N A T I O

A Great Nation Deserves Great Art. N National Endowment for the Arts A L E N D O W M E N T F O R T H E A R T S 2 0 0 6 A N N U A L R E P O R T

2006 Annual Report

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20506-0001 (202) 682-5400 www.arts.gov Not for sale–Available for free at www.arts.gov The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities and military bases.

Rufino Tamayo's Retrato de Olga (Portrait of Olga), 1964, was part of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art's exhibition Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted. Photo courtesy of Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, CONACULTA-INBA, © Herederos de Rufino Tamayo

Dear Mr. President:

It is my pleasure to submit the Annual Report of the National Endowment for the Arts for Fiscal Year 2006.

Since its establishment in 1965, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than $4 billion in grants to organizations and artists residing in all 50 states and the six U.S. jurisdictions, in communities large and small. Throughout its history, the NEA has played a transformative and sustaining role in the development of regional theater, opera, dance, orchestras, museums, and other arts—both contemporary and traditional—that Americans now enjoy.

The activities highlighted in this report illustrate the Arts Endowment’s continuing commitment to a nation in which artistic excellence is celebrated, supported, and available to all Americans.

Sincerely,

Dana Gioia Chairman

Sunrise, Old Walpi Pueblo, Arizona, ca. 1942, by Ansel Adams, one of the photographs being preserved through a Save America’s Treasures grant. Photo courtesy of Collection Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. © Trustees of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Table of Contents

Chairman’s Statement ...... 1 National Initiatives...... 7 State and Regional Partnerships ...... 17 Lifetime Honors ...... 19 ...... 19 NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship...... 20 NEA National Heritage Fellowship ...... 22 Grant Highlights...... 25 State-by-State listing Literature Fellowships...... 129 National Council on the Arts...... 139 Financial Summary...... 141 Appropriations History...... 143 Credits...... 144 Tatiana Jouravel in Milwaukee Ballet Company’s production of Lila York’s Coronach. Photo by Rick Brodzeller Chairman’s Statement o by Vance Jacobs t Pho Chairman’s Statement

A NEW CONVERSATION, ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE A NEW CONSENSUS In 2006, the NEA continued to support all the arts in s the National Endowment for the Arts all the disciplines across all the states and jurisdictions. (NEA) moves past the midpoint of the first More than $100 million was distributed in more than A 2,200 grants. Hundreds of millions of Americans— decade of the new century, we find ourselves leading a compelling new conversation including millions of children and youth—have about the role of government funding of the arts and benefited from Arts Endowment grants, broadcasts, arts education—a new conversation that has led to a and National Initiatives. new consensus of broad support for such funding. These grants included between 30,000 and 40,000 The NEA has introduced into this conversation topics concerts, readings, and performances. Among them such as “artistic excellence,” “arts presentation and were American Masterpieces: Choral Music concerts arts education,” “arts and civic engagement,” and involving eight choral festivals around the country, “democratic reach.” Discussion and exploration of including a free concert in our nation’s capital, each of these ideas has led us, as an agency and as a “America Sings!,” which showcased significant nation, out of the “us versus them” artistic arguments American choral works performed by as many as 325 of the last century and into the new consensus of the singers from a dozen American choruses. new century: Government support of the arts and arts Support from the NEA has helped provide some 4,000 education is an investment in our future. exhibitions, including visual and media arts, and more than 10,000 artist residencies in schools and other

2006 Annual Report 1 Chairman’s Statement

Sharing America’s artistic excellence and that of other countries was expanded even further with the announcement of the NEA’s International Literary Exchanges. These will provide American readers access to literary works by contemporary writers of other countries and provide foreign readers access to the work of acclaimed American writers, especially poets. Projects will include either publication of dual anthologies or specific translation projects. Projects are currently in development with Pakistan, , Mexico, , and . In all instances, the NEA The two-volume bilingual poetry anthology, will work with literary and governmental organizations Connecting Lines/Líneas Conectadas, features to complete the projects. work from Mexican and poets. COMBINING ARTS

locations. We have supported artistic excellence in PRESENTATION WITH organizations as large as the Kennedy Center for the ARTS EDUCATION Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and the Metropolitan Opera in City to those as The Arts Endowment’s commitment to arts education small as Figures of Speech Theatre in Freeport, Maine, has grown with each National Initiative as well as and the Caribbean Dance Company in the American within our Learning in the Arts direct grants. All of our Virgin Islands. From those as longstanding as the National Initiatives have education components and, MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in some cases, are driven primarily by the desire to est. 1907, to those as new as Youth Speaks in San educate young people to the power of art. Francisco, est. 1999. The goal of Shakespeare for a New Generation is to Our efforts to promote artistic excellence reached awaken America’s youth to the power of live theater. across our southern border in 2006 to the literary Since 2003, more than 16 million middle and high achievements of Mexican and American poets. The school students have benefited from the free teacher NEA published, with Sarabande Books, Connecting resource kits that are available through that program. Lines and Líneas Conectadas, a two-volume bilingual Since 2005, more than six million students have anthology of work by poets from Mexico and the learned about the history of jazz through our NEA United States. The anthology resulted from the Jazz in the Schools program. And tens of thousands collaborative efforts of the National Endowment for more Americans—young and old—have learned the Arts, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, and the about their own artistic and cultural heritage through National Autonomous University of Mexico. Each American Masterpieces presentations in dance, choral volume contains the work of 50 poets from the music, visual arts, theater, and musical theater. postwar generation writing in diverse styles.

2 National Endowment for the Arts Chairman’s Statement

As part of California Shakespeare Theater’s Student Discovery program, students participate in a post-show discussion with the cast of As You Like It. Photo by Jay Yamada

Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth direct Atlanta, Georgia. We taught photography to students grants continue to give students opportunities for in Pablo, Montana, and Chicago, . In short, we exposure to and instruction in dance, classical music, introduced millions of students across the country to folk and traditional arts, and visual arts—opportunities the entire spectrum of the arts—and to their that used to be as much a part of the school day as transformative power. math and reading, but which have become lost over the years to budget cuts and redesigned curricula. ARTS AND CIVIC If we don’t give our children access to the arts in their ENGAGEMENT schools, we don’t give them a chance to become fully During the past five years the formed, well-rounded human beings. Arts education NEA has rebuilt its Research is as necessary to a child reaching his or her full and Analysis department into potential as any of the sciences or language arts. With a leader in national opinion, this in mind, the NEA puts great emphasis on arts giving arts organizations, arts education. administrators, artists, opinion In 2006, the NEA supported youth writing programs makers, and legislators the hard data they need to in Poughkeepsie, New York, and San Francisco, illustrate the role that the arts play in our nation, our California. We helped awaken students to the states, our communities, and our lives. In much the excitement of dance in St. Louis, Missouri, and same way that the FBI or the Labor or Education

2006 Annual Report 3 Chairman’s Statement

At Miami, Florida’s Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, a 17th-century Italian figure of Neptune was shattered during 2005’s Hurricane Wilma; in 2006, the statute was restored with support from an NEA grant. Photos courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens

Departments issue statistics and studies in their arts is a sound indicator of civic and community realms, the NEA does so in ours. health.

In 2006, we issued a survey titled The Arts and Civic Engagement: Involved in Arts, Involved in Life. DEMOCRATIC REACH Extrapolated from our 2002 Survey of Public Because we know the difference that availability to a Participation in the Arts, these data are indisputable in thriving arts community can make to our youth and showing that people who are involved in the arts are families, the NEA has made a priority of reaching more active, engaged, and involved public citizens. every community.To be truly national, the National People who regularly avail themselves of literature, Endowment for the Arts has awarded at least one theater, opera, dance, and other arts are direct grant for every 760,000 Americans. Every demonstrably more active in their communities than member of Congress can return to his or her district those who do not. Their lifestyles reflect the same and find at least one arts organization that is receiving level of vigor and social commitment as those of catalytic support from the NEA. I say catalytic because sports enthusiasts. A healthy engagement with the for every dollar the NEA grants, seven to eight additional dollars are generated.

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Think of the difference that can mean to a rural or CONTINUING THE inner city dance company, orchestra, or small CONVERSATION museum. Think of the expanded horizons open to young people who are able to see live theater, hear As we move forward, the NEA is eager to continue live jazz or chamber music. the national conversation and build the positive consensus surrounding the necessity of keeping the These direct grants are in addition to NEA National arts in our lives, of introducing them to our children as Initiatives that may be available in cities and towns as early as possible, of the transformative power they well as NEA dollars that go to state arts agencies and can have at every stage of our lives, and of the part then to local arts organizations. they play in defining us as a nation. We also reached into areas whose artistic health was severely compromised by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005. In times of loss and devastation, people are especially needful of the solace and Dana Gioia inspiration the arts can provide. The NEA invested Chairman more than $700,000 in 34 direct grants and additional support to the Gulf Coast in 2006 to help arts organizations move forward with reestablishing their vital place in the lives of their communities.

Chairman Gioia tours the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum with Harry Philbrick, the museum’s director, and U.S. Representative Christopher Shays (Connecticut) during a trip to southwestern Connecticut in 2006. Photo by Terri Garneau

2006 Annual Report 5 2006 Poetry Out Loud National Champion Jackson Hille of Columbus Alternative High School in . Photo by James Kegley National Initiatives

National Initiatives

n order to reach even more Americans who may the NEA awarded a second round of American Inot have ready access to the arts, the NEA Masterpieces grants in visual arts and a first round of created the National Initiatives program in 2003. grants in dance, musical theater, and choral music. Since then, the program has grown from one to eight Funding also went to state arts agencies and regional National Initiatives, partnering with local communities, arts organizations to develop and support American arts organizations, presenters, and regional arts Masterpieces projects at the state and regional level. organizations to bring high quality arts programming Sixteen visual arts organizations received grants and educational activities to communities throughout totaling $1,240,000 to support touring exhibitions the country. The National Initiatives in FY 2006— such as Native Views: Influences of Modern Culture American Masterpieces, NEA Arts Journalism (Artrain, Inc.) and American Photography 1850-1960 Institutes, the , Great American Voices, NEA (Cleveland Museum of Art). NEA support enabled Jazz Masters, Operation Homecoming, Poetry Out many of these exhibitions to tour to the nation’s small Loud, and Shakespeare in American Communities— and mid-sized museums, for which the cost of these have reached millions of people in all 50 states. The shows is usually prohibitive. following pages highlight just a few of the activities that comprise these special initiatives. In American Masterpieces: Musical Theater, 13 organizations received grants of $25,000 to AMERICAN MASTERPIECES $75,000—for a total of $580,000—to support productions of classic works from the American American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic musical theater repertoire, including Porgy and Bess, Genius is designed to acquaint Americans with the West Side Story, and Oklahoma! Many of these best of their cultural and artistic legacy. In FY 2006,

2006 Annual Report 7 Music Director Philip Brunelle takes a bow at the end of the “America Sings!” concert, which launched the American Masterpieces: Choral Music initiative. Photo by Jim Saah

productions featured outreach components such as U.S. composers who have made significant mini-tours, audience discussions, and in-school contributions to the discipline, including William workshops. Billings (1746-1800), Charles Ives (1874-1954), and Libby Larsen (b. 1950). Eight organizations received American Masterpieces: Dance grants were given in grants of $20,000 to $90,000 to present American FY 2006 through a partnership with regional arts Masterpieces festivals, for a total of $490,000. These organization the New England Foundation for the projects featured a variety of activities including master Arts. These grants covered two categories: classes, workshops, lectures, and performances. In FY reconstruction and tour of masterworks of the 2007, these grant recipients were eligible to apply for American dance repertoire—such as the Alvin Ailey additional NEA funding to support festival-related American Dance Theatre’s reconstruction and tour of recording and radio broadcast projects. Talley Beatty’s Road of the Phoebe Snow—and a college component, which supports the reconstruction American Masterpieces: Choral Music launched on of master works by college dance programs, such as June 11, 2006 with “America Sings!”, an exuberant the University of ’s performance of Martha celebration of the nation’s rich choral music heritage, Graham’s Primitive Mysteries. in partnership with Chorus America and under the leadership of American Masterpieces: Choral Music The NEA also provided American Masterpieces Artistic Director Philip Brunelle. Held at the Music support to the choral music field with grants for Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland, the regional choral festivals highlighting the work of 49

8 National Endowment for the Arts National Initiatives

program featured 12 choruses, an orchestra, a fife- More than 200 journalists from nearly every state and-drum corps, a barbershop quartet, and even have attended the institutes thus far. Most run for 10 square dancers. Featured choruses included the Young days and are offered in three disciplines, through People’s Chorus of New York City and the United partnerships with three prestigious universities. States Army Chorus performing work by American University of Southern California’s Annenberg School composers, including Stephen Foster, Aaron Copland, for Communications co-sponsors the theater and and Leonard Bernstein. musical theater institute each winter. Columbia University organizes the classical music and opera NEA ARTS JOURNALISM institute each fall in New York City. And Duke INSTITUTES University, through a partnership with the American Dance Festival, hosts the dance institute every June. Just as a great nation deserves great art, every Writers, reporters, critics, editors, and broadcast community deserves quality arts coverage. At a time producers who attend the institutes find the schedule when many publications are reducing their culture to be packed with performances, panels, and hands- pages, the National Endowment for the Arts wants to on classes. They go backstage and take voice lessons equip arts writers and broadcasters with the insider at the Metropolitan Opera, have lunch with actors expertise that should make their positions essential. To from landmark theater productions, and see three that end, in 2004 the agency established NEA Arts internationally acclaimed dance companies perform in Journalism Institutes, brief sabbaticals for journalists to one day. Fellows also spend time honing their own spend attending performances, talking about the arts, writing skills through craft classes and writers and writing reviews under the tutelage of some of the workshops. The list of prominent critics who have country’s top arts writers. mentored NEA Arts Journalism Institute fellows include John Lahr (The New Yorker), Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune), and Terry Teachout (The Wall Street Journal).

Jay Handelman, theater critic for the Herald Tribune in Sarasota, Florida, was one of 61 journalists who attended an NEA Arts Journalism Institute during FY 2006. “Our conversations in and out of the different sessions and workshops led me to realize that newspapers need to change their approach to covering the arts….By demystifying art forms that some people don’t know or care about, we can New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff talks with fellows hopefully build more interest in the stories that we of the NEA Arts Journalism Institutes at the American Dance write and make more people interested in the art Festival at Duke University in North Carolina. Photo by Bruce Feeley/adf forms we cover.”

2006 Annual Report 9 National Initiatives

Fahrenheit 451 by , The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Their Eyes Were Watching God by , or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Each community also received reader’s and teacher’s guides for its Big Read novel; an audio guide featuring excerpts from the novel and commentary by noted writers, scholars, and public figures such as retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; promotional materials, such as banners, posters, and customized television public service announcements; and an organizer’s guide for hosting a Big Read program.

Miami, Florida’s Big Read programming for Fahrenheit 451 The pilot communities developed an impressive roster included Spanish-language events such as this one. of events including a Roaring ‘20s street party in Phot o courtesy of Florida Center for the Literary Arts Huntsville, Alabama; a Fahrenheit 451 technology exhibit at Boise, Idaho’s hands-on science museum; and a dramatization of one of the courtroom scenes from To Kill a Mockingbird in Sioux Falls, South In 2006, the NEA debuted the Big Read, a national Dakota. (’s Big Read is highlighted in the reading initiative designed to restore reading to the state grants section of this annual report.) center of American public culture. The Big Read is the In FY 2007, the Institute of Museum and Library literature component of American Masterpieces. The Services, which provides leadership and funding for program was developed in response to the 2004 NEA the nation’s 17,500 museums and 122,000 libraries, survey Reading at Risk, which reported that less than became the NEA’s lead federal partner for the project. half of American adults were reading any literature. The Boeing Company also joined the Big Read to Presented in partnership with regional arts support the program in military communities. organization Arts Midwest, the program is modeled Additional support was provided by the Paul G. Allen on the popular City Reads, in which communities Family Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. come together to read and discuss a single book. The Arts Endowment awarded 189 grants to cities Ten cities and towns participated in the program’s and towns nationwide to hold Big Read celebrations pilot phase from January to June 2006: Huntsville, in 2007. Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; Fresno, California; Miami, Florida; Boise, Idaho; Topeka, Kansas; GREAT AMERICAN VOICES , ; Buffalo, New York; Enterprise, Oregon; and Brookings/Sioux Falls, South The NEA continued to serve members of the military Dakota. These communities received Big Read grants and their families through its Great American Voices of $15,000 to $40,000—for a total of $265,000—to initiative, in which professional opera companies celebrate one of four classic American novels: brought live performances of classic songs from opera

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and musical theater to military installations In February 2006, Florida’s Pensacola Opera visited nationwide. Great American Voices was inaugurated Tyndall Air Force Base for a three-day residency by in 2005 in cooperation with OPERA America and with singers from the opera’s Young Artists Program. On support from The Boeing Company. In 2005 and the first day in residence, the opera company 2006, 24 companies performed at 39 bases in 24 presented two performances of the children’s opera states, including Naval Station Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), The Three Little Pigs at a local elementary school and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (New York), at the base’s youth center. More than 600 students and Albany Marine Corps Base (Georgia). attended these performances. On day two, Pensacola Performances were offered at no cost to the base or Opera presented performances of “Opera in a to audience members. In addition to the Trunk”—an improvisational opera performance performances, participating artists conducted school created from audience suggestions—at the Tyndall visits and pre-concert briefings to familiarize each Community Center and the Tyndall Family Camp. The community’s youth and adults with these musical Tyndall Family Camp, one of the base’s unique genres. features, is an on-base RV site for military families and veterans vacationing in Florida. The company gave its

The Tyndall Air Force Base audience enjoying Pensacola Opera’s performance of The Three Little Pigs as part of NEA’s Great American Voices initiative. Photo courtesy of Tyndall Air Force Base National Initiatives

final performance on the last day of the residency at Brubeck, Marian McPartland, and Paquito D’Rivera are the Tyndall Officer’s Club to an audience of more than just a few of the 24 NEA Jazz Masters who 200. The concert included favorites from the opera, participated in those performances. musical theater, and jazz repertoires, including the The NEA Jazz Masters program does more than honor sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor, “A Boy Like That” these living legends, it also works to create the next from West Side Story, and a pair of Spanish folk generation of jazz masters and aficionados through songs. In March 2006, the company brought its NEA Jazz in the Schools. Produced by Jazz at Lincoln performances to Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso. Center and supported by a grant from the Verizon The experience was so gratifying to the Pensacola Foundation, NEA Jazz in the Schools is a five-unit, Opera that it is continuing its outreach activities at Web-based curriculum and DVD toolkit for use by the air force bases. With NEA support, Pensacola high school teachers to explore jazz as an indigenous Opera expanded its military performances to include American art form as a means to understand Pensacola Naval Air Station. In 2006–2007, the American history. Each of the units includes an company offered more than 20 performances to introductory video, a lesson essay, a teacher’s guide the three bases and the schools that serve military with cross-curricular activities, assessment methods, children. student activities, and links to multimedia resources such as musical excerpts, period photographs, and NEA JAZZ MASTERS biographical sketches of significant jazz musicians. The flexible units can be taught in a day or expanded into The NEA established the NEA a more comprehensive series of lessons. Each of the Jazz Masters Fellowships in1982 units is structured to meet lesson objectives and to honor those musicians who national curriculum standards for U.S. history, social throughout their lifetimes have studies, arts education/music, civics and government, made significant and lasting and geography. impact on the field of jazz. The full NEA Jazz in the Schools curriculum was Each year, another class of launched in January 2006 as an online resource. legends is inducted as NEA Teachers from more than 6,800 schools have ordered Jazz Masters and feted during the toolkits, which they have in turn passed on to the NEA Jazz Masters concert more than 150,000 additional teachers. In total, and awards program. The NEA also helps to build and nearly 4.6 million students have benefited from the expand the audience for jazz in the United States toolkits alone. Even more teachers and students have through the NEA Jazz Masters on Tour program. In benefited from using the NEA Jazz in the Schools partnership with Arts Midwest and with support from curriculum online. Verizon, NEA Jazz Masters on Tour is a series of presentations by NEA Jazz Masters at jazz festivals that include performances, educational activities, and speaking engagements. In 2006, 45 communities hosted 74 Jazz Masters on Tour performances. Dave

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services. Workshops were held at 50 military installations, with 24 writers leading sessions for more than 6,000 individuals.

In 2006, Random House published Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, an anthology of letters, e-mails, personal narratives, poems, and short fiction written by U.S. military personnel who served after September 11, 2001, and their immediate families. Anthology editor Andrew Carroll and an independent panel of writers read through 1,200 submissions before selecting the nearly 100 pieces that comprise the anthology. While the anthology contains writing developed during the Operation Homecoming workshops, writers did not need to participate in the program to be Former Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Gregory S. Cleghorne and his eligible to submit works to the project. All of the son at the book launch for the NEA anthology, Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front, in submissions received from the anthology will be the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families. housed at an open government archive. Photo by Kevin Allen To launch the anthology, the NEA hosted a celebration at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, on OPERATION HOMECOMING September 12, 2006. At the widely attended event, more than 45 of the book’s contributors were on hand for a group book signing. After the launch, In April 2004, the NEA debuted the initiative Andrew Carroll and some of the anthology’s Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime contributors also took part in a more than 30-city Experience, in partnership with the Department of book tour throughout the U.S. and overseas, Defense and with generous support from The Boeing including a stop at the National Book Festival on the Company, to provide writing workshops by nationally National Mall. The tour visited more than ten military known writers at domestic and overseas military bases bases nationwide, with stops in California, Georgia, representing all four branches of the U.S. armed

2006 Annual Report 13 National Initiatives

New York, North Carolina, and Student competitions took Texas. Several of the anthology’s place at classroom, school, writers also appear in two district, or regional levels and Operation Homecoming culminated in a state final. documentaries, which Each state finalist received premiered in 2007. $200 and an all-expenses-paid trip to compete in the Poetry Proceeds from the Operation Out Loud National Finals in Homecoming anthology were Washington, DC. Each state used to provide arts and cultural finalist’s school received $500 programming to U.S. military for the purchase of poetry communities. Free copies of books for the school’s library. the book also were given to military installations, schools, On May 15 and 16, 2006, all and libraries. U.S. Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio 51 Poetry Out Loud State congratulates POL National Champion Jackson Champions met in the nation’s Hille in her DC office. capital for semi-finals and finals POETRY OUT Photo by Peter Freeman LOUD competitions administered by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, a Baltimore-based Poetry Out Loud is an NEA initiative developed with regional arts organization. After a welcome banquet the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation that capitalizes the previous evening, on May 16 the state champions on the latest trends in poetry—spoken word and participated in a Capitol Hill breakfast with Members poetry slams—to introduce the love of poetry through of Congress. The competitors next assembled at the memorization and recitation to a new generation. District’s historic Lincoln Theater for three regional After a successful pilot program in Washington, DC, semi-final rounds of competition, which yielded 12 and Chicago in FY 2005, the NEA partnered with the finalists. These finalists competed in an evening finals nation’s state arts agencies to launch Poetry Out Loud round, reciting two poems each, after which the final nationally in FY 2006, with competitions taking place five recited a third poem in the hope of taking first in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. place. Participating schools received free standards-based Ohio State Champion Jackson Hille ultimately was curriculum materials, including print and online poetry crowned the 2006 Poetry Out Loud National anthologies, a teacher’s guide, and an audio guide on Champion, after arresting recitations of “A Satirical the art of recitation featuring well-known actors and Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General” by writers. From January to April 2006, thousands of Jonathan Swift, “Altruism” by Molly Peacock, and students from more than 400 schools participated in “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins. Hille, a high school Poetry Out Loud programs managed by each state senior, received a $20,000 college scholarship. Second arts agency in the state’s capital region or beyond. place went to Teal Van Dyck of New Hampshire who received a $10,000 scholarship, and third to Kelli

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Taulia Anae of Hawaii, who received a $5,000 Theatre, and Florida’s Teatro Avante—gave 1,228 scholarship. The remaining finalists each received performances of 19 of Shakespeare’s plays in 1,022 $1,000 scholarships, and the schools of all 12 finalists communities in 40 states. These performances received $500 for the purchase of poetry books. reached 300,000 youth and adults, bringing the total number of individuals exposed to the Bard through SHAKESPEARE IN AMERICAN the initiative to nearly 750,000 through FY 2006.

COMMUNITIES: SHAKESPEARE Kentucky’s Actors Theatre of Louisville participated in FOR A NEW GENERATION the NEA’s Shakespeare initiative for the first time in FY 2006. A previous recipient of a Tony Award for Best In FY 2006, the NEA entered its third year of Regional Theater, the theater’s educational programs, Shakespeare for a New Generation, the second phase such as Actors in the Classroom, annually benefit of its innovative Shakespeare touring program, more than 11,000 students. In September and Shakespeare in American Communities. Shakespeare October 2005, the company conducted educational for a New Generation provides professional activities and performances of the comedy Twelfth Shakespeare performances and educational Night at 16 schools. In all, 14 performances were programs—free of charge or at a deeply discounted given and 112 educational activities conducted, rate—to high school and middle school students. reaching more than 2,100 youth and children. Thirty-five theater companies were selected to In-school and after-school activities afforded students participate during the 2005-06 school year, each the opportunity to interact with professional actors providing performances and activities for a minimum and production staff, and included pre- and post- of 10 schools. By the end of the school year, students performance workshops emphasizing text analysis, from 1,626 schools had seen a Shakespeare interactive theater exercises, and playwriting. In production, and more than 10,000 educational collaboration with the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, toolkits had been distributed for classroom use. the Actors Theatre also sent participating teachers and Participating theater companies—such as Minnesota’s community center coordinators through the Festival’s Guthrie Theater, Alaska’s Fairbanks Shakespeare teacher training institute.

