it was at during the mid-1990s at US$167.5 million but fell again in FY 2011 with a budget of $154 million.
Governance
The NEA is governed by a Chairman appointed by the President. The National Council on the Arts advises the Chairman on policies and programs, as well as reviewing grant applications, fundraising guidelines, and leadership initiative. This body consists of fourteen individuals appointed by the President for their expertise and knowledge in the arts, in addition to six ex officio members of Congress who serve in a non-voting capacity.Grantmaking
The NEA offers grants in the categories of: 1) Grants for Arts Projects, 2) National Initiatives, and 3) Partnership Agreements. Grants for Arts Projects support exemplary projects in the discipline categories of artist communities, arts education, dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literatureLiterature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, local arts agencies, media arts, museums, music, musical theater, opera, presenting (including multidisciplinary art forms), theater, and visual arts.
The NEA also grants individual fellowships in literature to creative writers and translators of exceptional talent in the areas of prose and poetry.
The NEA has partnerships in the areas of state and regional, federal, international activities, and design. The state arts agencies and regional arts organizations are the NEA’s primary partners in serving the American people through the arts. Forty percent of all NEA funding goes to the state arts agencies and regional arts organizations.
Additionally, the NEA awards three Lifetime Honors: NEA National Heritage Fellowships to master folk and traditional artists, NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships to jazz musicians and advocates, and NEA Opera Honors to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to opera in the United States. The NEA also manages the National Medal of Arts
National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...
, awarded annually by the President.
The NEA is the largest grantmaker to arts organizations in the nation.
1981 attempts to abolish
Ronald Reagan intended to push Congress to abolish the NEA completely over a three-year period upon entering the office in 1981. However, this plan was abandoned when the president's special task force on the arts and humanities, which included close Reagan allies such as conservatives Charlton HestonCharlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
and Joseph Coors
Joseph Coors
Joseph Coors, Sr. , was the grandson of Adolph Coors and president of Coors Brewing Company. -Birth and education:...
, discovered "the needs involved and benefits of past assistance", concluding that continued federal support was important.
1989 objections
In 1989, Donald WildmonDonald Wildmon
Donald E. Wildmon is an ordained United Methodist minister, author, former radio host, and founder and chairman emeritus of the American Family Association and American Family Radio.-Biography:...
of the American Family Association
American Family Association
The American Family Association is a 501 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, pornography, and abortion, as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free...
held a press conference attacking what he called "anti-Christian bigotry," in an exhibition by photographer Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
. The work at the center of the controversy was Piss Christ
Piss Christ
Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine...
, a photo of a plastic crucifix submerged in a vial of an amber fluid described by the artist as his own urine. Republican Senators Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
and Al D'Amato
Al D'Amato
Alfonse Marcello "Al" D'Amato is an American lawyer and former New York politician. A Republican, he served as United States Senator from New York from 1981 to 1999.-Early life and family:...
began to rally against the NEA, and expanded the attack to include other artists. Prominent conservative Christian figures including Pat Robertson
Pat Robertson
Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is a media mogul, television evangelist, ex-Baptist minister and businessman who is politically aligned with the Christian Right in the United States....
of the 700 Club and Pat Buchanan
Pat Buchanan
Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan is an American paleoconservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster. Buchanan was a senior adviser to American Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and was an original host on CNN's Crossfire. He sought...
joined the attacks. Republican representative Dick Armey
Dick Armey
Richard Keith "Dick" Armey is a former U.S. Representative from Texas's and House Majority Leader . He was one of the engineers of the "Republican Revolution" of the 1990s, in which Republicans were elected to majorities of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. Armey was...
, an opponent of federal arts funding, began to attack a planned exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe at the Corcoran Museum of Art that was to receive NEA support.
On June 12, 1989, The Corcoran cancelled the Mapplethorpe exhibition. Museum director Christina Orr-Cahill said she did not want to imperil the NEA's future funding allocation. Orr-Cahill was criticized and picketed by artists, civil liberties activists, and gay leaders for her act of censorship; she later apologized.
