National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent federal agency that supports and funds the arts in the United States. The endowment was established by the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965, which defines the arts to include music, dance, drama, folk art, graphic art, creative writing, architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, crafts, industrial design, costume and fashion design, motion pictures, television, radio, and sound recordings. The NEA is the country's largest single source of funding for nonprofit arts.

The endowment was established on the principle that the arts are as vital to the spirit, stability, and success of a democratic country as science and technology. Accordingly, the government and citizens of the United States must preserve the country's artistic heritage and cultivate new artistic expression. Through the NEA, the federal government fosters the preservation and development of the arts by financing new and classic artistic works and their presentation, making the arts accessible to people in all parts of the country, promoting art education at all levels, preserving the country's artistic heritage, and recognizing and honoring the country's national leaders in the arts.

Program

The NEA supports the arts through leadership initiatives; through partnerships with other federal agencies and with local, state, and regional arts organizations; and, primarily, through the making of grants to nonprofit arts organizations and, in some cases, to individual artists. It is not the intention of the federal government to fully subsidize the arts in the United States; rather the NEA aims at alleviating the financial stress prevalent in the arts by providing "seed" money to stimulate the private sector to provide support for the cultural growth of the country.

The NEA funds the work of individual artists through Literature Fellowships, American Jazz Masters Fellowships, and National Heritage Fellowships. Literature Fellowships of $20,000 are awarded to writers of poetry, fiction, and drama; fellowships of $10,000 to $20,000 are awarded for translation projects. Since the establishment of the Literature Fellowship in 1967, many National Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Awards, and Pulitzer Prizes in poetry and fiction have been awarded for works funded in part by the NEA. American Jazz Masters Fellowships of $20,000 are awarded to distinguished jazz musicians. National Heritage Fellowships of $10,000 are annually awarded to up to thirteen master folk and traditional artists who hope to teach their skills and techniques to another generation of artists. All recipients of NEA fellowships must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States.

Grants that are awarded to nonprofit organizations support a variety of projects, such as developing new works, bringing the arts to new audiences, developing new and stronger arts organizations, and preserving America's cultural heritage. The NEA's heritage and preservation grants support such projects as the restoration of historic buildings and artworks, the preservation of historic sound recordings, the documentation of dance projects, and the publication of anthologies of American literature. In 2000 the NEA formed a partnership with Heritage Preservation to sponsor Save Outdoor Sculpture!, a program to repair and maintain damaged outdoor sculptures in the United States. Another NEA program, Save America's Treasures, offers grants in cooperation with the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service for the preservation and conservation of historically or culturally significant buildings, sites, artifacts, collections, and monuments.

The NEA's grants for arts education aim to strengthen the role of the arts in America's public educational system and encourage lifelong learning in the arts. The NEA recognizes that stimulation of young audiences is essential to its goal of developing a broad base of public appreciation and support for the arts. In partnership with state arts agencies and regional arts organizations, the NEA has provided millions of dollars to support K–12 arts education projects in communities across the country. In a program conducted in cooperation with local school boards and the U.S. Department of Education, professional theater companies have received financial assistance to give free performances for student audiences. Similarly, the endowment provided support for a program aimed at sending poets into secondary schools to read and discuss their works. Other grants in support of art education have funded master classes, artist-in-residence programs, and training for elementary and high school art teachers.

To further achieve the expansion of audiences the NEA has initiated programs that bring the performing and visual arts to small towns, rural areas, and other regions of the United States where the arts would otherwise be unavailable. In 1996 the NEA helped finance the New England Foundation for the Arts, which sends contemporary dance companies on tours that include cities where few dance companies reside. The endowment has also provided funds for an experimental rural arts program to explore methods of increasing public receptivity to cultural programs. In many states, grants have been made to develop new audiences for opera by providing funds for additional performances for neighborhood and community organizations, labor groups, and students.

The endowment has provided new opportunities for arts programming on television through grants to public television stations for the production of arts programs and their free distribution to other public television stations throughout the country. The NEA helped fund the popular series Live from Lincoln Center, American Masters, and Great Performances, which are broadcast around the country and seen by millions of people each year. These grants have served as an incentive to the further development of educational programming on the arts and have helped many smaller stations get access to local cultural resources.

The American Film Institute was established with funding from the NEA in order to focus national attention on motion pictures as a contemporary art. One of the institute's central responsibilities is that of promoting and guiding the burgeoning interest in this art in secondary schools and higher education. The institute is providing assistance to the entire academic community.

Organizational Structure

The endowment's advisory body is the National Council on the Arts, which includes fourteen private citizens appointed by the president of the United States for six-year terms and six members of Congress who are appointed by congressional leaders and serve in a nonvoting capacity for two-year terms. The private members of the council are persons who have distinguished themselves through their training, experience, and interest in the arts. Past council members have included singer Marian Anderson, composer Leonard Bernstein, dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille, artist Richard Diebenkorn, composer Duke Ellington, author Harper Lee, actor Gregory Peck, actor Sidney Poitier, author John Steinbeck, and violinist Isaac Stern. The council, which meets three times each year, advises the chairman on NEA policies, programs, and procedures and makes recommendations on applications for financial assistance.

History and Development

The National Council on the Arts was created by the National Arts and Cultural Development Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88-579). The National Endowment for the Arts began its work in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation (Pub. L. 89-209) creating the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, consisting of both the NEA and its sister agency the National Endowment for the Humanities. The 1965 act transferred the functions of the council from the executive office of the president of the United States to the NEA.

The NEA came under attack during the 1980s and 1990s as some citizens and public officials questioned the value, quality, and appropriateness of certain NEA-supported projects. President Ronald Reagan established a Presidential Task Force on the Arts and Humanities in 1981 to develop "ideas to stimulate increased private giving for cultural activities." The task force, however, recommended that the NEA continue public funding of humanities and art projects. Between 1965 and 2000 the NEA awarded more than 115,000 grants to artists and art organizations in all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and Guam. In the 2001 fiscal year the endowment's budget was approximately $105 million.