The Actors Theatre of Louisville’s production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, directed by Aaron Posner. Photo by Harlan Taylor

2006 Annual Report 15 Gobey Hassan with Ilays, a multicultural group of artists from Somalia, dances with Granville High School student Elle VanWalsen from Ohio as part of Arts Midwest’s Midwest World Fest. Photo by Morgan Wonorski, THE ADVOCATE State and Regional Partnerships

State and Regional Partnerships

he NEA supports the cultural life of the public cultural programs—because of geography, economic T at the state as well as federal level through conditions, ethnic background, or other prohibitive partnerships with state arts agencies (SAAs) conditions—can apply for grants of $200 to fund arts and regional arts organizations (RAOs). Forty percent field trips. The grants, which are distributed on a first- of the NEA’s funding is distributed among these come, first-served basis, are most often used to defer agencies, thereby enabling them to be viable supporters of the cultural life of their communities.

There are 56 official state and jurisdictional arts agencies in the United States, including one in each of the fifty states and in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Through the SAAs, the Arts Endowment supports projects that are meaningful to local communities, while at the same time enabling local arts organizations to leverage financial support from other sources.

An example of one of these state partnerships is the Arts Council’s (IAC) Big Yellow School Bus grant The 4th-grade students at Lambert Elementary took a trip to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art as part of the Iowa Arts Council’s program. Through this program, both public and Big Yellow School Bus program. private K-12 Iowa schools that lack access to arts or Photo courtesy of the Iowa Arts Council

2006 Annual Report 17 State and Regional Partnerships

transportation expenses, thus enabling students to participate in activities such as live performing arts events and museum exhibitions. In FY 2006, IAC initially allocated $25,000 to the Big Yellow School Bus grant program, which served more than 9,000 students in 125 Iowa schools. A second round of funding for the program, comprising public and private funds, was announced in January 2006, Tomoyuki Iwatsuki demonstrating a bamboo instrument in Prairie ultimately serving nearly 6,000 students in 75 du Chien, , as part of Arts Midwest’s Midwest World Fest. additional schools. Photo by Shigeyo Henriquez

The Arts Endowment also serves the public at the regional level through RAOs, which were created by state arts leaders in partnership with the Arts programs to the public throughout its nine-state Endowment to transcend state boundaries and give region.

the public access to a greater and richer variety of arts Inaugurated in 2003, one outstanding Arts Midwest experiences. These six RAOs—Arts Midwest, Mid- project is Midwest World Fest, a two-year touring America Arts Alliance, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, program that brings international performing artists to the New England Foundation for the Arts, Southern Midwestern communities for weeklong residencies. Arts Federation, and the Western States Arts Residency activities include a public concert, one or Federation—work with the NEA on initiatives such two school concerts, multiple in-school workshops, as the NEA Regional Touring program, which helps and additional outreach activities, such as community bring quality performing artists and companies to dinners and master classes for local musicians. Arts communities across the country with the help of Midwest also develops a comprehensive curriculum federal, state, and private funds. RAOs also partner for participating schools, which is targeted to various with the Arts Endowment on NEA National Initiatives grade levels and designed to be integrated into such as Poetry Out Loud (Mid Atlantic Arts existing curricula. Foundation) and Operation Homecoming (Southern Arts Federation). For the 2005-2007 cycle, Midwest World Fest touring artists included Mexican son jarocho ensemble Arts Midwest is a regional arts organization Chuchumbe, the multi-ethnic Israeli ensemble Esta, headquartered in Minneapolis, serving audiences, arts The Bamboo Orchestra of Japan, and Somalian artists organizations, and artists throughout Illinois, , Hibo Nuur and Kooshin, who performed with the Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, , Ohio, ShegoBand. These artists traveled to 11 Midwestern South Dakota, and Wisconsin. In addition to communities, including Waterloo, Iowa; Prairie du partnering with the NEA on several National Chien, Wisconsin; and Newark, Ohio. Nearly 90,000 Initiatives—Shakespeare in American Communities, individuals benefited from the project, including more NEA Jazz Masters on Tour, and, most recently, the Big than 70,000 youth and children. Read—Arts Midwest also provides high quality arts

18 National Endowment for the Arts Lifetime Honors

Lifetime Honors

t is not always possible to accurately measure the The public recommends recipients for the award, and Iimpact of a particular artist’s work over his or her the National Council on the Arts nominates them to career. Some artists, despite their great influence, the President for final selection. The awards, which are are never recognized for their effect in the arts field. In non-monetary, are presented each year at a special the 1980s, the NEA realized the importance of White House ceremony. The National Medal of Arts recognizing artists for lifetime achievements in was designed by internationally renowned sculptor addition to current projects. Three such awards were Robert Graham. initiated: National Medals of Arts, NEA Jazz Masters, Information on submitting a nomination can be found and NEA National Heritage Fellows. on the NEA Web site at www.arts.gov.

NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS In 2006, the following artists, organizations, and arts patrons received the National Medal of Arts: Created by Congress in 1984, the National Medal of Arts is conferred annually by the President to honor Wilhelmina Holladay persons and organizations that have made Classical Composer Arts Patron Ann Arbor, Michigan Washington, DC extraordinary contributions to the excellence, support, Interlochen Center growth, and availability of the arts in the United Dancer for the Arts States. Unlike other arts awards, the National Medal Los Angeles, California School of Fine Arts of Arts is not limited to a single field or area of artistic Roy R. DeCarava Interlochen, Michigan endeavor. Photographer Brooklyn, New York

2006 Annual Report 19 President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush with the 2006 National Medal of Arts recipients in the Oval Office: from left, Ben Jaffe and his mother Sandra Jaffe (Preservation Hall Jazz Band), , Cyd Charisse, Roy DeCarava, , Dr. , Wilhelmina Holladay, William Bolcom, Jeffrey Kimpton (Interlochen Center for the Arts), and NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. White House photo by Paul Morse

Erich Kunzel Viktor Schreckengost those artists who have made significant contributions Conductor, Cincinnati Industrial Designer/ to the development and performance of jazz. Each Pops Orchestra Sculptor year, a one-time award of $25,000 is presented from Cincinnati, Ohio Cleveland, Ohio among various categories. Preservation Hall Jazz Dr. Ralph Stanley Band Bluegrass Musician Additionally, the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Jazz Ensemble Coeburn, Virginia Award for Jazz Advocacy recognizes individuals who New Orleans, Louisiana have made major contributions to the appreciation, Gregory Rabassa knowledge, and advancement of the American jazz Literary Translator art form as a writer, patron, or presenter. Brooklyn, New York NEA Jazz Masters NEA JAZZ MASTERS Toshiko Akiyoshi, Bandleader FELLOWSHIP Over the course of a six-decade career, pianist, bandleader, and composer-arranger Toshiko Akiyoshi Though its exact origins are often disputed, jazz is has made a unique and vital contribution to the art of inarguably one of the nation’s most vibrant big-band jazz. Her big band albums have received 14 indigenous art forms. In 1982 the NEA created the Grammy Award nominations, and Akiyoshi is the first NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship, the highest honor that woman ever to place first in the Best Arranger and our nation bestows upon jazz musicians, to recognize Composer category in the Down Beat Readers’ Poll.

20 National Endowment for the Arts Lifetime Honors

Curtis Fuller, Solo Instrumentalist (Trombone) Jimmy Scott, Vocalist A remarkably fluent trombonist, Curtis Fuller’s For more than five decades, vocalist Jimmy Scott has impeccable sense of time and ambitious solos have numbered the jazz world’s best singers among his made him a mainstay of the hard-bop scene. He has select group of fans. Although he was, for a period, added his instrument and compositions to albums by “perhaps the most unjustly ignored American singer John Coltrane, Bud Powell, the Jazztet, and Art of the 20th century” (according to Joseph Hooper in a Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. New York Times Magazine profile), Scott today is once Ramsey Lewis, Pianist more finding a dedicated international audience for his emotionally penetrating art. With a style that springs from his early gospel experience, his classical training, and a deep love of Frank Wess, Solo Instrumentalist (Flute) jazz, pianist and composer Ramsey Lewis has built a A multi-instrumentalist whose inspired solos have kept decades-long career as one of America’s most popular big band jazz fresh and vital into the present, Frank performers. Lewis is the artistic director of the “Jazz at Wess is one of the most influential and instantly Ravinia” series of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, the host recognizable flutists in jazz history. Wess is also of a weekday morning drive-time radio show on revered as a smoothly swinging tenor saxophone Chicago’s WNUA-FM, and the host of the syndicated player in the Lester Young tradition and an expert radio show Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis. alto saxophonist.

From left to right, top to bottom: Chairman Gioia with NEA Jazz Masters Dan Morgenstern, Phil Woods, Curtis Fuller, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Ramsey Lewis, Jimmy Scott, and Frank Wess. Photo by Tom Pich

21 Lifetime Honors

NEA NATIONAL HERITAGE FELLOWSHIP

The nation’s folk arts—that is, the artistic expression that is at once rooted in the collective American experience and in the traditions of the nation’s many ethnicities—is perhaps one of the truest windows into the American character. The nation’s folk and traditional arts reflect the many tongues that make up the distinctly American artistic voice.

Since 1982, the NEA has recognized the artists who dedicate their lives to cultural traditions and arts with NEA National Heritage Fellowships. Ten NEA National Heritage Fellowships, the country’s most prestigious honor in the folk and traditional arts, were awarded in 2006. The fellowships include a one-time award of $20,000.

Newly honored Frank Wess (left) talks with fellow NEA Jazz Additionally, the Bess Lomax Hawes Award is given to Masters Gerald Wilson and Jon Hendricks. individuals who have made major contributions to the Photo by Tom Pich excellence, vitality, and public appreciation of the folk Phil Woods, Composer-Arranger and traditional arts through teaching, collecting, advocacy, and preservation work. One of the most brilliant alto saxophonists in jazz, composer, arranger, saxophonist, bandleader, and Interviews with the 2006 awardees, as well as educator Phil Woods has devoted himself to the alto presentations of their work, can be found on the NEA saxophone since the age of 12. The three-time Web site (www.arts.gov). The NEA National Heritage Grammy Award winner has composed more than 200 Fellowships were presented in 2006 with support songs and recorded several albums with new from the Darden Restaurants Foundation. arrangements of famous composers. Dan Morgenstern, A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University since 1976, Dan Morgenstern is a jazz historian and archivist, author, editor, and educator who has been active in the jazz field since 1958. As head of the Institute of Jazz Studies, he is responsible for the largest collection of jazz-related materials anywhere.

22 National Endowment for the Arts Lifetime Honors

NEA National Heritage Fellows Charles M. Carrillo Doyle Lawson George Na’ope Nancy Sweezy (Bess Santero (Carver and Gospel and Bluegrass Kumu Hula (Hula Lomax Hawes Award) Painter of sacred Singer, Arranger, Master) Advocate, Scholar, figures) and Bandleader Hilo, Hawaii Presenter, and Santa Fe, New Mexico Bristol, Tennessee Wilho Saari Preservationist Westwood, Massachusetts Delores E. Churchill Esther Martinez Finnish Kantele Haida (Native Alaskan) Native American (Lap-harp) player Treme Brass Band Weaver Storyteller Naselle, Washington New Orleans Brass Band Ketchikan, Alaska Ohkay Owingeh, Mavis Staples New Orleans, Louisiana New Mexico Henry Gray Gospel and Rhythm and Blues Piano Player and Diomedes Matos Blues Singer Singer Cuatro (10-string Puerto Chicago, Illinois Baton Rouge, Louisiana Rican guitar) maker Deltona, Florida

From left to right, top to bottom: Chairman Gioia with NEA National Heritage Fellows Henry Gray; Diomedes Matos; Charles M. Carrillo; Wilho Saari; Benny Jones, founder of the Treme Brass Band; George Na’ope, Nancy Sweezy, Doyle Lawson, Delores E. Churchill, Mavis Staples, and Esther Martinez (who passed away September 16, 2006). Photo by Tom Pich Cellist Evan Drachman performing during the Sitka Summer Music Festival. Photo courtesy Sitka Summer Music Festival Grant Highlights

Grant Highlights

The following pages highlight some of the successful projects that the NEA has supported in every state. While these examples are by no means comprehensive, they are highly illustrative of the diverse, quality art that the NEA funds.

APPLICATIONS: GRANTS: FY 2006 Grant Category Number Received Number Awarded

Access to Artistic Excellence1 2,207 1,769

Learning in the Arts2 639 228

Challenge America: 414 233 Reaching Every Community

1 Includes 58 grants for Arts on Radio and Television, 33 grants for Folk and Traditional Arts Infrastructure, and 11 grants for Save America’s Treasures. 2 Includes 28 grants for Summer School in the Arts.

Access to Artistic Excellence: This category funds projects that encourage and support artistic creativity, preserve our diverse cultural heritage, and make the arts more widely available in communities throughout the country.

Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth: This category funds projects that help children and youth acquire appreciation, knowledge, and understanding of and skills in the arts. The focus is on children and youth in the general age range of five through 18 years old.

Challenge America: Reaching Every Community: In this category, the focus is on simple, straightforward local projects that involve experienced professional artists and arts professionals in small or mid-sized communities where opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability.

2006 Annual Report 25 Grant Highlights Alabama

Alabama Symphonic ASO is committed to reaching In all three communities, Association residents throughout all of musicians held master classes for BIRMINGHAM Alabama and in 2006, the Alabama high school band and orchestra Symphonic Association received students, providing the students he Alabama Symphony an NEA Access to Artistic with instruction focused on each Orchestra’s main goal is Excellence grant of $20,000 to instrument. In addition, ASO held T simple—to change lives support ASO’s Touring Alabama concerts for elementary school through music. And the more initiative. Between October 2006 students and provided teachers people it reaches, the more lives it and May 2007, ASO toured the with accompanying educational has the potential to change. Each communities of Livingston, materials. The orchestra also year, the Alabama Symphony Dothan, and Chilton County, provided a pre-show presentation Orchestra (ASO) presents Alabama providing not only high-quality for their final concert in each residents with a full season of concerts, but also a variety of community to give residents the more than 150 concerts. The educational and community opportunity to learn more about 54-member orchestra, led by activities. the music the orchestra performs. Justin Brown, performs for more than 100,000 people each year in both traditional venues, such as concert halls, and nontraditional venues—including schools, retirement homes, and parks. In addition, at least 15 of its concerts each year are provided free of charge and more than 23,000 individuals participate in ASO’s outreach programs, such as “On the Road,” a program which brings the orchestra to all 99 of Birmingham’s neighborhoods and focuses on inner-city schools The Alabama Symphony Orchestra Brass Ensemble conducts a master class for Dothan and neighborhoods. High School band students in Dothan, Alabama. Photo courtesy of Alabama Symphony Orchestra

26 National Endowment for the Arts Odell Valentine’s Lone Star is part of the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts’s collection of African-American quilts. Photo by Emily Stuart Thomas

Montgomery but preserving the works for future the quilts in their gallery and Museum of Fine Arts generations. creating an exhibit to tour. Textile conservator Harriet P. Neal MONTGOMERY In recent years, MMFA has focused undertook the conservation on attracting Birmingham’s process, which was concluded in andmade quilts have African-American population May 2007. long served as a medium through both their exhibits and Hfor memorializing home, outreach programs. In FY 2006, All created in the second half of family, and friends, and as a means MMFA received an NEA Access to the 20th century, the quilts are of personal expression and Artistic Excellence grant of representative of the work of some individual creativity. According to $15,000 to conserve and house a of the region’s most well-respected Robert Cargo, gallery owner and collection of 48 African-American quilters in a style distinctive to the longtime collector of Alabama quilts, an acquisition African-American community, quilts, “Prior to about 1980, representative of southern such as the use of large patterns, African-American quilts, African-American culture. The asymmetry, and bold colors and a particularly those from Alabama, project includes the labor and de-emphasis on precise quilting were scarcely known outside the materials for stabilization and for stitches. The collection will black community that created applying the proper headers to not only provide a deeper them.” Alabama’s first accredited display the quilts, and materials understanding of this artistic museum, the Montgomery for housing the exhibition in a safe tradition, but also will attract Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), has environment, all of which must be nontraditional visitors to the taken up the cause of not only undertaken to achieve the museum from Birmingham’s making these works better known, museum’s final goal of displaying African-American population.

2006 Annual Report 27 Grant Highlights

Sealaska Heritage ceremonial drink of water. Then, Institute symbolically dressed as ravens, Background: Visiting chamber JUNEAU eagles, whales, and other musicians performing a Mozart creatures, they began dancing to quintet with Alaskan mountains in the background during the Sitka n Juneau, Alaska, the beat of a ceremonial drum. Summer Music Festival. “Celebration” is a proper Celebration is a mix of educational Photo courtesy Sitka Summer Inoun. It’s the only name that Music Festival events, entertainment, and could describe the biennial festival contests. Organizers from Sealaska Below:A dancer wearing the that has shut down the entire town Sleeping Man mask performs at Heritage Institute chose the 2006 every other June since 1982. In FY Sealaska Heritage Institute’s theme, “Reflections of our 2006, the Sealaska Heritage Celebration 2006. ancestors in the faces of our Photo by Bill Hess Institute received an NEA Access children,” because they wanted to to Artistic Excellence grant of emphasize the importance of $40,000 to support Celebration passing on their cultural heritage. 2006, a five-day event of In keeping with the Sealaska indigenous art, dance, and culture. Heritage Center’s language The festival opened with the preservation work, Celebration traditional Coming Ashore 2006 included nine workshops in Ceremony. When the war canoes Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian. arrived at Juneau’s Marine Park, Participants were encouraged to clan members announced their continue pursuing language arrival in Tlingit and accepted a studies back home.

Alaska Grant Highlights

Contests at Celebration 2006 Sitka Summer Music “You are not going to get rich doing included black seaweed recipe Festival these concerts, and you’re not judging and canoe races, and a SITKA going to be famous, but you are traditional art market also featured going to have a good time.” work by more than 100 artisans. A o divas need apply to Rosenthal, a Juilliard-trained gallery of Native-American art perform at the Sitka violinist, founded the festival in work, including masks, sculptures, NSummer Music Festival. 1972 to bring high-quality and other works—most in vivid Musicians who sign on to play chamber music to Alaska. The Northwest red, white, and black— concerts in remote Alaskan festival began in Sitka, a culturally were on display throughout the villages must be willing to forego inclined coastal community, where festival. the comforts of a hotel and the the festival continues to offer nine acoustics of a concert hall in favor Celebration also drew dancers concerts each June. The music of staying at homes and from across Alaska, as well as competes with the view: Beyond performing in gymnasiums. It’s British Columbia, Yukon Territory, the stage is a wall of glass, water, not a glamorous tour, but Paul and Washington state. About 1,500 and mountains. Eagles have been Rosenthal, artistic director of the dancers from 43 ensembles known to sweep down from the sky festival, has no trouble finding donned regalia to perform in during concerts. takers. Centennial Hall and march down In addition to the festival in Sitka, the streets of Juneau in the closing “It’s very easy to recruit people to musicians attending the festival parade. More than 5,000 people come to Alaska. It’s an adventure often participate in touring attended the Celebration 2006 to come here,” Rosenthal said. concerts throughout the state. In events. 2006, the festival musicians traveled to Cordova, Dillingham, Juneau, and Togiak. In these outlying towns, the Sitka festival concerts have been known to draw up to 100 percent of the total population. People come not because they want to hear a particular Mozart sonata or Arensky piano trio, but simply because they want to hear high- quality chamber music. And the Sitka Summer Music Festival provides it.

2006 Annual Report 29 Grant Highlights

Thunderstorm, Mission San Xavier del Bac, Arizona, ca. 1948, by Ansel Adams, one of the photographs being preserved through a Save America’s Treasures grant. Photo courtesy of Collection Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. © Trustees of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Save America’s Treasures grant, a program offered jointly by the NEA and the National Park Service. In 2006, the university received a $270,000 Save America’s Treasure’s grant to conserve work by one of America’s most revered photographers: Ansel Adams.

The Center for Creative Photography was co-founded in 1975 by Adams and John P. Schaefer, the university’s president at the time, as a working Arizona institution for research in photography—a place that would not only give the public access to University of Adams’s prints, negatives, and Arizona personal items, but also collect the TUCSON work of other significant and creative photographers. The Ansel wentieth-century Adams archive remains the photography is fast center’s largest collection, T becoming art history. In containing approximately 2,500 the digital age, archiving slides is fine prints, more than 40,000 no longer storage; it’s negatives, and some 700 linear preservation. That’s why the feet of archival boxes containing University of Arizona’s Center for everything from Adams’s receipts Creative Photography applied for a to his signature Stetson hat.

30 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Of chief concern to conservators and nature. The couple quickly are the 40,000 negatives made of realized that a more important unstable cellulose acetate and audience was already there, waiting cellulose nitrate film stock. for them in rural northern Neither chemical ages well. With Arizona. Soon Hoffman and money from the Save America’s Bonfiglio weren’t just planning a Treasures grant, the center plans to concert series, they were teaching purchase a giant freezer that will music to children on Native- safely store thousands of negatives. American reservations. The grant is also funding a massive The outreach program began project that involves remounting Students from Chinle High School on informally in 1984. Each year more 1,250 Adams’s prints to acid-free Arizona’s Navajo Nation composing works reservation schools requested to be performed by the string quartet Ethel, paper and cataloging them in an visits from musicians. To meet the who visited their school in 2006. easy-access manner. Photo courtesy of grand canyon needs of schools more than 100 music festival Adams’s photos of the American miles away, they established the West remain more popular than Native American Composer’s ever—not only as iconic images, Apprentice Project in 2001. The composer-in-residence Raven but as a testimony to what was idea has been simple but Chacon. Several students who possible before the digital age. successful: professional composers began composing through the “There’s an explosion of technical go out to schools in advance and program have continued studying interest in how photographers teach students the basics of music music after high school. achieved what they achieved,” notation and theory. Then, while explained Barbara Allen, assistant the musicians are in Arizona for Perhaps the greatest success story director at the center. the festival, they visit schools and to date is Rochelle Chester, a perform works written by the Monument Valley High School students. student who participated in the Grand Canyon program in 2006. She submitted a Music Festival In 2006, Grand Canyon Music recording of a string quartet she GRAND CANYON Festival received a NEA $20,000 wrote to the radio show From the Learning in the Arts grant to send Top, securing an appearance on the hen flutist Clare the avant-garde string quartet program and having her quartet, Hoffman and violinist Ethel out to three reservation “Moon’s Lullaby,” performed. The W Robert Bonfiglio elementary schools, where the show aired nationwide on PBS founded Grand Canyon Music musicians gave concerts, and to affiliates during spring 2007. Festival in 1983, they anticipated five high schools, where they an audience of enlightened tourists performed works written by coming to commune with music students with the assistance of

2006 Annual Report 31 Grant Highlights Arkansas

Arkansas State University used to create a database of partnered with the Arkansas Arts traditional artists in the Arkansas Council to establish the Arkansas region. Folklife Program, which provides a As a result of his previous year’s full-time Folk Arts Coordinator research, Luster contributed position at the university to greatly to the planning of the Delta promote the folk arts throughout Blues Symposium, held annually at the state. Arkansas State University and In FY 2006, Arkansas State devoted to the examination of the

Essie the Blues Lady performs at West Memphis University received an NEA Folk music and culture of the delta (Arkansas) Junior High as part of the Blues in the Arts Infrastructure grant of region. As part of this symposium, Schools program. $30,000 to support the second Dr. Luster arranged the Blues in Photo by Simon Hosken year of the Folk Arts Coordinator the Schools program, where blues position. After spending the musicians visited middle school previous year concentrating on classrooms and spoke about their Arkansas State the Delta region, Dr. Michael J. music. University Luster, the Arkansas Folk Arts Dr. Luster also uses his research to STATE UNIVERSITY Coordinator, focused on nominate significant artists for the conducting fieldwork in Arkansas’s erhaps not as well known as NEA National Heritage Fellowship Ozarks. This included assessing its fellow Southern states, program and Arkansas’s the archival holdings of Ozark PArkansas has a rich history equivalent, the Living Treasure folklife and documenting the in the folk arts, from the blues of program—awards which increase efforts to preserve the region’s its eastern delta region of the knowledge and recognition of the folklore. This information was Mississippi River to the string importance of the folk and stored in Arkansas State band music of its northwestern traditional arts on a national and University’s folklore archives and Ozark Mountains. In 2005, state level.