Though this controversy inspired congressional debate about appropriations to the NEA, including proposed restrictions on the content of NEA-supported work and their grantmaking guidelines, efforts to defund the NEA failed.
1990 performance artists vetoed
Conservative media continued to attack individual artists whose NEA-supported work was deemed controversial. The "NEA Four", Karen FinleyKaren Finley
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement...
, Tim Miller
Tim Miller (performance artist)
-External links:* *...
, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes (performance artist)
Holly Hughes is an American lesbian performance artist. She began as a feminist painter in New York but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe. Her plays...
, were performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
ists whose proposed grants from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government's National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June 1990. Grants were overtly vetoed on the basis of subject matter after the artists had successfully passed through a peer review
Peer review (disambiguation)
Peer review may refer to:*Peer review, the scholarly process of screening papers or grant applications*Clinical peer review, the process by which health care professionals evaluate each other's clinical performance...
process. The artists won their case in court in 1993 and were awarded amounts equal to the grant money in question, though the case would make its way to the United States Supreme Court in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley
National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley
In National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 , the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, as amended in 1990), which required the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts to ensure that "artistic excellence...
. The case centered on subsection (d)(1) of which provides that the NEA Chairperson shall ensure that artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which applications are judged. The court ruled in , that Section 954(d)(1) is facially valid, as it neither inherently interferes with First Amendment rights nor violates constitutional vagueness principles.
1995-1997 congressional attacks
The Republican revolutionRepublican Revolution
The Republican Revolution or Revolution of '94 is what the media dubbed Republican Party success in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections, which resulted in a net gain of 54 seats in the House of Representatives, and a pickup of eight seats in the Senate...
of 1994 cleared the way for House Speaker Newt Gingrich to lead a renewed attack on the NEA. Gingrich had called for the NEA to be eliminated completely along with the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...
. While some in Congress attacked the funding of controversial artists, others argued the endowment was wasteful and elitist. However, despite massive budget cutbacks and the end of grants to individual artists, Gingrich ultimately failed in his push to eliminate the endowment.
2009 conference call
In mid-2009, the NEA came under controversy again when it was revealed on a website run by conservative activist Andrew BreitbartAndrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart is an American publisher, commentator for the Washington Times, author, an occasional guest commentator on various news programs who has served as an editor for the Drudge Report website...
that then-Communications Director Yosi Sergant
Yosi Sergant
Yosi Sergant is an American publicist He is known for his commissioning and management of the "Hope" poster created during the 2008 presidential election by Shepard Fairey....
had participated in an August 10, 2009 conference call that allegedly directed artists to create works of art promoting President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
's domestic agenda. "I would encourage you to pick something, whether it’s health care, education, the environment, you know, there’s four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service," Sergant said on the call, making reference to the four areas of focus earlier outlined by Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for United We Serve. Suggested areas of focus mentioned in the call included preventative care, child nutrition, community cleanups, trail maintenance, reading tutoring, and homelessness. At another point he said, "This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally. We're still trying to figure out the laws of putting government websites of Facebook and the use of Twitter. This is all being sorted out. We are participating in history as it's being made, so bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely. And we can really work together to move the needle to get stuff done." Some journalists speculated that this was evidence that Sergant was aware of the possibility he might be crossing the line into advocacy. At the time of the call, the federal government was drafting new policies concerning federal agencies' use of social media; these were released the following month.
The NEA countered the allegations by asserting that Sergant had acted unilaterally and without the approval of then-Acting Chairman Patrice Walker Powell, and that the call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda but rather to inform members of the arts community of an opportunity to become involved in volunteerism through the United We Serve program. They also noted that the call had nothing to do with grantmaking.