32 National Endowment for the Arts Pine Bluff Symphony Orchestra and singers from the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas perform The Splendor of Broadway on March 25, 2007 in Monticello, Arkansas. Photo by Tom Barton

Pine Bluff Symphony PBSO also maintains strong Approximately 3,000 attended the Orchestra educational programs, providing concert, which attracted additional PINE BLUFF more than 200 instruments for community interest by local schools as well as in-school collaborating with vocalists from n the rural, agricultural lessons for students unable to the Arts & Science Center for setting of southeast Arkansas, afford private lessons, sponsoring Southeast Arkansas, who have Ia demand for classical music a youth orchestra, and running a performed the pieces previously as led to the creation of the Pine Bluff summer orchestra workshop. part of Arts & Science Center Symphony Orchestra (PBSO) in musical productions. In FY 2006, PBSO received an NEA 1987. Growing from two Challenge America grant of In addition to strengthening the subscription concerts a year to a $10,000 to support a concert connection between PBSO and the season of four concerts with more featuring pieces from American Arts & Sciences Center, the than 70 musicians, PBSO also musicals. Performed on March 24, concert also was integral to PBSO’s features guest artists as well as 2007, in Pine Bluff, and March 25 efforts to build stronger local choirs. In addition to its in Monticello, The Splendor of community support of both PBSO regular season, PBSO also has Broadway included classic music and orchestral music in general. collaborated with area universities by Broadway icons, such as Irving for concerts and has presented Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, casual, cabaret-style concerts to and Andrew Lloyd Webber. attract more residents.

2006 Annual Report 33 Grant Highlights California

Santa Barbara said. “It’s been an overwhelming DuPont is thrilled to see her Museum of Art success. The NEA gave us a museum acclaimed for gathering SANTA BARBARA chance.” Tamayo’s work. Born in Mexico in 1899, Tamayo was never fully The museum received an NEA erception matters in the embraced by his homeland or his Access to Artistic Excellence grant fickle field of modern art. adopted environs of New York and of $80,000 to support the PIt takes a successful Paris. It’s only in recent years that exhibition. DuPont called on 98 exhibit, accompanied by buzz, to his painting has been lauded for museums and private collectors make the art-world map. In 2007, leaping boundaries rather than from four continents to collect Santa Barbara Museum of Art representing a national style. works for the show, which closed made the leap from a regionally in Santa Barbara at the end of May “Tamayo fused together Mexican respected museum to an 2007 and traveled on to the Miami art, American art, and institution regarded for its Art Museum and the Museo Modernism,” du Pont said. “It’s international touring exhibitions. Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in that fusion that makes him so Tamayo: A Modern Icon Mexico City. special.” Reinterpreted, the first major American retrospective of works Rufino Tamayo’s Mujeres de Tehuantepec (Women of Tehuantepec), 1939, was part of by Mexican painter Rufino the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s exhibition Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted. Tamayo, has drawn international Photo courtesy of Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1941:21, © attention to the little art museum Herederos de Rufino Tamayo north of Los Angeles. Nearly 60,000 people saw the exhibit while it was hung in Santa Barbara. Art magazines ran complimentary reviews right alongside critiques of shows in major cities.

“We aren’t in LA, we aren’t in Washington, DC, but we are doing a retrospective of international caliber,” curator Diana D. duPont

34 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

composer Frederic Rzewski delivered the 2006 keynote address, then sat at the piano to perform his own solo and chamber works.

In recent years the festival has embraced contemporary world music as well as works in the Western tradition. Edward Ortiz, the Sacramento Bee’s music critic, raved about the San Francisco- based Melody of quartet. Violinist Todd Reynolds performed at the 2006 Festival of New American Music. Their performance of Yuanlin Photo by Kevin Kennefick Chin’s “Two Prose Poems” made Ortiz’s 2006 list of top-ten music California’s avant-garde tradition. California State events in the Bay Area. University In 2006, the university received an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Melody of China was one of several Festival of New grant of $10,000 to bolster its 29th ensembles that visited northern American Music SACRAMENTO annual Festival of New American California schools during the Music. 10-day festival. The innovative Talujon Percussion Ensemble and ontemporary classical The November 2006 festival bluegrass-influenced Free Planet music has long enjoyed a brought more than two dozen guest Csolid fan base in Northern Radio were also dispatched to composers and artists to give more schools. All concerts, even the California. The region is perhaps than 60 concerts, lectures, and evening galas at the university, best known as home to composer educational assemblies. The were free and open to the public. John Adams and innovative emphasis, as always, was on 20th- KXPR-FM broadcast the opening symphony and opera companies. and 21st-century composers and gala concert live on Capital Public But for three decades, Sacramento artists who have dedicated their Radio. State University also has been careers to performing doing its part to nurture contemporary works. Pianist and

2006 Annual Report 35 Grant Highlights

A member of the Iron Family Dancers watches as a youngster practices the steps. Photo courtesy of Michael Tamkun and the Fort Collins Museum

support the fourth Crossroads festival on September 2, 2006. The festival educates the public about the contemporary culture of Native Americans, presenting traditional Native-American music with flute and drum along with rock, hip-hop, blues, and folk music, showcasing the effects of Native Americans on contemporary culture.

In addition to the performances, Colorado FCM arranged an art exhibit that highlighted the work of local artist Bunky Echo-Hawk, with other two- and three-dimensional art works by students at the Institute Fort Collins Museum Crossroads at the Council Tree Native American Music Festival. of American Indian and Alaska Foundation Native Culture and Arts FORT COLLINS The museum was founded in 1939 Development. as a pioneer museum, but has o many Americans, grown to focus more on the area’s Fort Collins Museum also arranged Native-American music culture and history. Since 2002 the an in-school educational T consists of the chanting museum has had the support of the component to accompany the and drums that they watched in old Fort Collins Museum Foundation, festival. Hoop dancer Jackie Bird Westerns on television. But which has worked to develop the visited eight elementary schools, Native-American music is more museum into the premiere four Native-American speakers complex and diverse than that, and institution of its kind in northern gave lectures at high schools, and the Fort Collins Museum (FCM) Colorado. In FY 2006, the Fort singer Pura Fe performed a presents that new vision of Native- Collins Museum Foundation concert at Colorado State American music to thousands of received an NEA Access to Artistic University, accompanied by Cary people each year through their Excellence grant of $15,000 to Morin of the band the Atoll.

36 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Denver Office of Cultural Affairs DENVER

n April 14 and 15, 2007, guided tours, and “urban As a result of this program, more than 35,000 adventures”—self-guided tours participants not only become more Oresidents and visitors that were tailored to a specific familiar with their community, but participated in Doors Open interest or theme. they’re also awakened to the Denver, a program to highlight impact of their surroundings. In this second year of the program, Denver’s architectural growth by Doors Open Denver builds an DOCA received an NEA Access to providing free access to sites of appreciation for architecture in Artistic Excellence grant of historic and modern architectural general, as well as an $25,000, which allowed the importance. The 82 diverse sites understanding of Denver’s own office to broaden its reach by included skyscrapers, libraries, architectural masterpieces. college buildings, and hotels. In promoting the program in ethnic order to properly introduce the communities, and by including Established in 1991 by City public to the sites, the Denver sites in predominantly or ordinance, the Denver Office of Office of Cultural Affairs (DOCA) historically minority communities. Cultural Affairs works to advance provided expert-led tours, self- the arts and culture in the city and county of Denver, which includes a vibrant arts community of more The Equitable Building, built in 1892, the tallest building in Denver at that time, is a stop on than 300 arts organizations. Other the architectural tour of the city, Doors Open Denver. Photo courtesy of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs programs include the Denver Poet Laureate Program, which increases the awareness and appreciation of poetry in Denver, and the City Free Concert Series, featuring local performing arts groups and individuals.

2006 Annual Report 37 Grant Highlights

Hartford Jazz Society HARTFORD

n 1961, the Hartford Jazz towering pianist captivated the jazz, artists passing through would Society (HJS) hosted its first audience with his quirky melodies try out new numbers in Hartford.” Iever ticketed concert. The and inventive beats, just as he did HJS seeks to book a spectrum of performer was a little-known jazz 45 years ago. pianist named Randy Weston. jazz musicians who push the ethnic Nearly half a century later, Weston And HJS was happy to bring the and stylistic boundaries of jazz. is an NEA Jazz Master, famous for jazz great back. “Hartford has a Other artists on the 2006 schedule infusing the jazz idiom with long history of being a city included contemporary blues African rhythms, and the Hartford enthusiastic for jazz,” HJS singer Shemekia Copeland, who Society is the oldest nonprofit jazz president Dan Feingold said. sold out the Atheneum for the concert presenter in the United “We’re halfway between Boston society. The day before the concert, States. and New York. In the heydays of Copeland coached aspiring vocalists at an NEA-funded master With the support of an NEA Access class held at a Hartford church. to Artistic Excellence grant of HJS plans to continue sharing the $10,000, the society welcomed joy of jazz with young people by Weston back to Hartford in offering more master classes 2006. In the afternoon and inviting high school jazz before the concert, Weston combos to open concerts for provided a master class in big-name artists. jazz piano for students. During his evening performance with his NEA Jazz Master Randy Weston. African Rhythms Trio, the Photo by Tom Pich Connecticut

38 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Yale University NEW HAVEN

ale University’s Gallery of Collection. In 2007, the exhibit collection to the Yale Gallery, Art received NEA funding will visit the Dallas Museum of Art where the works have been Y not only to display great and the Frist Museum in Nashville, displayed intermittently ever art, but to send masterpieces far Tennessee, and finally return since. from the gallery’s Connecticut home to Connecticut, where it will Critics across the country are quarters. be shown jointly by Yale and grateful to Yale for sharing Société Mount Holyoke College. With help from an NEA Access to Anonyme with a wider audience. Artistic Excellence grant of The exhibition represents the “What you see here is the $60,000, the Yale gallery curated painstaking effort of Yale curators wonderful, unruly mess that its first-ever traveling exhibition to recreate the early 20th-century Modernism deserves,” Roberta culled from its permanent exhibits organized by the original Smith wrote in the New York Times. collection of early 20th-century Société Anonyme: Connecticut art: Société Anonyme: Modernism for painter Katherine Dreier, the America. The internationally French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, acclaimed exhibit opened in the and American photographer Man fall of 2006 at UCLA’s Hammer Ray. During the 1920s and 30s, this Museum in Westwood, California, trio of artists rented galleries in where the Los Angeles Times New York and exhibited works by deemed it one of the top-ten art the likes of Wassily Kandinsky, events in southern California. Paul Klee, and Max Ernst. Dreier’s From there it was on to home became a modern art Washington, DC, where the pieces repository. In 1950, she were hung at the Phillips bequeathed her home and

Angelika Hoerle’s Female Bust, 1920, was one of the artworks featured in the exhibition Société Anonyme: Modernism for America. Photo courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Collection Société Anonyme

2006 Annual Report 39 Grant Highlights

Delaware Center for Studio for high schoolers, and an the group collaborate on a sewing the Contemporary Art and Community Program to project. Each participant used old Arts bring young artists to work with sewing paper patterns to create WILMINGTON groups in the community. clothes, symbolizing their old lives, and then used new materials In FY 2006, DCCA received an and their own ideas on top of the urturing new and NEA Access to Artistic Excellence old patterns, symbolizing a new emerging visual artists is grant of $12,000 to provide Nsomething for which the life pattern. Anasazi documented residencies for two visual artists, the process through photos and Delaware Center for the Maria Anasazi and Yukie video. Contemporary Arts (DCCA) Kobayashi, in 2007 as part of the strives. In addition to presenting Art and Community Program. Yukie Kobayashi worked with 13 nearly 30 exhibitions a year, DCCA DCCA provided each artist with a local home-schooled students and offers programs such as Visual and studio, housing, stipend, material six students at Wilmington Performing Arts Camps for allowance, and travel expenses and Hospital’s First State School, which students K-6, Pre-College Art paired the artist with a community serves critically ill children who group for an eight-week residency. are unable to attend regular school. Kobayashi taught the In June and July of 2007, Maria students a variety of traditional and Anasazi worked with men and contemporary hand-papermaking women at YWCA Delaware’s Home techniques from both Asian and Life Management Center, which Western cultures, using both provides emergency and natural pulps and Japanese transitional housing for mulberry fiber. At the conclusion families. Anasazi’s goal was of the program, students exhibited to explore issues of identity, their work at DCCA. loss, and change by having

Yukie Kobayashi teaches home-schooled students how to create marbleized effects on their handmade paper as part of her Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts residency. Photo by Holly Bennett Jackson

40 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights Delaware

Dance and Drum Company and Micaela Moreno’s Flamenco Ensemble. Several of the performances at Bellevue also featured audience members. The West African storytellers, Griots Wa Umoja, invited children on stage to help them with a performance and the Christina River Steel Band, who had worked with a creative arts camp at Bellevue prior to their During their performance at Bellevue State Park in Delaware, West African performance, invited these storytellers/folklorists, Griots Wa Umoja, invited audience members to participate. campers to perform with them. Photo by Michael Miller At the Killens Pond State Park in Felton, three performances integrate the arts into all facets of Delaware Division of featured musicians playing Delaware life, DDOA received an the Arts bluegrass, traditional Irish music, NEA grant of $595,000 to support WILMINGTON and traditional and original blues. its Partnership activities in FY Lastly, at the White Clay Creek he state parks of Delaware 2006. DDOA used a portion of its State Park near Newark, are known for their NEA funding for the Delaware singer/songwriter Kelly Ricketts, T boating and swimming, Division of Parks and original bluegrass group Delaware hiking and camping, but not Recreation/Delaware Folklife Rag, and lower case blues necessarily for their music. The Program’s 2006 summer concert performed at four concerts. Delaware Division of the Arts series of traditional forms of (DDOA) is aiming to change that. music. In total, more than 3,600 people attended the summer concert As the state agency that At Wilmington’s Bellevue State series and were introduced to such administers grants and programs Park, a mini-series of six diverse music styles as bluegrass, that support arts programming, performances devoted to Pan- Caribbean, and traditional Irish educate the public, increase Caribbean music featured such music. awareness of the arts, and groups as the Sankofa African

2006 Annual Report 41 Grant Highlights

The Washington Na Floresta, and Septime Webre’s ¡Noche Latina! also was integrated Ballet Juanita y Alicia, inspired by his into Washington Ballet’s DanceDC, WASHINGTON homeland, Cuba. which each year reaches more than 600 elementary school students in ¡Noche Latina! was presented he Latino/Hispanic four public schools and one January 31 through February 4, population in Washington, community center. Participating 2007 at the John F. Kennedy T DC, has grown by 154 students studied Latino culture Center for the Performing Arts and percent from 1980 to 2000, and and created their own salsa dance. attended by approximately 6,470 even faster in its suburbs. So local Students also attended free people. The city’s Latino leaders arts organizations such as the performances of ¡Noche Latina! at and members of community Washington Ballet have been THEARC. organizations were invited to open presenting programs specifically to rehearsals and performances. In engage with this growing addition, 1,200 more people population. attended four performances at Jared Nelson performs in Septime Webre’s Juanita y Alicia, part of Washington Ballet’s Town Hall In FY 2006, Washington Ballet Washington Ballet’s ¡Noche received an NEA Access to Artistic Education Arts & Recreation Latina! presentation. Excellence grant of $10,000 for campus (THEARC) in Anacostia. Photo by Carol Pratt ¡Noche Latina!, a production Washington Ballet held two designed to celebrate Latino performances for DC Public culture through a combination of School students and other live music and dance. ¡Noche community and school groups and Latina! included four live bands two performances for the public performing songs from Bolivia, with reduced-price tickets and Cuba, and Mexico and three free tickets for students studying at ballets: Paul Taylor’s tango THEARC. Piazzolla Caldera, Nacho Duato’s District of Columbia

42 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Heritage Preservation WASHINGTON

ublic murals can enliven neighborhoods, offering Pcommentary on events and challenges in the community. Unfortunately, weather can cause damage to the artwork, which without attention, will disappear.

DC’s Heritage Preservation created a project to help preserve such public art. In FY 2006, Heritage Preservation received an NEA Norma Montaya’s mural Innocence (1973) in Los Angeles is one of the murals Access to Artistic Excellence grant being preserved by Heritage Preservation’s Rescue Public Murals initiative. Photo by Moira Egan of $35,000 for Rescue Public Murals, a project developed to identify and preserve the nation’s and fundraising. At present, three Seurat: La Grand Jatte in Harlem outdoor mural masterpieces. works have been picked for (1986) is the last remaining New conservation. York City mural by Eva Crockcroft, Individuals and communities an artist, art historian, and author Two of the works chosen were submitted information about instrumental in the national Norma Montoya’s Innocence (1973) murals throughout the nation to community murals movement. Heritage Preservation. An advisory and Mario Torero and C.A.C.A.’s committee made up of muralists, We Are Not a Minority (1976). In addition to preserving the ten conservators, and art historians Created at the Housing Authority identified murals and drawing are assessing the murals and of the City of Los Angeles’s attention to their artistic and determining ten that are both the property at Estrada Courts, the historical significance, the advisory most endangered and significant murals exemplify the passions of committee is also identifying outdoor murals. For each one, the Chicano movimiento, the options for a national database of the committee will develop movement for social justice. A murals and is assembling best recommendations for distinctly different mural assessed practices on mural creation. conservation, maintenance, by the committee, Homage to

2006 Annual Report 43 Dr. Dulcamara (Rod Nelman) arrives in the village and peddles a magic elixir to townsfolk in the Orlando Opera Company’s production of L’Elisir d’Amore. Photo by Tony Firriolo

Orlando Opera limited exposure to live opera and accompaniment to its touring Company musical theater, including those agenda. Suitable for all age groups, ORLANDO areas underserved by the arts. In these productions included FY 2006, Orlando Opera received Introduction to Zarzuela; Opera ringing people to the an NEA Access to Artistic Extravaganza, a revue of opera, opera is much easier than Excellence grant of $15,000 to operetta, and Broadway selections; B bringing opera to the support an expansion of its touring a midsized production of The people. Moving sets, orchestras, program. Marriage of Figaro; and an abridged and large casts throughout the version of Hansel and Gretel, which The expansion included the hinterland makes mounting a incorporated local teachers and addition of a full-scale production touring opera production a students at each site into the of L’Elisir d’Amore—previously difficult proposition. The Orlando performance. The in-school produced for the company’s Opera Company, however, is performances took place at 56 mainstage series—to its touring dedicated to doing just that. schools from September 2005 to schedule. The company performed May 2006 and benefited more Since 1994, Orlando Opera has L’Elisir d’Amore for nearly 1,500 than 17,000 students. Figaro been on the Florida State Touring patrons at the Tampa Bay toured to Vero Beach, Florida, for Program, through which the Performing Arts Center. two performances in March 2006, company has visited 39 of Florida’s Orlando Opera also added smaller- which benefited 650 youth and 67 counties, bringing affordable scale productions, including in- adults. presentations to audiences with school performances, with piano

44 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

African Caribbean The three-day festival took place Additional festival activities Dance Theatre from June 8-10, 2006 at several included two free children’s dance TALLAHASSEE sites, including Florida State workshops, a book fair with local University’s Ruby Diamond and regional authors, and a health ith a primary mission Auditorium. Visiting artists to the forum on diabetes with health of promoting and festival from Congo, Senegal, and screenings. More than 250 W preserving African Guinea included Guinean dancer children and youth and 950 adults culture, the African Caribbean Moustapha Bangoura, who studied participated in the workshops, Dance Theatre (ACDT) presents with the Les Ballet Africains; while more than 1,000 individuals the annual African Dance dancers Ndeye Gueye from Senegal attended the culminating Festival—which includes arts and Mabiba Baegne from Republic performance. workshops, performances, and a of Congo; and drummers Eric Gore festival marketplace. In FY 2006, from the Ivory Coast and Mangue ACDT received an NEA Access to Sylla from Guinea. Artistic Excellence grant of Mohamed Diaby and Tonya Powell of The festival featured ten African $15,000 to support the 9th Annual African Caribbean Dance Theatre dance workshops, and eight Florida African Dance Festival, the perform at the 9th Annual Florida African drum workshops in a African Dance Festival, sponsored by the only statewide African dance event range of styles including dun dun, African Caribbean Dance Theatre. in Florida. Photos by Austin Roberts djembe, and ngoma. A culminating “This award allows our company to performance featured the festival’s expand and enhance this year’s teaching artists and ACDT’s festival offerings,” Jevelle resident company performing the Robinson, ACDT co-founder and Ivory Coast and Ghana piece titled executive director, told the “Abodon and Lobi.” Tallahassee Democrat. “Over 30 artists—the largest group of artists to date—will be a part of the event this year.” Florida

2006 Annual Report 45 Grant Highlights Georgia

Savannah Music blues, bluegrass, gospel, zydeco, Festival and world musicians, including SAVANNAH NEA Jazz Masters Paquito D’Rivera, Jim Hall, Slide nown for its diversity as Hampton, Roy Haynes, and Ahmad well as the excellence of Jamal. Between March 17 and April K its musicians, the 2, 2006, approximately 48,000 Savannah Music Festival (SMF) people attended the festival, an hosts renowned jazz, blues, increase of 33 percent over the bluegrass, classical, and previous year. In addition to 59 international artists over a 17-day ticketed events, SMF also featured period each spring in historic free midday concerts, youth downtown Savannah. Founded in education programs, artist 1980, SMF is Georgia’s largest workshops, a three-day gospel music festival, highlighting not workshop, and a two-day high only world-class musicians, but school jazz band workshop. also integrating the event into the One of the primary goals of the community as the festival takes festival is to provide the place throughout the entire opportunity for musicians to historic district, including collaborate and blend genres to theaters, houses of worship, and make unique festival art museums. Education is an performances. For 2006, examples integral part of the festival, with of this included four string 10,000 free tickets provided musicians combining elements of for students and educational bluegrass, folk, and jazz music, and materials supplied to teachers in NEA Jazz Master Slide Hampton works Hamilton de Holanda, an with high school jazz students from across anticipation of the concerts. Georgia in an annual jazz band workshop instrumentalist from , at the 2006 Savannah Music Festival. In FY 2006, SMF received an NEA collaborating with mandolinist Photo by Ayano Hisa Access to Artistic Excellence grant Mike Marshall to blend bluegrass, of $10,000 for their 2006 festival, classical, world, and swing music. which featured 500 classical, jazz,

46 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Robert W. Woodruff Theatre’s competition and the Arts Center world premiere of the winning play. Twenty-six playwrights from Alliance Theatre Company ATLANTA 13 schools submitted plays, and a national judging panel picked the winner and four other finalists, ne of Atlanta’s theater who received stage readings of companies that produce their plays. On April 7, 2006, the Oprofessionally staged winning play, ...,” said Said, by Yale productions for both adult and School of Drama student Kenneth youth audiences, the Alliance Lin and directed by the Alliance’s Theatre Company has presented Artistic Director Susan V. Booth, high-quality theater on two stages opened on the Alliance’s Hertz at the Robert W.Woodruff Arts Stage and ran for a total of 28 Center since 1968. The Alliance performances. Throughout the has become one of the nation’s rehearsal process, Lin was in leading regional theaters, and is residence at the Alliance and renowned for its role in producing participated in audience world premieres, many of which go enrichment activities surrounding on to Broadway, such as Alice his play. Walker’s The Color Purple. Alliance Theatre’s Graduate In 2003, the Alliance created the Playwriting Competition not only Graduate Playwriting Competition, introduces the Atlanta community an opportunity for students in the to new and groundbreaking country’s top graduate playwriting theater, but it also provides programs to compete for a full support and encouragement to new Sarah Said (Jacqueline Antaramian) with professional production by her father Andre (Michael Santo) in a playwrights as well as important Alliance Theatre. In FY 2006, the scene from …,” said Said, winner of the connections and invaluable Arts Center received an NEA Alliance Theatre Company’s Graduate recognition in the theater Playwriting Competition in 2006. Access to Artistic Excellence grant community. Photo by Greg Mooney of $40,000 to support Alliance

2006 Annual Report 47 Grant Highlights

A young dancer from Halua Hula ´ O Nawahine performs at the 2006 Prince Lot Hula Festival. Photo courtesy of moanalua Gardens foundation Hawaii

Moanalua Gardens noncompetitive hula festival suggested $3 donation per person. Foundation in Hawaii. “It’s all a great big help,” Merryman said. “The grant helps HONOLULU Competitive hula festivals are glitzy us spread the spirit of aloha.” indoor events that the average n Hawaii, hula dancers have Hawaiian family cannot afford to Even though colonial rulers the power to move highways. attend, according to Mahealani forbade Hawaiians from hula IThe Moanalua Gardens Merryman, executive director of dancing, during his reign Prince Foundation was founded in 1970 to Moanalua Gardens Foundation. Lot held clandestine parties with save a natural botanical garden Each year, the Prince Lot Hula hula and songs at Moanalua. The from being bisected by the Festival invites approximately ten modern-day festival pays homage Moanalua Freeway. The Moanalua dance schools, or haluas, to to a historic kahuna, or hula Gardens occupy land that belonged perform at the festival. In 2006, instructor.For 2006, the chosen to Hawaiian royalty until the late the foundation received an NEA honoree was Kama’ipu’upa’a, a 1800s. To celebrate preserving the Access to Artistic Excellence grant court dancer and favorite to the land, the foundation held its first of $10,000 to provide travel king. About 7,000 visitors crowded Prince Lot Hula Festival in 1978, stipends for the haluas who flew the gardens and crossed over into named after the king who held hula from three other islands to the adjacent city park to enjoy a dances on the site during the late perform at the historic festival and fair of Hawaiian crafts and cuisine. 1800s. It’s been growing in scope to continue keeping admission and reputation ever since, and is prices down—admission is a now regarded as the largest

48 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Ko-Ko discusses his impending marriage to a reluctant Yum-Yum and her sisters in Aina Haina Elementary School’s production of The Mikado. Photo courtesy Hawaii Opera Theatre

Hawaii Opera (HOT). “They sing opera on the produced their own eco-opera, Theatre playground and in the baseball Save the Habitats, based on poems HONOLULU dugout.” they wrote about ecology in a language arts class. HOT’s resident In 2006, Hawaii Opera Theatre hen educators from accompanist set the students’ received an NEA Learning in Hawaii Opera Theatre libretto to famous arias to create the Arts grant of $20,000 to stage W visit island schools, the opera. full-length operas at five Oahu they don’t waste time bemoaning elementary schools. For two HOT has been offering residencies the limited musical resources months, each school was in some form since 1995. The available. Instead, they take transformed into an opera program expands each year, and advantage of exposing students to company, with students learning future plans call for staging operas classical music. Children how to do everything from sing on the island of Maui, where only encountering opera for the first to apply stage makeup. Three one-third of the elementary time are blissfully unaware of schools presented a custom schools have music teachers. The stereotypes like plump sopranos adaptation of Madame Butterfly, company also flies singers to all wearing Viking helmets; they take with Puccini’s tragic ending the major islands to perform at to arias like catchy pop songs. replaced by a comic punch line. A schools and offers dress rehearsal “These kids have no inhibitions,” fourth school staged Gilbert and tickets to Honolulu students for said Erik Haines, the educational Sullivan’s The Mikado. And at each of its mainstage productions. director of Hawaii Opera Theatre Waikele Elementary, third-graders

2006 Annual Report 49 Grant Highlights

Idaho Falls Arts Council arranged for billboards to be displayed on major roads to attract tourists to Idaho Falls’ Cultural District. Photo courtesy of Idaho Falls Arts Council

Idaho Falls Arts The Willard Arts Center, with other In order to entice visitors, IFAC Council local arts organizations such as the began by revising and reprinting a IDAHO FALLS Idaho Falls Symphony, the Cultural District brochure. This Museum of Idaho, Actors’ was distributed at visitor centers, s the largest city in the Repertory Theatre of Idaho, and downtown stores and arts sparsely populated the Idaho Falls Public Library, facilities, hotels/motels, and other A eastern Idaho region, comprise Idaho Falls’s Cultural high-traffic areas. In addition, Idaho Falls sits as the center of District. This 10-block downtown billboards were displayed at the cultural activities for the region. area in the city’s historic district Idaho Falls airport and along major The Idaho Falls Arts Council also includes art galleries, roadways traveled by tourists. (IFAC) promotes the arts in this restaurants, a film theater, public Lastly, banners promoting the region, owning and operating the art gift shops, and antique stores. Cultural District were hung on Willard Arts Center, which Located 100 miles south of utility poles throughout the whole includes two art galleries, three Yellowstone and Teton National 10-block area. IFAC’s efforts are classrooms, a conference room, Parks, Idaho Falls attracts visitors designed to promote the cultural and the 988-seat Colonial Theater. to the town who are on their way to district to both tourists and local In addition to presenting visual these landmarks. In FY 2006, IFAC residents, transforming Idaho arts exhibitions and performing received an NEA Challenge Falls into a destination point for arts performances, IFAC also America grant of $10,000 for visitors to the region. offers arts education programs and marketing and promotional promotes other arts organizations activities for its Cultural District. and events in the region.

50 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

St. Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre dancer performing the well-known piece “The Dying Swan” from Carnival of the Animals as part of the Festival Dance Youthreach Project. P hoto by C. Rod Bacon Photography Idaho

Festival Dance and performances of artistic quality performances. For instance, Performing Arts and cultural diversity. In 2006, the Ragamala Music and Dance Association four free programs were provided Theatre taught students the MOSCOW by three dance companies to importance and meaning behind 4,000 third- through sixth-grade hand and eye movements in he only professional students from 15 rural Indian dances and then students dance series between communities in Idaho and participated by using hand T Seattle and Minneapolis, Washington. gestures to help tell a story. the Festival Dance and Performing Students were bussed to large In order to prepare students for Arts Association presents theaters, where they viewed the performances, Festival Dance performances in ballet, jazz, performances by dancers, singers, provides teachers with study modern dance, world dance, and and musicians of Mexico City’s guides about the companies and musical theater from such diverse Ballet Gran Folklorico de Mexico, types of dance the students will organizations as Alvin Ailey II, St. Russian ballet artists from the St. see, as well as discussion questions Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre, Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre, and activity suggestions. Typically, and the National Song & Dance and a program of Bharatanatyam students participate in this Company of Mozambique. dance of South India by Ragamala program for three years, giving In FY 2006, Festival Dance Music and Dance Theatre. At each them the opportunity to view received an NEA Access to Artistic performance, the artistic director multiple performances and Excellence grant of $9,000 for its or tour manager narrated the introducing them to diverse types Youthreach Project, designed to performances, and led background of international dance and music. introduce students in remote and discussions, demonstrations underserved locations to dance of technique, and mini-

2006 Annual Report 51 Grant Highlights Illinois

Dalkey Archive Press NORMAL

little publicity goes a by Danish Nobel Prize nominee long way. During three Louis Paul Boon; Distant Relations, A weeks in 2005, Dalkey by Mexican novelist Carlos Archive Press sold 15,000 copies Fuentes; A Fool’s Paradise, by of its most popular title, The Third contemporary Finnish writer Anita Policeman, after the cover of the Konkka; the break-out Irish novel book made a 1.2 second ,In Night’s City by Dorothy Nelson; appearance on the hit television Melancholy, by the Norwegian show Lost and producers hinted dramatist Jon Fosse; and Everyday the book held a clue to the series’ Life, the French bestseller by Lydie plot. Sales of the book soared to Salvayre. more than six times the annual So far, none of those books has average. The small staff at Dalkey landed a TV spot. Everyday Life did was floored, and left wishing every garner a glowing review and title they publish could land a spot “Books of Particular Interest” on primetime. mention in the New York Times, For more than two decades, Dalkey however, prompting a second print has been dedicated to bringing run. But most of the time, Dalkey’s out-of-print masterpieces back publisher John O’Brien relies on into print and making compelling his judgment of a good book. American and international “If a book is really that good, it literature available to the American crosses countries and it crosses public. cultures,” O’Brien said. “James In 2006, Dalkey received an NEA Joyce’s Dubliners is a great

Dalkey Archive Press is publishing Access to Excellence grant of example. It’s my belief that it’s the six new titles of foreign fiction with $55,000 to publish a half dozen art of great literature to transcend support from the NEA. foreign titles: Summer in Termuren, time and place.” Book covers courtesy of Dalkey Archive Press

52 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

WBEZ Alliance CHICAGO

family is seated around a its programming. The festival now television set, watching has three components—a A old home movies. competition for radio There’s Mom and Dad, now in documentaries, a conference in their 60s, exchanging wedding Chicago for narrative radio vows on the screen. Dad recalls producers, and a new “Listening how he much he loved the sermon. Tour” at film festivals. Mom remembers hating the Sitting in a dark theater, just minister’s message. Their grown listening to audio stories such as daughter, Sasha, sighs and says, ‘Til Death Do Us Part, may sound a “To begin with, my parents never little bizarre. But Joanna Zorn, the got along.” festival’s executive producer, Got the picture? Well, there isn’t suggested that Third Coast is all one. Only voices tell the story in about promoting radio with an art- ‘Til Death Do Us Part, one of 258 house aesthetic. “We want to raise entries in the 2006 Third Coast the level of discussion to an artistic International Audio Festival. The level,” Zorn said. “Radio is often festival was founded by WBEZ-FM, thought of as an information Chicago’s public radio station, as a source—it’s where we go to get the “Sundance for Radio.” This annual news, the traffic, the weather—but Alaska Public Radio host Rebecca Sheir celebration of audio it really can be so much more than took home the Director’s Choice Award documentaries has received NEA that. We want to raise awareness for her audio documentary on Jewish death and burials at the 2006 Third funding every year since its of audio documentaries as an Coast International Audio Festival. inception in 2000. In FY 2006, the art form.” Photo courtesy of WBEZ Alliance festival was awarded an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence grant of $20,000 to continue expanding

2006 Annual Report 53 Grant Highlights

Inalados, ceramic sculptures by Basque artist Angel Garraza, serve as gallery centerpieces for the exhibition From Rust to Restoration: Basque Art and the Bilbao Effect. Photo courtesy of South Shore Arts

Northern Indiana Art Association MUNSTER

hen John Cain first Hammond, two former steel towns The exhibit was presented traveled to Bilbao, whose economies have grown simultaneously at three venues: W Spain, two years ago, stagnant. Before the Guggenheim South Shore’s main gallery in he gazed at the winding facade of opened its Frank Gehry-designed Munster, the Also Castillo Gallery the Guggenheim Museum and Bilbao museum in 1997, the in Chicago, and the Gallery for envisioned northwest Indiana. Basque region was suffering from a Contemporary Art at the Gary “We saw so many parallels between similar post-industrial malaise. campus of Indiana University that region of Spain and our city,” Along with other urban Northwest (IUN). Cain said. redevelopment projects, the More than 8,000 people came out museum has become a catalyst for Cain is the executive director of the to see the multimedia exhibit. The economic renewal in north central Northern Indiana Art Association paintings, sculptures, and ceramic Spain. (renamed as South Shore Arts in works attracted viewers from a 2006), a trio of gallery spaces and Cain hopes South Shore Arts can range of demographic groups, art education centers that serve inspire a similar resurgence in including art and Spanish students more than 50 Indiana Indiana. To that end, the from 35 local schools. Events communities. The service area organization received an NEA related to the Rust to Restoration includes Gary and Challenge America grant of exhibit included a chamber music $10,000 in FY 2006 to present concert featuring music from the From Rust to Restoration: Basque Art Basque region and a three-day and the Bilbao Effect, an exhibit conference at IUN: The Arts and featuring more than 400 works by Urban Renewal. 20 artists from the Basque region.

Jesus Lizaso’s Teorema de 2 Lentes stands in the foreground of the exhibition From Rust to Restoration: Basque Art and the Bilbao Effect. Photo courtesy of South Shore Arts Grant Highlights Indiana

Fort Wayne Before and during each concert features a theme with a Philharmonic performance, video footage is unique marketing campaign: for Orchestra projected onto screens hanging example, Haydn vs. Beethoven was FORTWAYNE above the musicians. The billed as “A Smackdown between multimedia content includes Two Great Composers.” Local f MTV can do it, so can the interviews with the musicians, actors portraying the two Fort Wayne Philharmonic. composers bantered back and I The orchestra received an forth between movements. NEA Access to Artistic Excellence The Unplugged concert series has grant of $15,000 in FY 2006 to tapped into an up-and-coming fund Unplugged, an informal creative class of young people concert series that aims to in northeast Indiana. The attract younger audiences who philharmonic, which was also may watch the MTV founded in 1944, launched program of the same name. the casual concert series in The Philharmonic’s Unplugged 1996. A total audience of about concerts feature shorter classical 3,500 attended the four works, snippets of symphonies, Unplugged concerts, including and music with crossover appeal. many people who came to hear the “We’re trying to demystify classical Mozart (Brad Diamond) and Salieri (Philip orchestra for the first time. Of Kraus) spar onstage at an Unplugged music,” said Jeffrey Moore, the those newcomers, one in five later concert at the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. purchases a ticket for a classical philharmonic’s grants and Photo courtesy Fort Wayne research director. “Audiences get a Philharmonic. concert. But for $13, the reduced price of an Unplugged concert sense right from the beginning images that correspond with the can’t be beat.Tickets include a that this isn’t a stuffed-shirt music, or commentary from music post-concert party with the concert.” director Edvard Tchivzhel. Each musicians.

2006 Annual Report 55 Grant Highlights

Old Creamery Theatre Company AMANA

n 1971, Iowa’s first professional theater company Iwas founded in Garrison, Iowa. The city’s old co-op dairy gave the theater both a name and a home and the Old Creamery Theatre Company performed there for the next 17 years, until it moved to Amana, Iowa.

Touring is an integral part of the Creamery’s programming and an active way for it to reach Iowa’s small, isolated communities. In FY 2006, the Creamery received an Clockwise from top: Ryan Gaffney (standing with trumpet), Nicholas Hodge, NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Sean McCall, and Deborah Kennedy in the Old Creamery Theatre Company’s 2006 Young People’s Tour. grant of $18,000 to expand its Photo by Anne Craig outreach programs and bring its productions to underserved 19 and May 16, 2007, reaching respect, responsibility, fairness, populations in Iowa and nearly 40,000 students. caring, and citizenship. Based on throughout the Midwest. The first the schools’ enthusiasm for this Prior to beginning its tour, the component of its outreach production and a desire to reach Creamery held its annual writing initiative, the Young People’s Tour, more students in the rural contest for students in first resulted in 121 performances of Midwest, the production will tour through sixth grades. Each story TeRRiFiCC Tales between February to additional schools in the fall of was required to teach a lesson, and 2007. from these entries the Creamery created TeRRiFiCC Tales, a fully The Creamery also toured its staged theatrical production that mainstage production of Dates with focuses on the six pillars of a Nut by Meg Merckens and Iowa character: trustworthiness, Thomas P. Johnson to five

56 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

communities in southern and Taking inspiration from local Planning for this project began in central Iowa between April 10 and railroad history and natural January 2006 and, with the May 6, 2007, reaching more than history, local artist Judy Bales community’s help, work on both 17,000 people. In each designed artistic elements for the bridges was completed in July community, the Creamery held two bridges, such as a mosaic 2007. Public participation and between one and six entryway comprising pavers and a collaboration were key to the performances, as well as question- flagstone approach. In addition, success of the project. Community and-answer sessions with the Bales designed an enhancement members participated not only in actors, director, and playwright. for one bridge’s chain-link fence the actual installation of the using Cor-Ten steel. Cor-Ten steel design, but in the planning process self-oxidizes, forming a protective as well. For instance, a local Iowa Trails Council coat of rust, and both the color of manufacturing company, Creative CENTER POINT the metal and Bales’s organic Edge, helped JCTC to figure out design give the bridge a more how best to cut the Cor-Ten steel chapter of the Iowa Trails natural look, complementing the and another company, Schaus- Council, the Jefferson woodlands that surround it. Vorhies Manufacturing, developed A County Trails Council a way to attach the Cor-Ten to the (JCTC) works to design, plan, and existing fencing. develop local multiple-use trails. JCTC has built three bridges over Judy Bales designed decorative elements to retrofit onto the Cedar View Bridge, the past seven years, in addition to helping to soften the very industrial appearance of the bridge yet not obstruct maintaining the trail system and the view of the creek and woodlands. constructing new trail segments. Photo by Judy Bales

JCTC promotes its efforts through local photography and art exhibits of scenes along the trails and also integrates art elements into its trail design. In FY 2006, the Iowa Trails Council received an NEA Challenge America grant of $10,000 for JCTC to design and implement artistic enhancements to the Cedar View Pedestrian and Bicycle Trail Bridges.

2006 Annual Report 57 Grant Highlights

Johnson County During FY 2006, the NEA provided perform at one or both venues, Community College funding to two performing arts which are spaced about 175 miles centers that are committed to apart on I-70. Artists are often The Carlson Center OVERLAND PARK bringing internationally known skeptical, but leave the state acts to the heartland: the Stiefel impressed with the venues. Theatre in Salina and the Carlsen “We’re in Kansas, but we are doing Stiefel Theatre for Center on the campus of Johnson some interesting things,” said the Performing Arts County Community College, Charles Rogers, artistic director of SALINA located 22 miles south of Kansas the Carlsen Center. The center City. Both centers share similar presents a mix of touring theater, OMIX. Paul Taylor missions: they bring world-class chamber music, and children’s Dance Company. cultural entertainment to people MTrinity Irish Dance. performances. Rogers ventured who would otherwise be driving to into dance in 1999, when he It’s a line-up that could appear at Chicago, or more likely, never see overheard at a conference that Chelsea’s famed Joyce Theater or professional dance. Programmers Dance St. Louis was looking for Jacob’s Pillow, the renowned dance at both sites keep an eye out for partners to commission a new venue in the Berkshires. Where performers who may be driving work from Paul Taylor. did this prestigious trio of across the country and ask them to companies all perform? The Great Plains State of Kansas.

Julie Tice and Michael Trusnovec are the principal dancers in Paul Taylor’s Banquet of Vultures, a piece co-commissioned by the Carlsen Center and performed at the theater during 2006. Photo by Tom Caravaglia Kansas

58 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Rogers surprised his colleagues by saying he would be interested. The Carlsen Center has since co- commissioned three more dances from Taylor, a contemporary choreographer known for mixing the grace of ballet with comedy and athleticism. During the 2005- 2006 season, the Carlsen Center used its NEA Access to Artistic Excellence grant of $10,000 to fund a master class with Taylor’s company. The grant also supported a performance by Shen Wei Dance Arts and a residency for Hubbard Street 2 to co-create a piece with 49 aspiring local dancers.

Halfway across the state, the Stiefel Salina-area ballet students and members of Trinity Irish Dance Company stretch together at a master class sponsored by Stiefel Theatre. Theatre also offered an NEA- Photo courtesy of Stiefel Theatre for the Performing Arts funded master class. The theater invited students from every dance school within 100 miles to come gradually fell into decline and Shankar. Her band of kick up their legs with Trinity Irish closed in 1981. In 2003, it percussionists offered a well- Dance Company. reopened as a privately owned attended tabla drumming “Their performance was performing arts center dedicated workshop. incredible,” said Amanda Macklin, to serving central Kansas. “World music is something that project director. “It was so much In FY 2006, the center received an has not been presented a lot in this more than just some Celtic NEA Challenge America grant of area,” Macklin said. “We want to dancing.” $10,000 to book performers with a offer programming that will bring The Stiefel Theatre was once a Fox world music theme, like the Trinity in a little more diversity.” movie palace that provided cheap Irish Dance Company. The grant entertainment at the height of the also funded an evening of Indian Great Depression. The theater music with sitar virtuoso Anoushka

2006 Annual Report 59 The WLS Prairie Farmer Road Show in Wisconsin, 1936. Photo by James G. Buchanan

Media Working Hayloft Gang: The Story of the surviving performers and Group National Barn Dance. listeners, broadcast historians, folklorists, and folk and country LEXINGTON National Barn Dance appealed not music experts. Activities supported only to rural audiences but also to ack in the 1920s and 30s, by the NEA grant included the city listeners who had come from there was one promoter of digitizing and editing of archival rural communities. The Bcountry music that was film footage, the creation of pioneering program set the second only to the Grand Ole graphic materials and music, and standard for the hundreds of the recording of the film’s Opry—the WLS radio program, similar barn dance radio programs narration by Garrison Keillor. The National Barn Dance. The radio that followed in its wake. Some of , broadcast out of completed documentary will be program the iconic performers featured on downtown Chicago, began in 1924 broadcast on public television in National Barn Dance included “The and ran until 1960, presenting live partnership with the Independent Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry; music and entertainment to Television Service, WTTW National Country Music Hall of Famers Red millions of people every Saturday Productions, and Kentucky Foley and Bradley Kincaid; and Educational Television. The Hayloft night during its 26-year run. In FY Lulu Belle and Scotty Wiseman, Gang is expected to premiere on 2006, Media Working Group “The Sweethearts of Country PBS in late 2008. received an NEA Access to Artistic Music.” Excellence grant of $20,000 to support post-production and The one-hour film incorporates editing costs for a documentary archival film footage, photographs, film about the program, The and music with interviews with

60 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Southeast Kentucky was the Bluegrass Series. One of quality arts programming for the Community and the college’s artistic missions is to local community, and to build Technical College promote the preservation of community awareness of and CUMBERLAND Appalachian culture, and what partnerships for arts tourism. better part of Kentucky culture to More than 20 community he Bluegrass region of preserve than the musical style that organizations collaborated with the Kentucky gave its name to was created there. The Bluegrass college on the Goin’ Back to Harlan T the music that originated Series focuses on local Kentucky Bluegrass Festival. The three-day there (via Bill Monroe and his Blue talent, and has featured festival took place on the college’s Grass Boys), so it is not surprising performers such as Paul Williams Harlan Campus June 22-24, 2006. that one of the programs the and the Victory Trio, Pine There were 32 featured performers Southeast Kentucky Community Mountain Railroad, and the including the Cumberland Gap and Technical College’s Shadow Ridge Band. Connection, the Dixie Bluegrass Express, Dale Ann Bradley, and Cumberland campus pioneered Southeast Kentucky Community 2006 International Bluegrass and Technical College received an Music Association Emerging Artist NEA Challenge America grant of of the Year Steep Canyon Rangers. $10,000 to support the kickoff of There also were 14 open mic the Goin’ Back to Harlan Bluegrass performances by festival Festival, a celebration of the attendees. Nearly 2,000 people Bluegrass Series. The festival was attended the festival, which the inaugurated as a way to showcase college is planning on making an the region’s rich cultural heritage annual event. and local musicians, to provide Kentucky

Bassist “Fat Albert” Blackburn of the bluegrass band Fescue performs at the 2006 Goin’ Back to Harlan Bluegrass Festival sponsored by the Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College’s Cumberland campus. Photo by David penix/chesare burke

2006 Annual Report 61 Grant Highlights

Tulane University wreaked its havoc was Romeo and together a show, although Juliet, held August 3-12, 2006, on performances were reduced from The Shakespeare Tulane University’s campus. The 12 to eight. Even with that Festival at Tulane NEW ORLEANS NEA awarded the university an restriction, more than 930 Access to Artistic Excellence grant attended the production. of $8,000 for SFT’s production. fter the hurricane season In order to provide patrons from of 2005, New Orleans The damage of Hurricane Katrina all economic levels the chance to A knew a little something to SFT included displacement of attend, SFT provided half-price about being “star-crossed,” so it staff and actors, some now living in previews August 3 and 4 and pay- was appropriate that one of the FEMA trailers, and devastation of what-you-will performances performances by the Shakespeare its offices, theater space, costumes, August 6 and 12. The community Festival at Tulane (SFT) in the first and props. Still, the show must go seized this opportunity and all four season after Hurricane Katrina on, and SFT managed to put performances were sold out.

SFT has played an important role in revitalizing New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. This production provided the actors, Louisiana technicians, designers, and

Teddy Boone as Romeo and Sharon London as Nurse at the Capulet masquerade ball in Tulane Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet. Pho to by Brad Robbert Grant Highlights

support staff not Running from only employment, January 19 through but also the April 7, 2007, chance to help the exhibition bring normality Howardena Pindell: back to the city. SFT’s Hidden Histories summer festival is a included 51 of Pindell’s summer tradition for mixed-media works created residents in New Orleans and Howardena Pindell’s Untitled 3C, a between the 1970s and 2006. mixed-media work from 2005, is one of the having this tradition continue LASM provided guided tours for features in the Louisiana Art & Science brought a feeling of recovery. One Musuem’s exhibition on the artist. elementary and middle school member of the cast and crew, many Ima ge courtesy of Sragow Gallery, students, as well free docent tours New York of whom lost their homes in the on the weekend and a free family hurricane, commented, “Here at guide, all designed to inform the theater, I feel like I have a more than 50 percent African- visitors about Pindell’s concepts home again.” American, and LASM provides and engage them in a dialogue programming to reach this about the exhibit. In addition, important part of its community. LASM provided free admission to Louisiana Art & the exhibit on two dates. Science Museum LASM works in partnership with BATON ROUGE LINKS, Inc., a national African- Howardena Pindell herself gave a American women’s service public lecture at LASM on her he Louisiana Art and organization, and each year the two work and the current issues facing Science Museum (LASM), present an exhibition and lecture women in the arts, and spoke one- T which offers displays and program during Black History on-one with students participating education programs on the arts Month that focuses on the in LASM’s YouthALIVE!, a work- and sciences—including a contributions of African based learning program for planetarium and Challenger Americans to art. In FY 2006, underserved young women in the Learning Center with simulated LASM received an NEA Challenge community. In addition, Pindell space missions—serves more than America grant of $10,000 to spoke with graduate art students at 221,000 people, mainly from the support an exhibition of Southern University, a historically East Baton Rouge Parish and its Howardena Pindell’s work as part black college, and Xavier surrounding parishes, each year. of the museum’s Black History University in New Orleans. The population of Baton Rouge is Month programming.

2006 Annual Report 63 Grant Highlights

Joseph Marriner Gerrish Family by unknown artist, circa 1824, at the Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Image courtesy of Portland Museum of Art

Artwork by fifth-graders at Presumpscot Elementary School hangs on display at the Portland Museum Portland Museum of Art. Their paintings were inspired by the portrait of the Gerrish Family of Art from the museum’s permanent collection. PORTLAND Photo courtesy of Portland Museum of Art

n an era when arts education ten Maine elementary schools. Reception so the Portland often has fallen to the They worked on developing community could assess art Iwayside, Portland Museum of realistic goals for students that, projects created by students in the Art wants to help art teachers if met, would prove that progress 10 classes. Families that might remain critical to a child’s can be measured even in a never have come to see a Winslow education. Four years ago, the subjective subject like art. The Homer exhibit at the museum museum received an NEA grant to grant provided stipends for the instead came out to see their develop Looking to Learn, cross- teachers, transportation for child’s artwork inspired by Homer disciplinary lesson plans that students to travel to the museum, and other artists with ties to revolve around works from the and substitutes for the art teachers Maine. The exhibition won rave museum’s permanent collection. so they could go on the field trips reviews, according to education as well. director Dana Baldwin. In 2006, the museum received an NEA Learning in the Arts grant of Back at school, students were “We treated the student art very $45,000 to develop Artful asked to create their own work of carefully, with professional labels, Assessment, the second phase of art inspired by a piece they had so the work looks like it belongs in Looking to Learn. The new studied from the Looking to Learn the museum,” Baldwin said. program paired an art teacher and collection. In May of 2007, the Approximately 350 people classroom instructor from each of museum held a Celebration attended.