Chairpersons
- 1965-1969 Roger L. StevensRoger L. StevensRoger Lacey Stevens was an American theatrical producer, arts administrator, and a real estate executive. He is the founding Chairman of both the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts , and National Endowment for the Arts .Born in Detroit, Michigan, Stevens was educated at The Choate School in...
, appointed by Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. JohnsonLyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States... - 1969-1977 Nancy HanksNancy Hanks (NEA)Nancy Hanks was the second chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts . She was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon and served from 1969 to 1977, continuing her service under President Gerald R. Ford. During this period, Hanks was active in the fight to save the historic Old Post Office...
, appointed by Richard M. Nixon - 1977-1981 Livingston L. Biddle, Jr.Livingston L. Biddle, Jr.Livingston Ludlow Biddle, Jr. was an American author and promoter of funding of the arts, from a wealthy Pennsylvania family.-Life:Livingston Ludlow Biddle was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on May 26, 1918....
, appointed by Jimmy CarterJimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office... - 1981-1989 Frank HodsollFrank HodsollFrank Hodsoll was the fourth chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and served from 1981 to 1989....
, appointed by Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
. - 1989-1992 John Frohnmayer, appointed by George H. W. BushGeorge H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
- 1993-1997 Jane AlexanderJane AlexanderJane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...
, appointed by Bill ClintonBill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation... - 1998-2001 Bill IveyBill IveyBill Ivey, a graduate of the University of Michigan, was the seventh chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton and served from 1998 to 2001...
, appointed by Bill ClintonBill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation... - 2002 Michael P. HammondMichael P. HammondMichael P. Hammond was an American musician, educator, and eighth chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.-Early life:...
, appointed by George W. BushGeorge W. BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000.... - 2003-2009 Dana GioiaDana Gioia-Poetry:It was as a poet that Gioia first began to attract widespread attention in the early 1980s, with frequent appearances in The Hudson Review, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In the same period, he published a number of essays and book reviews...
, appointed by George W. BushGeorge W. BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000.... - 2009 Patrice Walker Powell, Acting Chairman, appointed by Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
- 2009 Rocco LandesmanRocco LandesmanRocco Landesman has been a long-time Broadway theatre producer. In August 2009 he became chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts...
, appointed by Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
See also
- National Endowment for the HumanitiesNational Endowment for the HumanitiesThe National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
- National Heritage FellowshipNational Heritage FellowshipThe National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts...
- List of music organizations in the United States
- National Medal of Arts winners
- NEA Jazz MastersNEA Jazz MastersThe National Endowment for the Arts , every year honors up to seven jazz musicians with Jazz Master Awards. The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowships are the highest honors that the United States bestows upon jazz musicians...
- National Council for the Traditional ArtsNational Council for the Traditional ArtsThe National Council for the Traditional Arts is a private, non-profit arts organization based in the United States that promotes the traditional arts. It organizes the National Folk Festival.It is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland....
- New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
Further reading
- Alexander, Jane. Command Performance: an Actress in the Theater of Politics. Public Affairs, a member of the Perseus Book Group; New York, NY, 2000. ISBN 0-306-81044-1
- Binkiewicz, Donna M. Federalizing the Muse: United States Arts Policy and the National Endowment for the Arts, 1965-1980, University of North Carolina Press, 312pp., 2004. ISBN 0-8078-2878-5.
- Napoleon, DaviDavi NapoleonDavi Napoleon, aka Davida Skurnick is an American theater historian and critic. She is a theater columnist for The Faster Times, an online newspaper, and a regular contributor to Live Design, a monthly magazine about entertainment design and designers...
. Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American TheaterChelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American TheaterChelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater is a book by Davi Napoleon about the onstage triumphs and the offstage turmoil at the Chelsea Theater Center of Brooklyn...
This history of a theater in Brooklyn that won critical acclaim but could not always get funding to finish planned seasons is in part a case study of the arts funding crisis in America. Iowa State University Press.