64 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts Maine NEWCASTLE

aine isn’t called producing commercial pottery and Vacationland for instead create ceramic art. To mark Mnothing. On weekends, the anniversary, the center motorists clog Route 1 heading for received an NEA Access to Artistic coastal cabins. Along the way, Excellence grant of $10,000 to tourists stop to shop at places like fund a series of ceramics symposia Blueberry Cupboard and Cool as a that were open to the public. Moose. They buy balsam fir “In our community, many people sachets, lighthouse magnets, and know about Watershed as an pottery dotted with Maine’s organization, but even some of our signature blueberries. Many Maine closest neighbors don’t know what potters make a living producing we do,” Gulden said. such serviceable ceramics, but cross Wiscasset Bridge and wander The symposia were held at west on winding dirt for a mile, Skidompha Public Library, a more and you’ll find a sanctuary for accessible location than the artists who aspire to create art ceramics studio. As many as 50 from clay: the Watershed Center people came to hear Watershed’s for the Ceramic Arts. summer artists-in-residence discuss and demonstrate their “Watershed’s mission isn’t to teach Jane Shellenbarger, a 2006 artist-in- work. The center also continued to residence at Watershed Center for the people to make blueberry pottery,” offer slide nights, open studios, Ceramic Arts, applies brushwork to a plate. said Tyler Gulden, the center’s Photo courtesy of Watershed Center and community dinners. Thanks to programs director. for the Ceramic Arts the symposia, more local residents For 20 years, the Watershed Center have been driving out that dirt for the Ceramic Arts has been road in Newcastle to watch the providing residencies for potters artists at work. who want to take a break from

2006 Annual Report 65 Grant Highlights

Background: Cambodian-American Heritage’s dance students perform as part of a Cambodian New Year celebration. Photo by Tom Pich Maryland

Cambodian- of $10,000 in support of folk dances, such as the Robaim American Heritage instruction in Cambodian dance Kangok Pailin, or Pailin Peacock FORT WASHINGTON and music, culminating in a Folk Dance. In addition to these performance in celebration of the traditional dances, the concert also fter the Cambodian Cambodian New Year. From featured Robaim Prosithi Por, a holocaust in the 1970s, November 2006 through April classical dance choreographed by A when many traditional 2007, Cambodian-American CAH’s teachers. The performance dancers and musicians were killed, students ages three through adult was recorded for broadcast on DC the survival of an art form was in participated in dance and music public access television stations. jeopardy. As the leading classes, organized and taught by By creating new dances and Cambodian arts education and CAH artistic director and NEA preserving traditional ones, CAH performance organization in the National Heritage Fellow Sam- provides an invaluable service to United States, Cambodian- Oeun Tes, music director and NEA the Cambodian-American American Heritage (CAH) has National Heritage Fellow Chum community and is integral to the undertaken the responsibility of Ngek, and dance director Devi survival and resurgence of this preserving this Asian artistic Yim. tradition for the future. tradition, training the next The 37 dance students and five generation of Cambodian- music students performed on April Americans in Cambodian classical 29, 2007, at Gunston Middle and folk dances and traditional School in Arlington, Virginia. The music, and also introducing this dancers and musicians presented traditional art form to a nine pieces, showcasing mainstream American audience. Cambodian classical dance, such as In FY 2006, CAH received an NEA Robaim Phoung Neary, used to open Access to Artistic Excellence grant a special event, and Cambodian

66 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

University of Maryland at College Park Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center COLLEGE PARK

o celebrate the Marie, entitled Josephine Anniversary Retrospective, a achievement of women Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot. The compendium of three works T in the arts, the University presentation used historic film set choreographed by Liz Lerman that of Maryland’s Clarice Smith to new compositions to reflect on incorporated both the University Performing Arts Center created a the life and times of singer, of Maryland Symphony Orchestra series as part of its 2006-2007 dancer, and actress Josephine and a group of community dancers. season that featured some of Baker. On November 2 and 3, On November 12, 2006, jazz band America’s most renowned female 2006, the Liz Lerman Dance leader and composer Maria artists. The center received an Exchange presented 30th Schneider conducted her big band NEA Access to Artistic Excellence in a concert of her works that grant of $45,000 to support the included her own commentary and residencies and presentations in As part of the series Legendary Leaders: The stories. Lastly, on March 29, 30, Legacies of Artful Women, the Liz Lerman the series, Legendary Leaders: and 31, 2007, the center hosted a Dance Exchange and a group of community Legacies of Artful Women. dancers perform Still Crossing, one of three festival of workshops, symposia, works that made up Liz Lerman’s 30th and concerts under the leadership As the hub for the university’s Anniversary Retrospective. of artistic director Diane White. music, theater, and dance Pho to by Enoch Chan departments, the center’s series Each of these performances helped to bring more attention to included a residency, allowing the those talented female artists, past artists to hold master classes with and present, who have made the university’s performing arts significant contributions to the students, and participate in public performing arts. lectures, symposia, and workshops. In total, more than The series began on October 12 3,700 took advantage of the and 13, 2006, with a concert by performances and concerts. Imani Winds and vocalist René

2006 Annual Report 67 Grant Highlights Massachusetts

Landscape with David and Bathsheba, by Herri Bles, circa 1535-40, is one of the works in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s permanent collection to be digitized in 2007. Image courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

available online, with the support of an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence grant of $25,000.

The project involves digitizing images, creating a database of bibliographic and descriptive details, creating summaries of art Isabella Stewart century Venetian-style palazzo and historical research on the objects, Gardner Museum boasting a collection spanning BOSTON more than 30 centuries and and publicizing the availability of including works by such masters as the database and its specialized features. The museum physically sabella Stewart Gardner first Rembrandt van Rijn, Sandro receives approximately 180,000 welcomed visitors to her Botticelli, and James McNeill visitors annually, a figure that Imuseum on New Year’s Day, Whistler. cannot increase significantly 1903 with a musical and visual arts The museum still bustles with without raising substantial celebration. Following an opening artistic activity and presents preservation issues. By adding the concert performed by members of ongoing programs in celebration collection to the museum Web the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of historic art, contemporary art, site’s current offerings, the the museum was opened to display music, education, and Gardner will help to ensure a flower-filled courtyard horticulture. To bring the museum continued access to its holdings surrounded by galleries of art. The into the 21st century, however, the without risking critical damage to museum has remained essentially Gardner Museum is making its the work. The enhanced Web site is unchanged since then, housed in collection of 3,200 objects expected to launch to the public in three floors of galleries in a 15th- late 2007.

68 National Endowment for the Arts Maizy Scarpa (l) and Steve Grant Highlights Johnson in Chatham High School’s production of King Lear, part of Shakespeare & Company’s Shakespeare in Action education program. Photo by Elizabeth Aspenlieder

Shakespeare & Company LENOX

ina Packer, artistic New York participated in the nine- by nearly 5,000 teachers and director of Shakespeare & week program comprising in-class students. In November, students T Company, has said, curriculum-based teaching also took part in the Fall Festival of “Engagement with great poetry in a sessions and six master classes in Shakespeare, a noncompetitive dramatic setting is one of the most stage combat, Elizabethan dance, festival of student performances. important learning opportunities text in performance, stage Shakespeare & Company also we can provide young people in management, publicity, and participates in the NEA’s this country.” And to support that technical theater. Students also Shakespeare in American belief, the theater company began worked after school for 20 hours Communities national initiative— Shakespeare in Action, a theater per week with professional artists, which brings full productions of arts residency program for high including an education artist, Shakespeare’s works with school students. actors, a costumer, a set designer, educational and community and a production director. In FY 2006, Shakespeare & outreach activities to middle and Classroom teachers received two Company received an NEA high schools—and received a 2006 weeks of professional development Learning in the Arts grant of Coming Up Taller award for its sessions with the theater artists. $50,000 to support the program. Shakespeare in the Courts Each residency culminated in a Beginning in September 2006, programs, which presents full-scale, 90-minute production more than 600 students from 11 Shakespeare’s work to adjudicated of one of nine Shakespeare plays. high schools in Massachusetts and youth. These performances were attended

2006 Annual Report 69 Grant Highlights

Man’s Shirt, circa 1860, from the Crow tribe, one of the articles in the Detroit Institute of Arts’s Native- American art collection. Photo courtesy of Detroit Institute of Arts Michigan

Detroit Institute in the ways in which objects are of Arts arranged, including thematically, DETROIT culturally, or chronologically. DIA received an NEA Access to Artistic overing nearly 3,000 years Excellence grant of $75,000 in FY of history, the Detroit 2006 to support the reinstallation CInstitute of Arts’ Native- of its Native-American collection American art collection includes post-renovation. pieces from North, Central, and The collection comprises early Founded in 1885, DIA’s large South America. Spacing issues, religious artifacts, ceremonial collection includes muralist Diego however, have hampered the attire, and domestic objects such Rivera’s seminal Detroit Industry museum’s ability to show these as a 19th-century Navajo blanket fresco cycle and an 1887 Vincent sculptures, ceramics, and textiles and an early 20th-century Western Van Gogh self-portrait, the first in their entirety. Until now. Apache basket. Approximately 300 Van Gogh acquired by a U.S. The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) objects from the collection will be museum. The museum’s buildings is undergoing an extensive reinstalled in a 4,000-square-foot feature more than 100 galleries, renovation and expansion program first floor gallery. The project small and large lecture halls, an art that will, among other included final exhibition design reference library, and a state-of- improvements, add 35,000 square and fabrication, development of the-art conservation lab. The feet of gallery space. As part of the interactive interpretive media, and museum, including all of its newly renovation, the museum has consultations with scholars and reinstalled collections, will reopen reconfigured its curatorial plan for technical experts. to the public on November 23, each gallery to allow for flexibility 2007.

70 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

University Musical NEA Access to Artistic Excellence teachers on Mexican cultural Society grant of $50,000 to support four traditions and Ugandan ANN ARBOR artist residencies in February and performing arts, master classes in March 2006, with public Indian traditional dance, family- stablished in 1879, the performances and community focused dance and music University Musical Society engagement programs. The workshops, and artist visits to area E(UMS) is one of the oldest residencies included the Mariachi schools and churches. For several performing arts presenters in the Los Camperos de Nati Cano (an performances UMS also provided country. It has maintained its high NEA National Heritage Fellow), bussing subsidies to encourage quality through uncommon and the performance troupe Children program participation by students exciting bookings, such as the of Uganda, and India’s Nrityagram from underserved schools. In total, Jerusalem String Quartet,Wynton Dance Ensemble. A fourth the four residencies served more Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln residency, Summit of the Levant, than 9,000 adults and 8,200 Center Orchestra, and Hubbard featured master musicians from children and youth. Street Dance Chicago. By booking Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. artists working in authentic Residency activities included youth cultural traditions, UMS is able to Members of the Children of Uganda performances for area performing ensemble pose with Catherine engage audiences in a better schoolchildren, professional Blackwell at a performance exchange at understanding of these traditions development workshops for Blackwell Academy, the Detroit charter throughout the community. UMS school named in her honor. Photo courtesy of University presents more than 75 Musical Society performances and 100 free educational events each year in five performance spaces and in local community venues.

With a focus on the region’s African-American, South-Asian, Mexican, and Arab-American communities, UMS received an Grant Highlights

considered a triumph when it premiered in Naples in 1846, but Mercadante’s efforts soon would be overwhelmed by grand Italian operas and by Wagner’s music dramas.

Dale Johnson, the artistic director of Minnesota Opera, knew that with the right creative team in place, Mercadante was ripe for a Curiazio (tenor Scott Piper) vows to fight for revival in Minneapolis. Johnson his family honor, much to the alarm of his hired Tony- and Oscar-winning fiancée Camilla (soprano Brenda Harris) director Eric Simonson to recast in Minnesota Opera’s production of Saverio Mercadante’s Orazi e Curiazi. Orazi, a 7th-century tale about two Photo by Michal Daniel Italian families torn apart when their countries go to war, as a tragedy set during the American Minnesota Opera Civil War. Designers clad the Orazi Company men in Confederate gray, the MINNEAPOLIS Curiazi in Union blue, and the women in resplendent antebellum peras such as Tosca and gowns. By all accounts, the singers La Traviata are performed and musicians relished a chance to Owith ruthless regularity, perform such lovely but unfamiliar but the Minnesota Opera Company music. Minnesotans packed the is committed to producing one Ordway Center for the Performing new work and one worthy rarity Arts to see the results. each year. As a result, two operas “Our audiences love this stuff,” made their United States debuts Johnson said. “It was a bit of a sell during the 2006–2007 season. at first, but now the whole notion One was brand new, the other was of bel canto is imprinted on our 160 years old. audiences.”Performances were The company received an NEA attended by 7,460 people, and Access to Artistic Excellence grant after the 2006-2007 season, a of $20,000 to support its record number of Twin Cities production of Orazi e Curiazi, a residents renewed their opera long-forgotten opera by Saverio company subscriptions. Mercadante. Orazi e Curiazi was Inigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Cloud Prototype no.1 is a 14-foot titanium model of a cumulo- nimbus thundercloud. 72 National Endowment for the Arts Pho to by Scott Stulen Grant Highlights

Rochester Art Center galleries, taking in Manglano- ROCHESTER Ovalle’s sculptures, videos, photography, and ambient sound espite its title, Rochester recordings. Manglano-Ovalle, a Art Center’s 2006 2001 MacArthur Fellowship Dexhibition of works by recipient, is known for his Inigo Manglano-Ovalle was hard to collaborative artworks. Blinking miss. Blinking out of Existence was included Cloud Prototype no. 1, a the most ambitious installation large-scale titanium sculpture of a ever undertaken by the 60-year- cumulo-nimbus thundercloud old art museum in southeastern modeled by atmospheric scientists Minnesota. In 2004, the museum at the University of Illinois at relocated to a 36,000 square-foot Urbana-Champaign. Even more facility that could easily imposing was Iceberg (r11iO1), accommodate special exhibits Manglano-Ovalle’s co-creation such as Blinking. with Chicago architect Colin Franzen. Using data gathered by The center received an NEA the Canadian Hydraulic Center, the Challenge America grant of duo constructed a 25-foot scale $10,000 toward presenting works aluminum model of an iceberg by Manglano-Ovalle, a Chicago- drifting off the coast of based Spanish-American artist, Newfoundland. and producing educational and interpretive materials that made Such meteorologically themed his contemporary multimedia art work resonated with Minnesotans. appeal to a wider audience. This Nearly one out of 15 Rochester marked the first time the center residents came out to see Blinking. received an NEA grant. The art center also reached out to southeastern Minnesota’s growing Between June 23 and September Hispanic community by publishing 24, 2006, more than 6,400 people its first bilingual gallery guide and wandered through the center’s offering Free Family Day activities. Minnesota

2006 Annual Report 73 Grant Highlights

Mississippi

Ohr-O’Keefe museum has gone forward grant to fund the retrospective. It Museum of Art undaunted with its reconstruction, initially received an NEA Access to BILOXI and plans to open the center in late Artistic Excellence grant of 2009 with an unprecedented $25,000 to support American f George Ohr were alive today, retrospective of work by Ohr, one Maverick: The Masterpieces of George he’d be fighting Hurricane of the 19th century’s most Ohr. In the hurricane’s aftermath, IKatrina’s wake by spinning innovative ceramicists. A smaller, that funding was increased to his own maelstrom from his traveling version of the show hits $40,000. The museum has used potter’s wheel. But since Ohr, the the road in late 2007. the money to offset the cost of “mad-dauber” of Biloxi, storing and transporting its Before the storm hit in August of Mississippi, has been dead for 90 extensive collection of Ohr pottery, 2005, the museum applied for a years, the staff and supporters of as well as pieces on loan from the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art private collections that will be are rallying the Gulf Coast arts included in the retrospective. community on his behalf.

The museum had hoped to open a new four-acre campus Cadogan by G.E. Ohr, circa 1900, with buildings designed by Frank is one of the items to be featured in the upcoming Ohr-O’Keefe Gehry during 2006, but damage Museum of Art exhibition due to Hurricane Katrina has American Maverick: The delayed the opening. The Masterpieces of George Ohr. Image courtesy of Ohr-O’Keefe Museum

74 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Film of , who served on the NEA’s National Council on the Arts from 1972 to 1978, was recently discovered by NEA staff and donated to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. NEA File Photo

“It will just be breathtaking,” said Marjorie Gowdy, executive director of the museum. “Many of these are pieces that have not ever been in the public eye. For the opening of our new campus, we wanted the very best available pottery, both from our collection and private collections. They are very much deposited eight canisters of digitize and preserve the reel-to- American masterpieces.” 16-mm color film into an NEA reel film. storage facility. According to Welty biographer Those canisters were rediscovered Mississippi Suzanne Marrs, the NEA donation by the NEA’s Media Arts is the earliest known Welty film of Department of department in 2006 and donated extended length, as well as the only Archives and History to the Mississippi Department of one that captures the author at the JACKSON Archives and History. As Chairman manual typewriter where she wrote Dana Gioia explained when he numerous literary classics. n 1975, writer Eudora Welty delivered the canisters to Jackson sat down in front of Mary Alice White, niece of the himself, “It was Miss Welty herself Ifilmmaker Richard O. famed Optimist’s Daughter novelist who said, ‘never think you’ve seen Moore’s camera for five hours and and director of the Welty House, the last of anything.’ I’m delighted read from her famous short said the film has since been to say she was right.” stories. She also talked about the converted to DVD format. Plans craft of writing and about the rich Chairman Gioia called finding the are underway to produce tradition of writing in the South. Welty footage “one of the greatest educational guides that would From that five hours of footage, literary discoveries of the last accompany copies of the DVD. Moore selected five minutes of decade.” Along with the film Excerpts from the footage also will Welty’s voice to include in his canisters, he presented the Welty be shown at the new Welty House NEA-funded documentary, The House with a $10,000 Chairman’s Visitor’s Center. Writer in America. Then he Extraordinary Action Grant to

2006 Annual Report 75 2006 Honoree Arthur Duncan, Wizdom Rounds, Professor Robert L. Reed, and Dee Mac Sandoz strike a pose bridging the gap between generations and between tap and hip hop. Photo by Melba Huber

participant showcase featuring dancers from seven states and Canada, and All That Tap XV, the festival’s culminating performance. In addition to showcasing the festival’s master tappers, All That Tap XV also provided shadowing and internship opportunities for student dancers.

Several festival events were offered free of charge or at a discounted rate, including workshops; the Missouri outdoor Tap Jam, which featured “cutting contests” by participants; and a panel discussion moderated by national tap dance columnist Melba Huber. Notable artists participating in the festival in all its myriad forms, Robert L. Reed Tap included Israeli tappers Avi Miller expressions, techniques, and Heritage Institute and Ofer Ben, The Lawrence Welk ethnicities. ST. LOUIS Show veteran Arthur Duncan, and In FY 2006, RTHI received an NEA 1999 NEA National Heritage ince 1991, the Robert L. Access to Artistic Excellence grant Fellow Jimmy Slyde. The Reed Tap Heritage Institute of $10,000 to support the 15th participation of world-renowned S(RTHI) has produced the St. Annual St. Louis Tap Festival, stars of yesterday, today, and the Louis Tap Festival, the world’s which took place July 24-29, 2006. next generation make the festival oldest annual festival devoted to The six-day festival featured tap one of the most popular in the city. the form. Reed, himself a artists from throughout the United More than 2,500 individuals renowned dancer and teacher, is States as well as Canada. The roster benefited from the festival, dedicated to promoting an interest of more than 70 events included including more than 1,500 in and appreciation for this master classes, jam sessions, children and youth. indigenous American dance style lectures, video screenings, a

76 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

reStart, Inc. KANSAS CITY

hen you are living on the streets, the arts Jalen and Alicia, both seven W may not be your first years old, learned to use digital cameras and edit their prints concern. But the arts can make a through a reStart photography difference in homeless children’s workshop with Pulitzer Prize- lives by nurturing their desire to winning photographer Dan learn and think creatively. And that White. Photos by Jalen and is why reStart, Inc., an interfaith, Alicia of each other, overnight emergency shelter, courtesy of reStart began its Arts at reStart program with assistance from an NEA Learning in the Arts grant of $20,000 in FY 2006.

“The homeless children’s In July 2006 and January, incredible creative imaginations February, and May 2007, Arts at and talents are reinvigorated by reStart students participated in workshops. At the end of each unit learning, experiencing, and units on digital photography, student work was displayed at participating in arts units with poetry, and the painter Thomas reStart. Kansas City’s finest arts Hart Benton. Classes met two to educators,” said Linda Kemnitzer, five times per week for 120 During the project, participants administrator of the Arts at reStart minutes, providing 15 hours of also attended workshop opera program. The program provides learning in each discipline. Field rehearsals at the Lyric Opera of participants with three levels of trips included a visit to the Truman Kansas City, a performance of The ongoing professional arts Museum to view Benton’s mural Mikado by Paul Mesner’s Puppets, instruction: live experience of Opening to the West and to the and a production of Geppetto & Son multidisciplinary arts on- and off- American Jazz Museum to view by Coterie Theatre. Two-hundred- site, curriculum-based hands-on portraits by Pulitzer Prize-winning and-thirty homeless children and study of arts disciplines, and photographer Dan White, who also youth benefited from the program. presentations of participants’ led the digital photography work.

2006 Annual Report 77 Grant Highlights

India’s Navrachana School Choir, which traveled to the United States for the first time as part of this festival. In addition to the choirs’ geographic diversity, they were also diverse in their age ranges: the festival included adult, youth, and children’s choirs.

Each choir performed separately and then as a group for the finale concert, when they were joined by three other Montana-based choirs for a total of 712 singers. The festival contained a total of 17 concerts, including three preview Ústí Children’s Choir of the , participants in the 2006 International Choral concerts that were open to the Festival. public for free, altogether reaching Photo by Mark Gorseth a total of 20,000 people.

In addition to the official International Choral the International Choral Festival performances, the festival also Festival received an NEA Access to Artistic MISSOULA Excellence grant of $10,000 for its arranged for outreach concerts to 2006 festival. be held in Montana’s smaller, rural communities, where because of n the United States alone, Taking place from July 12-16, geographic isolation residents do more than 28 million people 2006, 13 international choirs and not have the chance to experience Iengage in choral singing, seven domestic choirs were such international culture. Lastly, according to a Chorus America selected through a rigorous the festival co-sponsored with the study. So it is not surprising that screening process. Participating University of Montana a six-day the International Choral Festival in choirs ranged from Slovenia’s symposium on choral conducting Missoula, Montana, is such a hit. Mariborski Oktet to Kansas’s with Dr. Melvin Unger, Director of More than 75 world-class choirs Lawrence Children’s Choir to the Riemenschneider Bach and thousands of singers from Institute, in Berea, Ohio. around the world have participated in the International Choral Festival since it began in 1987, including choirs from Argentina, Botswana, China, and Thailand. In FY 2006, Montana

78 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Great Falls presented Jr/Sr concerts twice a orchestra on April 6, 2006, in the Symphony season for students in the region as Great Falls Civic Center Mansfield Association well as senior citizens and those Theater, GFSA arranged for an GREAT FALLS who are developmentally disabled. open rehearsal and invited string students from Montana’s high GFSA takes great efforts to provide schools and universities as well as he Great Falls Symphony its musicians with artistically members of GFSA’s Regional Youth Association (GFSA) stimulating opportunities and its T includes the Great Falls Orchestra. More than 600 community with high-quality students took advantage of this Symphony Orchestra, an 80-voice concerts. Part of GFSA’s success opportunity to observe Itzhak symphonic choir, a regional youth has been its ability to attract Perlman’s rehearsal with the orchestra, and two professional world-class musicians to its orchestra. For the evening concert, resident ensembles, the Cascade theater in Great Falls. In FY 2006, GFSA sold out its 1,782-seat String Quartet and the Chinook GFSA received an NEA Challenge theater, drawing an audience from Winds Quintet. These musicians America grant of $10,000 to bring all four corners of the state. In travel extensively throughout celebrated violinist recognition of an important cause Montana, presenting educational to Montana for a premiere of Itzhak Perlman’s, GFSA also school programs and performing performance. in both large and small offered discounted tickets to communities. In addition, for In addition to an evening disabled members of the more than 30 years, GFSA has performance with GFSA’s community.

Itzhak Perlman plays with the Great Falls Symphony Orchestra at the open rehearsal to more than 600 students. Photo by Stu White, GREAT FALLS TRIBUNE Grant Highlights

Two of the translations that the University of Nebraska Press is publishing with support from the NEA. Book covers courtesy of University of Nebraska Press Nebraska

University of published more than 100 books of such diverse authors as French Nebraska at Lincoln literature in translation and nearly writer and winner of the Prix a dozen series that include Goncourt Paule Constant, whose University of Nebraska translations. In FY 2006, the White Spirit was translated by Betsy Press LINCOLN University of Nebraska received an Wing; Algerian journalist Baya NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Gacemi, whose I, Nadia was hile the percentage of grant of $25,000 for the translated by Paul Côté and published foreign publication, promotion, and Constantina Mitchell; and Mercè W works in English distribution of ten books of Rodoreda, one of Catalan translation is in single digits, one international literature in English literature’s most celebrated writers publisher is attempting to make translation. and author of A Broken Mirror, translated by Josep Miquel Sobrer. those foreign authors better known University of Nebraska Press on these shores. printed 1,000 copies of each book, The University of Nebraska Press The largest academic publisher in distributing them through a variety is dedicated to making celebrated the Great Plains, the University of of means, including libraries, international writing more Nebraska Press (UNP) has major bookstore chains, accessible, an act that promotes published first-rate creative independent and college these authors to readers outside of literary work, memoirs, and bookstores, internet booksellers, their native languages and in doing scholarly works for more than 60 and the press’s own Web site. so, provides an invaluable tool for understanding other cultures. years. In addition, UNP is one of Chosen for their literary quality, the leading publishers of reputation, and value in the study translated literature, having of humanities, the books include

80 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Nebraska Arts support Nebraska Folklife Council Network’s 2007 activities. This OMAHA included the implementation of Nebraska by Heart, a folk arts rom 1990 to 1999, curriculum focused on Nebraska Nebraska’s immigrant and used by teachers at the middle Wayne Connell, rancher, cowboy poet, and F population rose at least 50 school level, as well as professional traditional artist in horsehair and leather, percent, according to a study by the development activities for teachers with a bosal style braided hackamore he made for training horses on his ranch near Urban Institute. The Nebraska Arts and traditional artists focused on Tryon, Nebraska, included in the Nebraska Council (NAC) recognized the this curriculum. Farming and Ranching Trunk Exhibit. importance of making these new Photo courtesy of Nebraska NFN also created museum trunk Folklife Network diverse cultural traditions better exhibits highlighting Nebraska’s known to the public and created farm and ranch traditions and the Latino Arts Initiative, designed educational kits on Irish- to identify and serve Nebraska’s American and Iraqi cultural growing Latino arts field. In 2003, traditions to be used by schools to through a collaboration with the meet Nebraska social studies, arts, Nebraska Humanities Council and and other academic standards and the University of Nebraska– recommendations. NFN’s Lincoln Plains Humanities activities are designed to both Alliance, NAC created the highlight Nebraska’s deep Nebraska Folklife Network (NFN), traditions as well as appreciate the devoted to the documentation, culture of its newer immigrants, preservation, and presentation of building a greater cultural Nebraska’s diverse folk and understanding among its citizens traditional arts. and preserving these diverse In FY 2006, NAC received an NEA traditions and cultures for the Folk & Traditional Arts future. Infrastructure grant of $25,000 to

2006 Annual Report 81 Grant Highlights

Nevada Ballet Theatre LAS VEGAS

hen Val Caniparoli first choreographed W Lamberena for the San Francisco Ballet in 1994, he envisioned a dance that celebrates the joy of living. Through movement and music that alternates between African and Western traditions, he sought to convey that expressing joy Principal Dancer Racheal Hummel-Nole evokes the earthy spirituality of African transcends cultures. In FY 2006, dance while maintaining classical ballet technique in Nevada Ballet Theatre’s production of Lambarena. Nevada Ballet Theatre received a Photo by Jeff Speer $10,000 NEA Access to Artistic Excellence grant to present but not to those who know the and arias but emulate African Lambarena in Las Vegas. story behind Lambarena. Named dance when the Gabonese music In March 2007, Caniparoli, his for an African village in present- comes on. As in other cities, the assistant, and a pair of African day Gabon, the dance pays tribute Las Vegas performances of dance instructors all traveled to to Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel- Lambarana were complemented by Las Vegas to work with 14 Ballet prize winning musicologist who African dance master classes for Theatre company members on the wrote a biography of Bach, earned area teachers and two school-day piece. “It was a challenge for the a medical degree, then moved to matinees for children, who were dancers,” Caniparoli said. “It Africa to establish a hospital. offered a Lambarena study guide. definitely stretched them.” Caniparoli’s dance features music “It’s an amazing program that The score alternates between from an album compiled by brings in children and audiences traditional African vocal music and French arranger Hughes de who would normally never come to pieces written by Johann Sebastian Courson. With little derivation, the a ballet,” Caniparoli said.“They Bach 250 years ago. That may dancers perform Western classical watch in wonder. And they love it.” sound like an odd combination, ballet to Bach’s partitas, fugues,

82 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights Nevada

Nevada Humanities podium. Workshops focused on Committee screenwriting, editing, and self RENO publishing. To support bringing in guest t’s no mirage—the Vegas Valley authors and panelists, Nevada Book Festival does get a little Humanities received an NEA Ibigger and better each year. At Access to Artistic Excellence grant the inaugural festival in 2002, of $10,000. Chuck Palahniuk, several hundred people came to author of the 1996 cult-classic hear the venerable John Irving Fight Club, served as keynote speak in suburban Henderson, reader, but just as many people Nevada. The Nevada Humanities attended events such as the panel Committee, an independent discussion on the Las Vegas years nonprofit group that first of Howard Hughes, the eccentric organized the festival, doubled the entrepreneur. Some of the authors number of events in 2004 and attending the festival included added venues in Las Vegas. A year novelist and screenwriter Peter later, the city became a festival Lefcourt, rock music critic Jim cosponsor and included it in the DeRogatis, slam poet Beau Sia, and Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk Las Vegas centennial celebration. children’s author Beti Kristoff. delivered the keynote address at the 2006 Vegas Valley Book Festival. By 2006, the book festival was a The 2006 festival also included a Photo by Shawn Grant busy two-day event in downtown spin-off, the Target Children’s Las Vegas that was more a Book Festival, a half day of family- celebration of the writing life than focused readings, giveaways, and a cavalcade of book signings. performances. More than 5,000 Memoirists, poets, and music people attended book festival journalists had equal time on the events.

2006 Annual Report 83 Composer and seven-time MacDowell Colony Fellow Meredith Monk at work on Basket Rondo, a new work for the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, which she began at MacDowell in 1994. She also MacDowell Colony writers, composers, visual artists, began a new piece for her vocal ensemble photographers, printmakers, and the Kronos Quartet during her 2006 PETERBOROUGH residency. filmmakers, architects, and Photo by Joanna Eldredge he oldest artists’ colony in interdisciplinary artists each year Morrissey the nation, MacDowell from all parts of the United States T Colony provides the and abroad. In all, MacDowell has essential items all artists need— hosted more than 5,500 artists, time and space. The composer including Aaron Copland, James Edward MacDowell and his wife, Baldwin, and Alice Walker. Marian, founded MacDowell At the colony, artists receive room, Colony in 1906, and throughout its board, and their own studio, which history the only criterion for includes the instruments acceptance has been talent. Today, necessary for their particular art, MacDowell hosts more than 250 New such as a piano for a composer, or Hampshire

84 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights a dark room for a photographer. City Cultural businesses. Art-Speak will hire an Between 20 and 30 artists are in Commission urban planning/design consultant residence at any time and artists PORTSMOUTH firm to work with the commission can stay for a maximum of two and carry out the project’s seven months. Need-based grants are n 2002 the mayor of components, from analyzing the available to alleviate travel costs, a Portsmouth established the area, to identifying opportunities practice which ensures that those ICity Cultural Commission, for community participation, to an who are qualified to attend have known as Art-Speak, as part of a implementation plan. It also will the means to do so. Residents city-wide cultural plan. Charged establish standards, guidelines, share breakfast and dinner with representing and promoting and application processes to guide together and have their lunch the arts in Portsmouth, a small city the developers, businesses, and delivered to their studios to on the New Hampshire coast with artists in implementing the arts eliminate distractions during the 20,000 residents, a primary district plan. workday. Artists-in-residence also responsibility of Art-Speak is to This study gives Art-Speak the benefit the surrounding carry out Portsmouth’s cultural leverage it needs to encourage community through presentations plan, which identified the need for support among community, of their work at local schools, more cultural space and housing political, educational, and business libraries, and senior centers. for cultural workers. leaders. In order to keep the In FY 2006, MacDowell Colony In FY 2006, Art-Speak received an community connected to the received an NEA Access to Artistic NEA Access to Artistic Excellence process, Art-Speak will provide Excellence grant of $25,000 to grant of $12,000 to conduct an arts the public with all presentations, support fellowships for ten artist district planning study for the meeting summaries, and residencies. These residencies are Islington Street corridor of the documents related to the study on becoming a necessary way for city. This one-mile corridor in their Web site. An online artists to support their creative Portsmouth’s downtown currently discussion forum also will be work, and many artists describe provides limited studio space for created to engage the community their time at the colony as a artists, but through this study will in a dialogue about the city’s turning point in their creative be transformed into a home for the cultural plan. career. arts, artists, and creative

The West End Studio Theater, one of the buildings that will serve as an anchor in Portsmouth’s arts district as part of the city’s arts district planning study. Photo by Jason Page

2006 Annual Report 85 Grant Highlights New Jersey

Paper Mill Playhouse to Artistic Excellence grant of performances designed to MILLBURN $10,000 to support its continuing accommodate hearing-impaired effort to help all audience audience members. During those aving a disability should members get the full Paper Mill shows, the script appears on a large not preclude anyone experience. LED screen situated to the left of Hfrom participating in and the stage. Audio captions, provided More than 400,000 people attend enjoying the arts. New Jersey’s via headphones by a live reader, performances at the playhouse Paper Mill Playhouse strives to and Sensory Seminars offered 90 each year. Approximately 4,000 of make the lavish musical minutes before designated shows, the theater’s patrons identify productions for which it is known cater to vision-impaired themselves as disabled, according available to all audience members, theatergoers. The Sensory to Mooney. Since 1983, the theater regardless of disabilities. “We want Seminars bring blind patrons has been offering ASL-interpreted the experience for all of our backstage, where designers performances of every mainstage patrons to be as high quality as the describe the show’s aesthetic and show. The theater also pioneered show onstage,” Michael Mooney, props are passed around. For various accessibility options. Paper Mill’s access program example, backstage before manager, said. In FY 2006, the Since 1996, the theater has offered Carousel, blind children had a playhouse received an NEA Access special “open captioning” chance to finger the stars that dangle from the ceiling in the heaven scene. “Once you hold that Lucite star in your hands, you get that same feeling that Julie does in the show,” Mooney said.

An LED screen displays open captions during a Paper Mill Playhouse production of Grease!, part of the theater’s accommodations for the hearing-impaired. Photo courtesy Paper Mill Playhouse

86 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Institute for Arts Nation event at two sites: Lawrence and Humanities Township High School and The Education Cave, a Highland Park community NEW BRUNSWICK center. In classes taught by visiting Pixel avid Sarnoff would have Nation professors, the high school been proud. On a spring students learned all aspects of Devening in 2007, about video, from scriptwriting to taping two dozen technically inclined to editing. Word of the teenagers gathered in the documentary quickly spread Princeton library that bears the around Lawrence Township High pioneering broadcaster’s name. School. Retired teachers offered to The occasion was the premiere of be interviewed, and marketing Cardinal Pride, a documentary students volunteered to promote commemorating the 40-year the premiere. By the project’s end, legacy of Lawrence Township High Top: Asela Perez,14 years old, captured this a broad range of students had been smile in her experimental movie, Put Your School. The teen filmmakers spent involved in some way. Records On, created through the Pixel countless hours both during and Nation after-school program. after school collecting interviews Some 20 miles away in Highland Bottom: A shadow falls in 15-year-old and images that told the story of Park, a second group of Pixel David Webber’s experimental movie, their school. Nations students were David’s Darkness, which he created simultaneously working on their through the Pixel Nation after-school The event was part of Pixel Nation, program. own experimental movies. Images courtesy of Institute for a unique program created through Program director Maureen Arts and Humanities Education a partnership by the Institute for Heffernan and her staff discovered approximately 25 children, ages 11 Arts and Humanities Education that the students flourished when to 15, created short movies during (IAHE) and several New Jersey asked to experiment but stay The Cave’s after-school program civic groups. In 2006, IAHE within bounds. From November and showed off their efforts at a received an NEA Learning in the 2006 through May 2007, Arts grant of $35,000 to offer Pixel “school’s out” party.

2006 Annual Report 87 Los Reyes de Albuquerque performing traditional music at Share Your Care Adult Day Care Center. Photo by Roberto New Mexico Martínez

Los Reyes de national tours. The Los Reyes informative talks on the origin and Albuquerque de Albuquerque Foundation significance of Nuevomexicano Foundation complements the group’s music and song and dance ALBUQUERQUE public performance schedule performances. According to by producing free programs Martínez, each presentation takes ounded in 1961 by 2003 intended to preserve, promote, place “in a relaxed setting where NEA National Heritage and perpetuate Nuevomexicano the audience is encouraged to sing F Fellow Roberto Martínez, music and culture. along, dance, or simply enjoy the Los Reyes de Albuquerque is music. Corridos and canciones Los Reyes de Albuquerque a traditional music group alternate with old-time dances, Foundation received an NEA specializing in the Nuevomexicano including waltzes, marchas, inditas, Access to Artistic Excellence grant music of northern New Mexico and cunas, and polkas, which are part of $17,500 to support 60 southern Colorado. The group has of the historical fabric of colonial presentations by Martínez on performed several times at the and 19th-century New Mexico, and Nuevomexicano folk traditions in Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife still popular today.” Approximately Albuquerque, Pueblo, and several Festival, at the National Hispanic 3,500 adults and 1,200 youth of the state’s rural and underserved Cultural Center, and as part of the benefited from these areas. The 60-minute National Council for the performances. presentations comprised brief Traditional Arts Raices Musicales

88 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

The grant also supported five historic and contemporary Navajo exhibit opened on May 11, 2006, presentations to underserved silver and turquoise jewelry; and a and was expected to close on middle and high school students wide range of 20th-century art by March 31, 2007. Due to the show’s of Albuquerque public schools by Native American, Hispanic, and popularity—it attracted more than Robert D. Martínez, Roberto Euro-American artists. 21,000 visitors—the museum Martínez's son and collaborator, moved the closing date to August The Millicent Rogers Museum of Entriega de los Novios, an 31, 2007. received an NEA Access to Artistic 18th-century cololonial New Excellence grant of $25,000 to In addition, the museum Mexico social ritual featuring support the reinstallation of the developed exhibition-specific improvised sung verse. More than museum’s permanent collection in materials for its educational 650 students benefited from these celebration of its 50th anniversary. program for fourth- and fifth- presentations. The Best of the Southwest: Celebrating grade students, which brings 50 Years at the Millicent Rogers approximately 1,000 Taos County Millicent Rogers Museum features one hundred of students to the museum each fall Museum the most significant works in the and spring. This multivisit TAOS museum’s collection, such as a rare program assists teachers in 1860s First Phase Ute Style Chief’s fulfilling New Mexico state illicent Rogers, Blanket and The Disciples Washing curriculum requirements in art, Standard Oil heiress the Feet of Christ, a unique Spanish math, history, and the sciences. Mand legend in the Colonial Hide painting. The fashion industry, fell in love with Taos, New Mexico, the first time she went there. She spent much of the rest of her life supporting the rights of Native-American people living in the area, and was enamored of their arts and culture. In 1956, four years after her death, a museum was founded in her name to celebrate the Southwest culture that she found so inspirational. The museum’s extensive collection comprises a comprehensive collection of Maria Martinez pottery; Hispanic religious and secular arts and crafts; Navajo and Pueblo textiles;

2006 Annual Report 89 Grant Highlights New York

Genesee-Orleans famous spinning dance. But when “The event also turned out to be a Regional Arts the Genesee-Orleans Regional vibrant exchange between dancers Council Arts Council, also known as Go from the region, and those who BATAVIA Art!, put on its celebration of traveled from the New York City community and ethnic dance area to participate and offer lesser- estern New York, traditions from New York State— known traditions,” said Karen mostly rural outside called On Your Feet!—that was one Canning, director of the W the large cities of of the acts audiences saw Traditional Arts Program at Go Art! Buffalo and Rochester, is not the performed. Groups performing included the place you would expect to find an In FY 2006, Go Art! received an Niagara River Dancers, based in Egyptian Sufi performing the NEA Challenge America grant of the Tuscarora Nation near Niagara $10,000 to support the dance Falls, New York, performing festival, which took place at two traditional Native American locations in Genesee and Orleans dances; the Borinquen Dance Counties—the April 28th event in Theatre, from Rochester, Pavilion and the April 29th event presenting dances from different in Medina. Each free event regions of Puerto Rico; the Polish featured one-hour workshops for Heritage Dancers of Western New participants to learn dances, York from Lancaster, invoking followed by a dance concert and Polish folk dance; Kelly’s Old refreshments. Timers, a square dance band from Perry; Yasser Darwish of Bay Ridge, who performs tanoura, the traditional Egyptian Sufi spinning dance; and Rita Silva from Brooklyn, performing dances in the Brazilian candomblé tradition, a blend of Yoruba spiritist belief and Roman Catholic symbolism.

Yasser Darwish performing a secular Sufi spinning dance during the On Your Feet! dance festival in Medina, New York. Photo by Tom Rivers

90 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Lincoln Center for the Los Angeles Opera and highlights included Benjamin the Performing Arts featured an elaborate set designed Baqby’s telling of Beowulf, NEW YORK by George Tsypin, a corps of 20 performing in Old English and dancers, and a 75-piece orchestra. accompanying himself on the lyre, t the Lincoln Center Director Julie Taymor wrote the to complement the opera; Festival 2006, a monster libretto with J.D. McClatchy based DruidSynge, a presentation of the A took center stage, with on the 1971 novel by John Gardner, complete works of playwright John the NEA’s help. The Lincoln which tells the story of Beowulf Millington Synge; two U.S. Center for the Performing Arts from the monster’s point of view. premieres and one New York (LCPA), a national leader in arts The score was composed by Elliot premiere by Israel dance and arts education, received an Goldenthal, his first opera, and companies Yasmeen Godder and NEA Access to Artistic Excellence bass Eric Owens starred in the title the Bloody Bench Players, the grant of $35,000 to support the role. Batsheva Dance Company, and festival. Emanuel Gat Dance; a New York Taking place over three weeks in premiere of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie The centerpiece of Lincoln Center July, the festival celebrated its Zane Dance Company’s dance Festival 2006, the comic opera tenth anniversary by offering 16 piece Blind Date; and Balkan Grendel was co-commissioned with premieres and debuts by composer and guitarist Goran companies from eight countries. Bregovic and his 40-member In addition to the New York band. premiere of Grendel, other

Desmond Richardson as Beowulf and Eric Owens as Grendel in the Lincoln Center Festival 2006 production of Grendel, composed by Elliot Goldenthal with libretto by director Julie Taymor and J.D. McClatchy, based on John Gardner’s 1971 novel. Photo by Stephanie Berger Grant Highlights

Triad Stage development of Preston Lane’s Running from March 12–April 2, GREENSBORO Brother Wolf, which celebrates the 2006, and attended by more than region’s Appalachian culture. 6,000 individuals, Brother Wolf eeply rooted in and Loosely based on Beowulf, the play was one of Triad Stage’s most well- devoted to its southern combines dance and folklore from attended productions in its history. Dcommunity and cultural the Southern Appalachians and The production also accomplished heritage, Triad Stage, Piedmont features original mountain music one of the organization’s primary Triad region’s largest professional by Laurelyn Dossett, performed goals—to attract new audiences theater, turned to the Appalachian live for each performance. “[L]ive from the rural communities in the part of the state for a 2006 music plays a pivotal role at just the Piedmont Triad. presentation. right moments,” wrote Ken Keuffel To enhance their audience’s of the Winston-Salem Journal. “It knowledge of Appalachian In FY 2006, Triad Stage received reinforces the play’s spiritual heritage, Triad Stage held post- an NEA Access to Artistic underpinnings.” Excellence grant of $10,000 for the performance talkbacks with the North Carolina

The Triad Stage’s production of Preston Lane’s Brother Wolf, which featured live music for each performance. Photo by NyghtFalcon Photography Grant Highlights

artists, arranged for a noted Choreographed to Paul Morevec’s scholar to discuss Appalachian Pulitzer Prize-winning music, culture, and developed an art Tempest Fantasy is a 30-minute exhibit related to Appalachia. For dance meditation based on high school students in Guilford William Shakespeare’s The County, Triad Stage offered free Tempest. Timour scripts, study guides, in-class artist Bourtasenkov starred visits, and free tickets to evening as Prospero, Lilyan performances of Brother Wolf. Vigo as Miranda, and Alain Molina as By integrating productions into its Ferdinand. Cyrille de season that focus on the heritage la Barre gave a and culture that is such a strong particularly captivating part of the region’s history, Triad performance as the Stage is actively working to beastly Caliban. introduce more people to theater and create a broader and more Part of a program of three diverse audience. works entitled Shakespeare Suite, Tempest Fantasy accompanied a reprise of José Limón’s The Moors Carolina Ballet Pavane and the premiere of Lynne Margaret Severin-Hansen and RALEIGH Taylor-Corbett’s Love Speaks, Pablo Javier Perez in Carolina which incorporated Shakespeare’s Ballet’s Tempest Fantasy. hakespeare has been good Photo by The Right Image sonnets. Between February 16 and Photography “ to Carolina Ballet,” March 5, 2006, 6,398 people Ssuggested Roy C. Dicks in attended performances of artistic direction of Robert Weiss the News & Observer. “First there Shakespeare Suites. was its luminous Romeo and Juliet, and currently consisting of more then the magical A Midsummer One of the top ten ballet than 30 dancers from around the Night’s Dream, and now its current companies in the United States, world, the dance company production, the impressive Carolina Ballet has commissioned presents approximately 60 Shakespeare Suite.” approximately 60 ballets from performances each season innovative choreographers since primarily for residents in North In FY 2006, Carolina Ballet 1984, an act that expands the Carolina’s Triangle region, received an NEA Access to Artistic company’s repertory and also including Raleigh, Durham, and Excellence grant of $10,000 for the allows it to present its audiences Chapel Hill. creation and presentation of a new with innovative new works of the ballet by Robert Weiss. highest artistic merit. Under the

2006 Annual Report 93 Larger-than-life masks and Fruma Sarah body puppets, created under the direction of Louay Al Assaf, used to enact Tevye’s fate-changing dream sequence in Trollwood Performing Arts School’s productions of Fiddler on the Roof. Photo by David Samson

FutureBuilders currently include a two-show musical. The program began with youth performance season, a the audition process in mid-May, Trollwood Performing middle school pre-show when 122 students were chosen for Arts School FARGO performance, and a free the cast, orchestra, and technical community event with student crew for a production of Fiddler on s a past winner of a performances in addition to the Roof. All of the students Coming Up Taller Award summer classes and an arts received intensive training by A from the President’s workshop during the school year. professional artists, whether they were actors taking vocal, acting, Committee on Arts and In FY 2006, FutureBuilders and dance classes; musicians Humanities in 2002 and the North received an NEA Summer Schools taking master classes; or Dakota Governor’s Award for the in the Arts grant of $35,000 to technicians learning set and Arts in 2003, the Trollwood support TPAS’s Summer Mainstage costume construction. The Performing Arts School (TPAS) Musical Program. Each year students presented fourteen knows something about providing students ages 13-18 are given the performances July 12-15, July 19- arts training for students in grades opportunity to act, to play in the 23, and July 26-30 for a total 1-12. Since 1978, TPAS has orchestra, and to work as audience of 16,735. provided its community with technicians to present a classic or quality performances, which contemporary professional

94 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights North Dakota

TPAS’s Mainstage program meets Turtle Mountain a live classical music concert. national, state, and local arts Band of Chippewa With performances of piano education standards and students Elders Support masterpieces, Gallo and Thomson are eligible to receive academic Services presented classical music to the credit for participating in the BELCOURT residents in Grand Forks, program. The one-on-one Bismarck, and Minot, and brought guidance students received helped he Turtle Mountains of together a diverse group that them to set high goals for North Dakota are filled included students, military themselves and take risks, T with the rich traditions of personnel, Native Americans, resulting in greater creativity, the Chippewa Tribe, but due to the and farmers, for a total audience communication and collaborative rural surroundings, it often is of 580. skills, and confidence in their difficult to find other cultural The Chippewa Elders were able to abilities as artists. events. The Turtle Mountain Band use the concerts to spread of Chippewa Elders Support important information about Services (Chippewa Elders), which health issues facing the elderly provide services to the more than members of the tribe, many of Pianist Sergio Gallo participated in 1,500 elderly members of the whom struggle with poverty and Chippewa Elders’ series of classical tribe, were able to present three extremely high malnutrition levels, music concerts. concerts by two world-renowned Photo by Jason McCullough and whose population will more classical pianists, Sergio Gallo and than triple in the next five years. Philip Thomson, with the During intermissions of the assistance of an NEA Challenge concerts, Chippewa Elders spoke America grant of $10,000. about the health issues and the The concerts were performed at organization’s activities addressing three locations in the state: the the issues. University of North Dakota, Bismarck State College, and Minot State University. Most of the concert attendees were from rural, underserved areas of North Dakota and had never before experienced

2006 Annual Report 95 Grant Highlights

Dayton choreographer from The Color “Color-ography” premiered in Contemporary Purple, led off with J. Lawrence Dayton in February 2007. From Dance Company Paint ( Remix), a southwest Ohio, the company DAYTON compelling dance that conveys the launched a 20-city U.S. tour. In travails of slavery and the strength Seattle, critic Philippa Kiraly called ince 1968, the Dayton of one strong but diminutive the Tubman piece “magnificent” Contemporary Dance woman. Kevin Ward, the while in Pittsburgh, Jane Vranish SCompany (DCDC) has company’s recently retired artistic praised the dancers’ “zealous, prided itself on collecting and director, followed with Continuing unremitting strength.” All told, the performing the works of African- Education, a piece inspired by tour was seen by more than 20,000 American choreographers. In FY Lawrence’s paintings from the people: nearly 5,000 school 2006, DCDC received an NEA Civil Rights era. Next up was children attended matinees, 775 Access to Excellence grant of Reggie Wilson, founder of Fist & aspiring dancers took master $30,000 for a project that fits well Heel Performance Group, with a classes with the company, and within that mission. The company Caribbean-influenced We ain’t more than 15,000 people bought asked four contemporary black goin’ home but we finna to get the tickets for evening performances. choreographers each to create a hell up outta here, based on new dance inspired by the Lawrence’s The Migration Series. paintings of Jacob Lawrence, a The dance concluded with Reggie Harlem Renaissance artist who Harris’s funky, hip-hop Jacob’s depicted mid-century African- Ladder. American life in bright, abstract scenes.

The result was “color-ography, n. the dances of Jacob Lawrence,” a diverse evening of modern dance. Donald Byrd, the Tony-nominated

Sheri “Sparkle” Williams portrays Harriet Tubman in Dayton Contemporary Dance Company’s world premiere of J. Lawrence Paint (Harriet Tubman Remix) by choreographer Donald Byrd. Pho to by Andy Snow

96 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Cincinnati Art who served on the museum’s Restaurant a few floors down, Museum board during the 1940s. He guests enjoyed piecing together CINCINNATI envisioned the Terrace Plaza Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati Hotel, then the city’s most while they ate. Rather than depict n 2006, the Cincinnati Art prominent modern building, as an the city geographically, Steinberg Museum received a grant to international showplace featuring conceived city landmarks in Ireinstate two of the city’s work by major contemporary thematic groups like statues, aesthetic landmarks. The museum artists. To that end, he fountains, and buildings with received a Save America’s commissioned a large-scale interesting roofs. Treasures grant of $135,200 to painting by Spanish artist Joan Both pieces were donated to the restore two large-scale paintings Miró and a multi-panel work by museum in 1965, when the Terrace in the museum’s permanent New York illustrator Saul was sold to the Hilton Hotels collection, one of 10 projects Steinberg. Corporation. The paintings— jointly funded in 2006 by the Cerulean blue dominates Miró’s grease stained, smoke damaged, National Endowment for the Arts 30-foot-long oil painting, which and discolored by aging varnish— and the National Park Service. hung for two decades in the hotel’s have since spent more time in Both murals were commissioned rooftop restaurant. At the Terrace storage than on display. After in 1947 by Cincinnati businessman undergoing a thorough cleaning at and philanthropist John J. Emery, Intermuseum Conservation Association in Oberlin, all 10 panels of the Steinberg piece, totaling 80 feet, were rehung in June 2007 and complemented by a retrospective of Steinberg’s New Yorker cartoons. The refurbished Miró should make its own debut at the museum in 2008. Ohio

Background: A detail of Saul Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati (1947), recently refurbished and rehung at the Cincinnati Art Museum in July 2007. Phot o by Scott Hisey

2006 Annual Report 97 Grant Highlights

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma DURANT

ith 168,000 members the Native-American community, and a land base that and young American Indians learn W covers more than more about this important part of 15,000 square miles of hills and their heritage. This traditional Pow valleys, the Choctaw Nation of Wow is led by an emcee with head Oklahoma is the third largest dancers, and includes a contest, Indian tribe in the United States. gourd dancing, and performances Since 1984, Choctaw Nation has by the Choctaw Dancers. celebrated its heritage and the future of its nation through an Through the Living Village activity, annual Labor Day festival, drawing participants become completely more than 200,000 individuals immersed in the sights, sounds, each year from both around the and smells of the historic Choctaw United States and internationally. people. Members of the tribe cook over fires, repair homes, weave For 2006, the Choctaw Nation baskets, and make tools and received an NEA Access to Artistic weapons to illustrate the history of Excellence grant of $20,000 for its their culture. Lastly, the Choctaw annual free festival, and in Art Show displays traditional specific, the Pow Wow, Living Choctaw crafts, such as painting, Village, and Arts Show bead work, sculpture, and components that emphasize the stickball. tribe’s culture and history. The festival activities are designed The Pow Wow provides both to highlight the rich culture of the The Choctaw Nation Pow Wow begins with entertainment through dancing Choctaw Nation, celebrating both a grand entry. and singing, and an understanding their heritage and their current Photo courtesy of BISHINIK of the spiritual side of this ritual. contributions. Visitors are exposed to the language, values, and teachings of Oklahoma

98 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Tulsa Oratorio Chorus TULSA

ne of only three showcase the best of classic choral and preparations, TOC performed performing arts music. In addition to TOC’s chorus for approximately 800 people at Oorganizations in the Tulsa and orchestra, this performance the Coleman Theater in Miami. region, the Tulsa Oratorio Chorus also featured two guest soloists, TOC has a tradition of making its (TOC) has brought choral music to Lindsey McKee and Richard performances accessible to audiences throughout Oklahoma Sutliff. students through reduced-price since its founding in 1992. Apart tickets, and likewise in Miami, TOC volunteers undertook all of from the artistic director and TOC offered tickets at a special rate the logistical planning of accompanist, the organization is for students at the local community transporting the chorus and entirely volunteer-run; chorus college. orchestra 85 miles from Tulsa to volunteers account for all Miami. In addition, volunteers planning, fundraising, and arranged for platforms to be added arrangement of venues and also to the stage at the Coleman Theatre make up the 100-member choir to accommodate TOC’s entire and 40-member volunteer The Tulsa Oratorio Chorus brought a chorus. On May 7, 2006, after orchestra. Through the performance of Brahms Requiem to nearly two months of rehearsals Miami, Oklahoma, with the support of commitment of its volunteer base, an NEA grant. TOC presents four to five concerts Photo by John Southern each season.

In FY 2006, TOC received an NEA Challenge America grant of $10,000 to bring both the chorus and orchestra to Miami, Oklahoma, a rural, artistically underserved community of 13,000, for a performance of Brahms Requiem. Brahms Requiem is a work representative of TOC’s usual repertoire, chosen to

2006 Annual Report 99 Grant Highlights

Portland Opera Portland Opera received an NEA the former President of the United PORTLAND Access to Artistic Excellence grant States and soprano Nancy Allen of $10,000 to join a six-city co- Lundy portrays the First Lady. ichard Nixon? Singing? production of Nixon in China. When the opera premiered at Even a few board Charles MacKay, general director Houston Grand Opera, R members were skeptical at Opera Theatre of St. Louis, musicologists immediately hailed when Portland Opera’s artistic spearheaded the project and asked it as a classic, a perfect fusion of director, Christopher Mattaliano, Mattaliano to join. The production Adams’s minimalist style and first proposed staging John debuted in St. Louis in 2004, world music motifs. This tour is Adams’s 1987 opera Nixon in traveled on to Minneapolis, the first new major production of China. The whole idea is bizarre: Portland, and Chicago, and will the work since it was originally Why write an opera about the continue to Denver in 2008. The performed in 1987. Nixon’s trip is infamous president’s 1972 trip to same creative team has worked on recounted through a sequence of China? But Mattaliano insisted each production and, in most tableaux featuring historic that this opera could be revived in cities, the lead singers have characters, including Nixon, Portland, and that people would reprised their roles, with each Chairman Mao, and Henry come see it. He was right. company supplying a supporting Kissinger. chorus. Tenor Robert Orth stars as

Richard Nixon (baritone Robert Orth) prepares to Oregon meet Chairman Mao in Portland Opera’s 2006 production of John Adams’s Nixon in China. Photos by Duane Morris

100 Grant Highlights

“That’s what makes the piece timeless,” Mattaliano said. “It’s about public figures and their private lives. And when you think about it, that’s what so many great operas are about.”

Eugene Symphony Orchestra EUGENE

ontemporary composer Michael Daugherty is the Cmusical antidote for Daugherty taught anyone who has ever listened to master classes to contemporary classical music and composition students and deemed it inaccessible, chaotic, or coached the university’s Timpanist Charles Dowd earned rave overly academic. His harmonies, percussion and wind ensembles reviews for his solo performance when rhythms, and instrumentation are through performances of Niagara the Eugene Symphony performed Falls, Lex, and Shaken Not Stirred. Michael Daugherty’s Raise the Roof. just as complex as the next Photo by Steve Smith, PhotOregon composer’s, yet Daugherty’s The weekend culminated with an audiences are at a distinct all-Daugherty concert at the Hult musical depiction of Superman advantage: as long as they know Center. The Eugene Symphony and Doomsday’s final fight to the their cartoon characters, super gave the West Coast premiere of death, based on the Latin Dies Irae, heroes, and celebrity icons, they’ll Daugherty’s Raise the Roof, a or “Day of the Dead,” chant. get what’s going on in the music. timpani concerto he wrote for the In 2006, the Eugene Symphony opening of Detroit’s Max Fisher Daugherty expounded on all these Orchestra received an NEA Access Music Center in 2003. Also on the connections himself at a free to Artistic Excellence grant of program: Route 66, a sonic trip public lecture the day before the $7,500 to bring Daugherty and his through the Heartland; Desi, a concert, and spoke briefly from parade of pop culture allusions to Latin-influenced tribute to Desi the stage during the performance. Oregon. The enigmatic composer Arnaz; Above Clouds, a symphonic The concert was attended by 2,240 divided his four days between the movement inspired by the people and up to 55,000 listened Hult Center concert hall and the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe; and via broadcast on KWAX-FM, University of Oregon. On campus, Red Cape Tango, Daugherty’s Eugene’s classical music station.

2006 Annual Report 101 Grant Highlights Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh Irish & Christopher Rawson, the Pittsburgh Godot, to lead off his “Top 10 Plays Classical Theatre Post-Gazette’s drama critic, was one of 2006” list. of the festival’s biggest fans. He PITTSBURGH For Paul and his creative dubbed the festival Pittsburgh’s ensemble, however, the festival’s othing says Pittsburgh “theater event of the year” and greatest distinction may have been like the Steelers, Heinz picked two BeckettFest plays, unofficial. As far as he knows, no NKetchup, and Samuel PICT’s Endgame and the Gate other theater in North America Beckett. Or so it seemed to Andrew Theatre of Dublin’s Waiting for celebrated Beckett’s centennial by Paul, artistic director of presenting a complete Pittsburgh Irish & Classical retrospective of his stage Theatre (PICT). In 2006, Paul plays. An ensemble of 14 and his theater received an actors and directors NEA Access to Artistic performed or read 18 of Excellence grant of $12,000 in Beckett’s shorter works in support of BeckettFest, a repertory style, with different repertory performance of all combinations of plays 20 stage plays by Beckett to available each weekend. At a celebrate his 100th birthday. separate venue, the seminal The Irish playwright was one Endgame ran throughout the of the most influential 20th- three-week festival. All shows century playwrights, bringing were created by an a sense of minimalism and international team of absurdity to the realistic designers. Two months after drama of his day. The festival the festival, PICT completed proved wildly popular in the Beckett Cycle by co- Pittsburgh, with nearly sold- hosting the Gate Theatre of out crowds that included many Simon Bradbury (Clov) and Larry John Dublin’s touring production of area college students. Meyers (Hamm) appear in Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre’s acclaimed 2006 Waiting for Godot. “There are a lot of Beckett fans out production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. there. They came out of the Photo by Suellen Fitzsimmons woodwork for this,” Paul said.

102 National Endowment for the Arts Don Francisco de la Robe and His Sons Pedro and Domingo, 1599, by Andean artist Andrés Sánchez Gallque, one of the pieces featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s exhibition Tesoros/Treasures/Tesouros: The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820. Ima ge courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia conquerors conscripted that spans three centuries. Nearly Museum of Art indigenous Inca, Aztec, and Mayan all the artwork was created under PHILADELPHIA craftsman to produce functional colonial Spanish or Portuguese artworks for Catholic worship. The rule, yet the art of each indigenous enturies before Rufino museum received an NEA Access culture is distinct. Tamayo, Frido Kahlo, and to Artistic Excellence grant of All told, more than 200,000 people CDiego Rivera, there was $100,000 to support touring the saw the show, with many more Cristobal de Villalpando, a 17th- exhibit, which was on view in participating in related educational century Spanish ensign tasked with Philadelphia from September activities, including traditional painting the sacristy in Mexico 20 to December 31, 2006, and craft workshops for children and a City’s cathedral. The art of de traveled to Miami and Mexico Day of the Dead celebration. By the Villalpando, and some 40 other City in 2007. time Treasures closed, more than near-anonymous artisans, drew Curators Joseph J. Rishel and 26,000 people participated in international attention in 2006 Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt spent education programs related to the when the Philadelphia Museum of more than five years collaborating exhibit, including nearly 10,000 Art debuted Tesoros/Treasures/ on the selection of works for the school children. The museum also Tesouros: The Arts in Latin America, exhibit with a team of Latin reached out to the Hispanic 1492-1820. American scholars. The result is a community in southeastern The exhibit makes a compelling highly visceral and visually Pennsylvania. About 2,600 Latinos case that the artistic traditions of stunning presentation of nearly redeemed free tickets, distributed Latin America are rooted in a 250 sculptures, paintings, through various community colonial fusion: Iberian furniture, ceramics, and textiles groups.

2006 Annual Report 103 Grant Highlights

Yorick’s Productions performance designed around songs, and creating their own work SAUNDERSTOWN music popular in the 1940s and of art. In total, approximately 700 1950s, chosen in particular to people participated in Yorick’s he NEA-initiated study appeal to their audience. Following workshops, and in some Creativity and Aging (2006) the performance, T revealed how ongoing, Yorick provided community-based arts programs a short lecture improve the quality of life for older demonstration on the Americans. But that wasn’t history of marionettes anything Yorick’s Productions and puppetry in the didn’t already know, as United States. demonstrated by its Young at Heart Participants were tour, supported by an NEA Access then given the to Artistic Excellence grant of opportunity to handle $10,000 in FY 2006. the marionettes and create their own Since 1991 Yorick’s Productions short dialogues with has been performing classical and them. The activities Czech traditional puppetry with concluded with marionettes hand-carved by artist participants making Dusan Petran. Yorick focuses A resident at Adult Day Center in their own puppets out of a Waterford, Connecticut, displays her on reaching those in need, variety of materials. own hand-made puppet during the performing for children in Yorick’s Productions presentation. hospitals and senior citizens in The Young at Heart tour was Photo by Dusan Petran senior centers and nursing homes. designed as a way for residents to both recall memories of their communities, it provided an Between July 2006 and April 2007, youth in the 1940s and 1950s and activity for the seniors and their Yorick traveled to 20 senior also express themselves artistically grandchildren to participate in centers in the northeast region. At by manipulating the marionettes, together. each center,Yorick presented a singing along with the production’s Rhode Island

104 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Community provides students ages 7-18 with diverse musical traditions; Musicworks instrument lessons, educational bimonthly performance parties, PROVIDENCE workshops, public performances, designed to bring together parents, and exposure to concerts. students, neighbors, and uilding the community musicians for performances and In FY 2006, CMW received an NEA around music is one of the demonstrations; and bimonthly Access to Artistic Excellence grant Bgoals of Community youth salons, a less formal venue of $10,000 for their music Musicworks (CMW), in which the for teens to perform. education and performance members of the Providence String programs from September 2006 CMW also organized Phase II, an Quartet teach, perform, and through June 2007. These opportunity for teen musicians to organize community events in the activities included weekly improve their skills in a close-knit inner-city neighborhood in which instrument lessons, held both peer group. Students in Phase II they reside. Operating in areas of individually and in small groups; participated in weekend retreats Providence that have the highest monthly musical workshops about and group discussions and were percentage of at-risk youth, CMW trained to teach as teaching assistants for beginning students. Providence String Quartet member Sebastian Ruth teaching 17-year-old viola student Lastly, CMW’s string quartet Fatima Johnson. performed at least once a month, Photo by Patrick Roberts at both community venues, such as schools, libraries, and even soup kitchens, and traditional performance spaces, where they put on full-length concerts.

Approximately 100 students participated in CMW’s programs and approximately a thousand people attended the string quartet’s concerts. All of these components are offered free of charge and are designed to both grow an appreciation for music and build a community through arts education.

2006 Annual Report 105 Grant Highlights South Carolina

City of Charleston place during the 17 days of the workshops for children, preparing Spoleto Festival USA, Piccolo them to attend the performances, Office of Cultural Affairs CHARLESTON Spoleto is a series of free events and the chance for local children featuring local and regional artists, to audition for and perform in complementing the international the performances. he annual Spoleto Festival flavor of its parent festival. OCA’s USA is internationally More than 2,700 children and work with local arts organizations— T known as one of the youth benefited from the as well as its management of two premiere arts festivals, but not as education activities and contemporary art galleries in the well known is the Piccolo Spoleto performances. The total audience city—make it the perfect Festival created by the City of for the productions was more than organization to produce the festival Charleston Office of Cultural 6,000 individuals of all ages and program. Affairs (OCA) in 1979. Taking ethnic backgrounds. In FY 2006, OCA received an NEA Suzanne Fleming-Atwood and Sarah Access to Artistic Excellence grant Williams perform the title roles of Hansel and Gretel—accompanied by the of $50,000 to support Opera is For Island School Council Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Ashley Everyone: Piccolo Spoleto Takes for the Arts River Creative Arts Elementary School Two Favorite Operas on the Road to HILTON HEAD ISLAND Unichorus, and Charleston Children’s Rural S.C. From May 26-June 1, Chorus—at St. John’s High School on reating large outdoor John’s Island, South Carolina. 2006, the project toured free and Photo by Charleston Picture Company discount-priced concert versions sculptures out of tree Csaplings is North of Hansel and Gretel and Amahl and the Night Visitors to several venues, Carolinian visual artist Patrick including area schools, a church on Dougherty’s specialty. “My affinity Johns Island, a large factory in for trees as a material seems to Dorchester County, and a migrant come from a childhood spent farm workers camp in the Sea wandering the forest around Islands. In order to connect to Southern Pines, North Carolina,” local communities, at each staging he said. He creates his work for a community leader was invited to the specific location where it will perform as narrator. reside, trying to make a work that Accompanying educational will fit organically with its activities included in-school surroundings.

106 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

In FY 2006, South Carolina’s Island School Council for the Arts received an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence grant of $10,000 to support the installation of a site- specific outdoor sculpture by Dougherty. Sited at Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina—a 20,000-acre tract of land containing 150 archaeological and historical sites—the original work of woven and twisted tree saplings was installed during a month-long residency by the artist. The residency, which took place from March 5-25, 2007, included two public lectures by the artist and seven hands-on workshops with middle and high school students.

The Island School Council—an organization of parents, teachers, principals, and other supporters— The outdoor installation, Home Sweet School District, during which Home, by environmental sculptor Patrick is committed to academic students could ask questions of Dougherty at Palmetto Bluff in South achievement through arts Dougherty, make comments, and Carolina. presentations and education Photograph by Kristin Goode, participate in the construction courtesy of THE ISLAND PACKET programs in the visual, process. More than 829 students performing, and literary arts, so an benefited from the workshops and educational component to the field trips. The temporary project was important. The project sculpture, Home Sweet Home, was included a series of field trips to completed on March 23, 2007, and the active project site by students will be on view to the public from the Beaufort County Public through November 2007.

2006 Annual Report 107 Grant Highlights

Kayla Jackmon, South Dakota’s champion, performs at the Poetry Out Loud national finals in Washington, DC, in May 2006. Photo by James Kegley

Out Loud encourages Building in Sioux Falls, each high school students to reciting three poems for judges learn about poetry David Allan Evans, South Dakota’s through memorization, Poet Laureate, and Ray Peterson performance, and and Kim Bartling, theater artists at competition. In FY 2006, South Dakota State University and state arts agencies in all the University of Sioux Falls, 50 states and the District respectively. Kayla Jackmon, a of Columbia received senior at Sioux Falls’s Washington NEA Poetry Out Loud High School became South grants of $8,000 each to Dakota’s first state champion, carry out the program in receiving a $200 prize, $500 for their state capitals. her school to purchase poetry books, and an all-expense-paid In Sioux Falls, South trip to Washington, DC. Dakota, the South Dakota Arts Council chose to On May 16 at the Lincoln Theatre broaden its program in Washington, DC, Jackmon outside of the state recited Yone Noguchi’s “The Poet” South Dakota Arts capital by targeting the state’s and ’s “Still I Rise”, largest high schools. Each high and out of the 51 participants was Council SIOUX FALLS school held its own Poetry Out selected as one of 12 to advance to Loud competition with 500 the final round of competition. As students throughout South Dakota a finalist, she received a $1,000 reated by the National participating in the program. college scholarship prize and her Endowment for the Arts school received $500 for the Cand the Poetry Foundation On April 12, 2006, the ten school purchase of poetry books. to promote the study and champions competed in the Senate appreciation of great poetry, Poetry Chambers at the State Capitol

108 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights South Dakota

South Dakota Center of $25,000 to create a series of activities, including writing for the Book events around Harper Lee’s classic contests for high school students BROOKINGS/SIOUX FALLS novel. and adults, discussion groups, and three separate events with Mary HarperCollins donated 450 copies outh Dakotans got a chance Badham, the actress who portrayed of To Kill a Mockingbird to the to climb into Scout Finch’s Scout in the 1962 film To Kill a Center for the Book, aiding the Sskin and walk around in it Mockingbird. A community troupe organizers in making the novel as they participated in NEA’s Big presented a Readers’ Theatre accessible throughout their Read initiative, choosing To Kill a production of the play, focusing on community. To promote the Mockingbird for their community the novel’s court scene with many program, the Center for the Book read. The Big Read is restoring members of Sioux Falls becoming created posters of local officials, reading to the heart of American involved.A panel on race relations community leaders, and South life by providing funding to followed the performance, Dakota’s U.S. congressional support community-reads of a allowing participants to discuss delegation reading the book. single book. an issue central to the novel and Sioux Falls’s Big Read program their community. In FY 2006 the Big Read selected encompassed more than 15 unique ten organizations out of 45 By developing activities around applicants to participate in the this work of literature, Big Read pilot phase of the program. The organizers in Sioux Falls South Dakota Center for the discovered a new way of not only Book, part of the South promoting literacy, but also Dakota Humanities engaging residents in their Council, received a grant community.

Residents performed with a community theater troupe in a dramatic reading of the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird as part of Sioux Falls’s Big Read. Phot o by Jayne Erickson

2006 Annual Report 109 Grant Highlights

VSA Arts Tennessee GALLATIN

or aspiring musicians act. Other performers included More than 1,000 people—about growing up in Tennessee, local disabled artists and the four half from the general public, half F there is no loftier dream finalists in VSA Arts state Young from the disabled community— than performing onstage at Ryman Soloist competition. The audience attended the evening performance Auditorium, the original Grand must have included a few talent at Nashville’s opulent and historic Ole Opry. scouts, because two of those theater. During the day, 2,000 students, pianist Angela Mosley special education students from 25 In 2006, VSA Arts Tennessee gave and gospel singer Daniel Janvrin, schools came to the Ryman. Many disabled performers from across have since been offered additional of those schools have since become the state a chance to fulfill that performing gigs. involved in VSA Arts. dream. The organization received an NEA Challenge America grant of $10,000 to fund its first-ever Night at the Ryman gala. Lori Kissinger, founder and executive director of VSA Arts Tennessee, Tennessee deemed the event “a huge success.”

Kissinger founded VSA Arts Tennessee after moving to Nashville in 2001 and discovering Laura Dodd, past winner of VSA that the national organization had Arts National Young Soloists no state chapter. She has since contest, sings at VSA Arts organized many events, including Tennessee’s Night at the Ryman, a gala concert that put a spotlight educational programs, a on disabled performers. singer/songwriter cabaret, and Photo by Evan Dickert several competitions—but nothing as big and splashy as Night at the Ryman.

Country singers T.G. Shepherd and Kelly Lang served as emcees for the evening. Ginny Owens, a well- known blind contemporary Christian artist, was the headline

110 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Arts Center of Cannon County WOODBURY

e’re looking at a visionary,” said Evan “W Hatch, a folklorist at the Arts Center of Cannon County, about John Wesley Work III. “Work was a European-trained conductor who valued folk culture at a time when other black intellectuals were running as far away from it as possible.”

Work traveled with Alan Lomax, commissioned by the Library of Congress to record the music of Son Sims and Muddy Waters make music on a porch in Clarksdale, Mississippi. John African-American folk singers in Wesley Work III most likely took this photo while traveling with Alan Lomax in 1942. Photo courtesy of the collections of the Center for Popular Music, the Mississippi delta region, Middle Tennessee State University introducing him to African Americans who might otherwise have been wary of a white man and his collaborator. With help from an will complement a traveling his disc-cutting machine. Together NEA Access to Artistic Excellence exhibit, John Work III: Recording they recorded blues singer Muddy grant of $20,000, the Arts Center Black Culture. The exhibit began its Waters, the gospel quartet the of Cannon County aims to bring Southern tour at , Fairfield Four, and many other Work out of obscurity. where Work was once chair of the musicians whose talents may never music department. “We are going On the side, Work made a few have spread north had Work and to make our audience aware that it scratchy glass-disc recordings of Lomax not preserved their music was not strictly a white, upper- his own.A dozen of those songs, for posterity. class endeavor to preserve folk now digitally remastered, will be culture,” Hatch said. Within the decade, Lomax would be made available to the public on the winning wide praise for collecting Cannon County Arts Center’s own and cataloging recordings of old- label, Spring Fed Records, in time music. Few Americans, November 2007. The CD’s release however, ever learned the name of

2006 Annual Report 111 Grant Highlights

Carlos Boltes and Scott Hill—the Alturas Duo—performed the American premiere of Horacio Salinas’s Danzas Peregrinas with the Symphony of Southeast Texas. Photo by Thomas Giroir Photography

Texas

Symphony of After receiving an NEA Challenge and other venues across southeast Southeast Texas America grant of $10,000, the Texas. The season finale, held at BEAUMONT symphony brought the Alturas Silsbee High School, featured the Duo—Canadian guitarist Scott Hill Alturas Duo. fter surviving the and Chilean multi-instrumentalist Christopher Zimmerman, music battering winds of Carlos Boltes—to Texas so they director of the symphony, had A Hurricane Rita, a breezy could present the American heard the duo perform before and new suite from the Alturas Duo was premiere of Danzas Peregrinas, a was impressed with their classical just what residents of Beaumont, suite for guitar, charango, and pan virtuosity and world-music Texas, needed to hear. “They were flute by Horacio Salinas. The panache. Zimmerman proposed fabulous, they were amazing, and concert was originally scheduled that Hill, Boltes, and their friend, they cheered us up like a breath of for Beaumont’s Julie Rogers wind-player Gonzalo Cortes, play fresh air,” said Galen Wixson, Theatre, but Rita’s winds and water with the symphony and perform executive director of the Symphony damaged the hall. The symphony assemblies at local elementary of Southeast Texas. spent the 2005-2006 season playing in high school auditoriums schools.

112 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

“This was totally unique for us,” Art include Henry Moore, Sculpting Rodin, and Pablo Picasso—in Wixson said. “It was truly a risk.” the 20th Century, which toured to order to highlight Matisse’s unique the Fine Arts Museums of San style and explore Matisse’s The risk paid off. Students at four Francisco and the National Gallery engagement with the work of his schools were fascinated by the of Art in Washington, DC, and contemporaries. multicultural musicians, and more Sigmar Polke: New Paintings and than 1,000 people drove to Silsbee, The exhibition is accompanied by Drawings, which toured to 15 miles north of Beaumont, to educational materials, including London’s Tate Modern. attend the Alturas Duo concert an audio tour, Web-accessible with the symphony. Danzas The Dallas Museum of Art received interpretive materials, and a fully Peregrinas literally translates as “a an NEA Access to Artistic illustrated catalog. After its dancing pilgrimage.” Salinas’s Excellence grant of $60,000 to premiere at the Dallas Museum of meandering, rhythmic music support the exhibition Matisse: Art (January 21 - April 29, 2007), proved just that, the perfect finale Painter as Sculptor, in consortium Matisse: Painter as Sculptor will to an orchestra’s wayfaring season. with the Baltimore Museum of Art. travel to the Baltimore Museum of The touring exhibit of Art (June 10 - September 2, 2007) approximately 160 works and the San Francisco Museum of Dallas Museum investigates Matisse’s sculpture in Modern Art (October 7, 2007 - of Art the context of his paintings, January 13, 2008), giving more DALLAS drawings, and prints. Matisse’s than 500,000 individuals access to sculpture is also exhibited with the exhibit. ince its founding in 1903, works by other major 19th- and the Dallas Museum of Art 20th-century artists—such as Shas evolved from an art Alberto Giacometti, Auguste association primarily concerned with Texan art to a renowned museum with a comprehensive collection comprising 23,000 objects spanning 5,000 years. Significant exhibitions previously curated by the Dallas Museum of

Henri Matisse’s oil painting Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra, 1907, (above) and bronze sculpture Reclining Nude I (Aurora), 1907, were featured in the Dallas Museum of Art’s exhibition Matisse: Painter as Sculptor. Images courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, © 2007 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

2006 Annual Report 113 Grant Highlights

Spy Hop Productions Produced by both Spy Hop SALT LAKE CITY Productions and the Sundance Film Institute, Reel Stories was n overwhelming majority held from June 15-July 31, 2006. of teenagers own at least This free intensive workshop gave A one personal media students the opportunity to work device, yet most do not know the with the country’s best basics of what is involved in documentary filmmakers. The producing the media arts. Spy Hop program guides the students Productions—a youth media arts through the entire process of and educational enrichment center making a documentary, including serving Salt Lake City—is trying to story development, camera do something about that. operation, and editing raw footage.

In FY 2006, Spy Hop Productions Documenting Communities, a received an NEA Learning in the collaboration with the University Arts grant of $60,000 for its Youth of Utah College of Humanities, was A student in Spy Hop Productions’ Youth Documentary Arts Program held from January 1, 2006-May 30, Documentary Arts Program checks to make (YDAP), a free program for 2007. This project allowed high sure her shot is set. students ages 14-18. In 2006, school students to explore their Photo by Matt Bradley approximately 50 students learned local community through the the aesthetics, skills, and process of creating, shooting, and only youth-produced radio techniques of documentary editing documentary videos. broadcast in Utah, Loud and Clear production while exploring stories The third branch of YDAP, Loud trains students in all aspects of and issues that relate to both youth and Clear, is a weekly all-youth designing and implementing a and adults. YDAP is made up of radio program airing live on KRCL radio show. three core collaborative programs: 90.9 FM and reaching an audience Reel Stories, Documenting of more than 80,000. The first and Communities, and Loud and Clear.

114 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights Utah

Southern Utah production, USF also provides a prop seminars, introducing them University post-show discussion with the to all the various aspects that make actors and workshops in stage up a USF production. Utah Shakespearean combat, performing Shakespeare’s Festival CEDAR CITY text, and developing character through improvisation.

n 1961 the Utah In FY 2006, Southern Utah Shakespearean Festival (USF) University received an NEA Access Iwas founded, in partnership to Artistic Excellence grant of with Southern Utah University, $20,000 to support USF’s as a way of providing evening production of Shakespeare’s rarely entertainment for visitors performed tragedy, Antony and attracted to Cedar City by the area’s Cleopatra. The play follows the six national parks. Recipient of the relationship between Cleopatra 2000 Tony Award for America’s and Mark Antony from the time of Outstanding Regional Theatre, the Parthian War to Cleopatra’s today USF has become a suicide. Directed by Nagle Jackson, destination event, attracting an the tragic love story was performed audience of more than 127,000 between June 22 and September 2, from around the United States and 2006, reaching 12,298 people. The abroad. production ran in repertory with Hamlet and The Merry Wives of For four years, USF has Windsor in USF’s Adams participated in the NEA’s Shakespearean Theatre, an Shakespeare for a New Generation outdoor theater patterned after Bill Christ as Antony and Jacqueline initiative, presenting an London’s Globe Theatre. Patrons Antaramian as Cleopatra in the Utah abbreviated Shakespeare play in Shakespearean Festival’s 2006 production also were invited to participate in schools in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, of Antony and Cleopatra. free literary, acting, costume, and and Utah. In addition to its Pho to by Karl Hugh

2006 Annual Report 115 Grant Highlights Vermont

New England Conservatory faculty member Roger Tapping participated in Yellow Barn’s summer professional development sessions. Photo courtesy of Roger Tapping

support professional development in chamber music for emerging musicians during its annual summer music festival. From July 2 to August 6, 2006, 38 young musicians—selected from an audition pool of nearly 500 applicants—were immersed in an intensive schedule of coaching, rehearsals, classes, lessons, and public performances. Held on the grounds of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Yellow Barn performance program in chamber PUTNEY music for outstanding pre- program’s faculty included Yellow professional musicians and a Barn Artistic Director Seth Knopp, New England Conservatory faculty ith more and more summer training program for high member Roger Tapping, and schools cutting back school students. In addition, composer-in-residence W on arts and music Yellow Barn also presents a Menachem Zur, among others. education, today’s youth have summer festival and seasonal Participating students presented fewer opportunities to hone their concert tours that include master 33 public concerts in Amherst and artistic skills. Yellow Barn Music classes and workshops. in Putney, Vermont, including a School and Festival, founded in In FY 2006, Yellow Barn received series of community outreach 1969, provides those opportunities an NEA Access to Artistic concerts for at-risk children and through a summer training and Excellence grant of $7,500 to seniors. More than 4,000

116 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

individuals, including 250 showcase some arts and traditions children and youth, benefited that the population might not from the concerts. An additional ordinarily see, and put on a two- audience of 10,000 was reached day Asian arts festival, supported through broadcasts of the by an NEA Challenge America performances on WGBH. grant of $10,000.

Violist Jessica Oudin, a 2006 Pentangle Council on the Arts participant, raved, “It is so rare presents arts programming to the to find an environment that at community at its historic Town once commands excellence in Hall Theatre, serving more than Children in traditional costumes during performance, as well as 10,000 people annually. PCA has Pentangle Council on the Arts’s Asian camaraderie, warmth, and support brought international artists to the arts festival. Photo courtesy of Pentangle among peers, and Yellow Barn community in the past, and Council on the Arts does just that! I had an incredible produced a Latin Caribbean summer, and there is nowhere I festival in 2002-03. would rather have been.” The Asian arts festival was presented, in partnership with the the dance and drumming of Pentangle Council University of Vermont Asian Portland Taiko to the folktales of on the Arts Studies department, at the award-winning Japanese storyteller WOODSTOCK Woodstock Town Hall Theater and Motoko. Other festival activities on the Woodstock Union High included demonstrations of Asian ounded in 1768, School campus on March 29 and traditional dance, cooking, flower Woodstock, Vermont, has 30, 2006. The university provided arranging, bamboo stick fighting, F been called the resources for kimono and tea calligraphy, and poetry. Nearly 800 “quintessential New England ceremonies as well as displays of students and 40 teachers from 10 village.” The Pentangle Council on Asian masks and artwork. schools participated in the festival. the Arts (PCA), which serves this The festival immersed the Approximately 400 adult residents rural community, wanted to community in Asian culture, from of the community also participated.

2006 Annual Report 117 Grant Highlights

University of El Dorado in cities all over the musicians who traveled along the Virginia country, and that many of them Southern Crescent train line. The CHARLOTTESVILLE had been lost or forgotten. I trunks contain stories, started the Dresser Trunk Project photographs, maps, and illiam D. Williams, as a way of giving a voice to these computer-generated models to associate professor of important places of refuge for document the clubs, hotels, and W architecture at the black travelers, and to use art as a other places musicians stayed in University of Virginia, first came way of reminding people of the eleven cities along the train line, up with the idea for the Dresser importance of black business from New York to New Orleans. Trunk Project after coming to an districts during segregation.” Each trunk and its contents important realization. “I was In FY 2006, the University of symbolically and architecturally working with Project Row Houses, Virginia received an NEA Access to represents a now-forgotten place an arts organization in Houston, Artistic Excellence grant of of refuge for African-American on renovating the El Dorado $44,000 to support the traveling musicians during the Jim Crow ballroom. The El Dorado is where exhibition and catalogue. Eleven era. In fall 2007, the exhibition Elvis reportedly heard Big Mama artists/architects each designed a will tour to each of the sites by Thornton sing ‘Hound Dog.’I box based on a dresser trunk—the train, the passengers being a more realized while trying to bring it case in which a musician carried diverse audience than might see back to its original glory that there his gear—to tell the stories of the works in museums or were hundreds of venues like the universities. Virginia

Artist Lisa Henry-Benham created a dresser trunk for the Carver Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia— later demolished for the expansion of Preston Avenue—which was the only hotel listed for black travelers in the “Negro Motorist” Travelers Guide. Photos by Lisa Henry- Benham

118 Grant Highlights

John Beale Bordley’s portraits of Nelly Custis Lewis (left) and Lawrence Lewis (right), circa 1841, are being conserved with NEA support. Photos courtesy of George Washington’s Fredericksburg Foundation

George to the public, and at Kenmore Fielding Lewis’s eldest son, by Washington’s alone, more than 16,000 people Francis Cezeron. After Fredericksburg visit annually. conservation, both portraits have been displayed as part of the core Foundation In FY 2006, GWFF received an exhibition in Kenmore’s FREDERICKSBURG NEA Challenge America grant of Crowninshield Museum. $10,000 to restore two period n Fredericksburg, when they frames for important portraits in The portraits to be conserved are say “George Washington slept Historic Kenmore’s permanent the John Lewis portrait (which has Ihere,” it is more than likely collection and to clean and been completed) and the 1841 true. George Washington’s conserve three major portraits in portraits by John Beale Bordley, a Fredericksburg Foundation the collection. The restoration highly respected portrait painter, (GWFF) owns and operates three included repairing damage to the of Nellie Custis Lewis and her Washington family properties in frames’ surfaces and removing husband, Lawrence Lewis (whose Virginia: Historic Kenmore, the unwanted overpaint. The two frames were conserved with a FY 1775 plantation home of portraits to be framed are among 2005 NEA grant). Conservation Revolutionary War patriots the most significant holdings in includes cleaning and removing Fielding and Betty Washington the Kenmore’s permanent discolored varnish from the Lewis; Ferry Farm, where George collection: a 1796 miniature portraits. The conservation of the Washington and his siblings grew portrait by John Trumbell of Nellie Bordley portraits was completed in up; and Accokeek Furnace, Custis Lewis, the Washingtons’ August 2007. Augustine Washington’s (George’s granddaughter, and a circa 1810 father) iron mine. They are open panel portrait of John Lewis,

2006 Annual Report 119 Grant Highlights Washington

Seattle International also encourages teachers to performances in traditional and Children’s Festival incorporate world arts and culture contemporary music, dance, SEATTLE into the classroom through teacher theater, puppetry, and storytelling. training programs and free The festival’s diverse acts included ounded in 1986, the curricular resources. a demonstration of the drumming Seattle International tradition of taiko, a play designed SICF presented its 21st annual F Children’s Festival (SICF) especially for toddlers by Canada’s festival in Seattle May 14-19, 2007, is Washington’s only major global Le Théâtre de Quartier, and and its 8th annual one-day festival cultural event that focuses performances in Afro-pop by in Tacoma on May 21st. SICF primarily on young people in H’Sao, a music group from Chad. received an NEA Access to Artistic grades K-12. Presented annually, Excellence grant of $30,000 in In addition, each year SICF SICF educates young audiences support of the festival and related commissions at least one work about international cultures while educational and outreach especially for the festival. In 2007 also providing international artists activities. Twelve national and SICF presented the world with exposure and the opportunity international companies of artists premiere of Share This Place by to connect with other artists. SICF participated, providing Mirah and Spectratone International, featuring animation by Britta Johnson. Using stop- motion animation and live music, the artists explored the life of insects through the writing of Jean-Henri Fabré, known as the “father of entomology.”

Nearly 1,500 teachers received free educational materials to incorporate into their curricula, introducing their students to

Chinese Theatre Works performs Birth of the Monkey King, a comical shadow puppet adaptation of the Chinese classic Journey to the West. Photo courtesy of Chinese Theatre Works

120 National Endowment for the Arts global arts in anticipation of the 2007 festival. More than 30,000 students, teachers, and families attended the festival and SICF ensured access for all students through subsidized tickets to disadvantaged students.

Museum of Glass TACOMA Above: Artist Mitchell Gaudet applies the finishing touches to a sculpture in the Museum lthough of Glass hot shop. glassmaking Photo courtesy of the Museum of Glass A might often be Left: Mitchell Gaudet, Myth of Romance thought of more as a craft (detail), 2006. than an art form, the Museum Photo courtesy of Mitchell Gaudet and of Glass, which opened in July the Museum of Glass 2002, celebrates the contribution glass artists have made to 2006 Visiting Artist Program in discussion on their experiences contemporary art. In its three which 20 artists from both the working in the changing Czech galleries and surrounding outdoor United States and around the political environment. space, the museum presents world participated in five-day During another artist residency in exhibitions and installations in residencies at the museum. glass, mixed media with glass, and August 2006, Mitchell Gaudet in other media by internationally Celebrated Czech artist René created a series of bowls and house recognized artists, bringing in Roubícek’˘ s residency from April forms with shapes, colors, and more than 170,000 people 12-16 coincided with the textures inspired by the ruined annually. The museum also houses exhibition, Czech Glass, 1945 – areas of New Orleans, his the world’s largest hot shop 1980: Design in an Age of Adversity. hometown. His personal amphitheater, which allows During his residency, Roubícek˘ photographs taken of both the visitors to watch as many worked with fellow Czech artists destruction and recovery efforts in renowned and emerging guest Petr Novotny´ and Jirí Pacinek in New Orleans were displayed on a artists create their artworks. the museum’s hot shop, creating big screen in the hot shop while he bowls and vases, glass clarinets, worked. In FY 2006, the Museum of Glass and 10-foot-tall glass columns. All received an NEA Access to Artistic three artists participated in a panel Excellence grant of $35,000 for its

2006 Annual Report 121 Grant Highlights

West Virginia Public Theatre MORGANTOWN

he hills of Morgantown came alive in 2006 when T West Virginia Public Theatre staged an NEA-funded production of The Sound of Music.

An NEA Challenge America grant of $10,000 enabled the theater to offer deeply discounted student tickets for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical, Captain von Trapp (Ray Lutters) and Maria (Laura Hughes) sing along with the von Trapp which takes place in Austria on the children in the West Virginia Public Theatre’s 2006 production of The Sound of Music. eve of World War II. More than Photo by Sue Amos/Infinite Lens Studio 7,000 children traveled up to 90 minutes by bus so they could see advance so they could discuss would normally not ever see the show during the 2006 holiday World War II issues with their professional theater.” season. The performances featured students. The Public Theatre has been professional actors in the lead “That grant was a special grant,” presenting summer stock drama in roles and children from West said Ron Iannone, executive Morgantown since 1985. Back Virginia filling the ranks of the von producer at the theater. “We then, the shows were staged in a Trapp family. Teachers were produced The Sound of Music and small tent theater in a hotel provided with a study guide in made it available to students who West Virginia

122 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

parking lot. Today, the Public Heritage Center, a nonprofit basketry, traditional wood joinery, Theatre presents plays and organization based at Davis & and herbal medicine. Six up-and- musicals at a theater on West Elkins College in central West coming craftspeople traveled Virginia University’s campus. Virginia. Since 1972, the center has across the state to study at the Future plans call for the Public been promoting and preserving homes of established artists like Theatre to share a new event space the music, dance, crafts, and fiddler Elmer Rich and quilter in Morgantown’s Wharf District. folklore of Appalachia. Carroll Barlow, who was once an The theater serves as both an apprentice herself. Many more “Given the rural character of West artistic ambassador and as an novices received scholarships to Virginia, folk arts have a strong economic generator to the region. attend a weeklong workshop at the influence on our regional identity,” Theater patrons pump more than Augusta Heritage Center. Milnes said. $3.5 million into the Morgantown In addition, the Center used some economy each year. In 2006, the college received an of its grant money to provide travel NEA Access to Artistic Excellence stipends for about two dozen grant of $25,000 for the center to musicians, age 60 and over, who Davis & Elkins continue offering apprenticeships performed at the 2006 Old-Time College and scholarships to West Fiddler’s Reunion. About 10,000 Augusta Heritage Center Virginians looking to learn an people converge on Elkins each ELKINS old-fashioned trade. autumn to celebrate traditional music at this three-day festival. he traditional arts of West The Augusta Heritage Center Virginia, as Gerald Milnes began offering scholarships and T proudly points out, are apprenticeships in 1989. Background: Master Quilter quilting, basket-making, and Recipients chose to study a variety of folk art skills, including Carroll Barlow of Pocahontas banjo-picking. Milnes serves as County, West Virginia, and four folk arts coordinator at the Augusta fiddling, guitar making, white oak apprentices created crazy quilts during a summer folk arts school funded by the NEA. Photo courtesy of Augusta Heritage Center,Davis & Elkins College

2006 Annual Report 123 Grant Highlights

Marc Petrocci in Milwaukee Ballet Company’s production of Lila York’s Coronach. Photo by Rick Brodzeller

Wisconsin

Opera for the Young costume designs. In addition to the MADISON performance, schools have the option of participating in an ith only four singers “Opera by Design” residency, led and one pianist, Opera by OFY’s production designer. W for the Young (OFY) has brought professional, specially OFY developed the opera Orpheus adapted opera productions to Returns (or The Case of the Underworld Zoo) during their 1993- Orpheus’s Harp encourages him to use his elementary school audiences since magical voice to help save the environment 1970, reaching more than 90,000 94 season and chose to revive it for in Opera for the Young’s production of students each year. OFY’s their 2006-07 tour. They received Orpheus Returns. an NEA Access to Artistic Photo courtesy of Opera for the performances, however, are only Young one part of its effort to interest Excellence grant of $10,000 to support this tour in approximately students in opera. Months before power of music and the 170 elementary schools across OFY begins its tour, students importance of caring for Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, submit costume and set design endangered animals and the Minnesota, and Wisconsin. drawings, and OFY selects its environment. One of OFY’s unique favorite ideas and incorporates Adapted from the Greek myth, practices is the integration of the them into the final set and Orpheus Returns emphasizes the students into the performances.

124 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

All schools that book an OFY the only professional ballet school chance to create new and exciting performance receive teaching in the state of Wisconsin. In 2002, pieces. In FY 2006, Milwaukee materials for music classes—this Milwaukee Ballet hosted the first Ballet received an NEA Access to allows the students to learn the Milwaukee International Artistic Excellence grant of chorus parts. For Orpheus Returns, a Choreographer’s Competition, $10,000 for the commission and group of students at each school part of Milwaukee Ballet’s presentation of a new work by joined the singers on stage by dedication to new works. choreographer Lila York. playing the endangered animals. Commissioning new work has Over a five-week period, Lila York The success of OFY’s performances become a major part of Milwaukee worked with Milwaukee Ballet’s is due to its focus on collaboration Ballet’s mission, a practice that has company to create Coronach, a 30- and participation; by learning the benefited its dancers by giving minute modern piece, set to a chorus music, submitting design them the opportunity to work with violin concerto by composer Ross ideas, and interacting with the diverse choreographers, but also Edwards. Paired with Kathryn artists, students become much has benefited the dance world Posin’s Scheherazade, Coronach ran more engaged and involved in the by providing professional from February 16-19, 2006, and production, and therefore, in the choreographers the was attended by more than 8,000 world of opera. individuals.

While staging her new work, Lila Milwaukee Ballet York also held a master class for Company Milwaukee Ballet dancers-in- MILWAUKEE training and participated in a panel on the state of dance at ounded in 1970, the the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee Ballet Milwaukee. In addition, a F Company is currently one behind-the-scenes event gave of the nation’s premiere dance the choreographer the companies, presenting opportunity to discuss with approximately 45 programs each Milwaukee Ballet subscribers her year for an audience of more than motivation in creating Coronach. 70,000. The Milwaukee Ballet School, opened in 1974 by the Milwaukee Ballet, is one of the top David Hovhannisyan and Karisa ballet schools in the nation and is Stich in Milwaukee Ballet Company’s production of Coronach. Photo by Rick Brodzeller

2006 Annual Report 125 Grant Highlights Background: The American Indian Heritage Weekend took place in the picnic area and outdoor amphitheatre at Devils Tower National Monument. Photo courtesy of Devils Tower National Monument

Devils Tower Natural History Association DEVILS TOWER

lthough it is known as heritage weekend is part of the musicians, dancers, and Devils Tower to most, to organization’s Cultural and Natural historians. Crafts demonstrated A several Northern Plains History Program Series, which during the weekend included Indian Tribes the 1,267-foot runs from Memorial Day through beadwork, star blanket weaving, mountain is known as Bear’s Lodge Labor Day and comprises pipe carving, the making of or Bear’s Tipi, a sacred site for approximately 15 presentations on traditional powwow regalia, flute Native Americans and an topics ranging from technical rock carving, and the making of burden important landmark in many tribal climbing to western history, baskets. Speakers and performers narratives. In response to a culminating with the Cowboy Poet included the Northern Cheyenne mandate that designated Devils Festival. Tribal Dancers, flute player and Tower as a protected sacred site, educator David Wolfs Robe, In FY 2006, DTNHA received an the Devils Tower Natural History musician and hoop dancer Kevin NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Association (DTNHA) created a Locke (1990 NEA National grant of $10,000 to support the Native-American heritage Heritage Fellow), and songwriter heritage weekend, which took weekend to educate visitors, and storyteller Jack Gladstone. place August 25-27, 2006. participants, area residents, and More than 400 visitors attended Activities included presentations, others who use the site about the the heritage weekend, despite performances, and ongoing arts culture of the Northern Plains inclement weather. and culture demonstrations by Indian Tribes and the significance Native-American craftspeople, of Devils Tower to that culture. The Wyoming

126 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Highlights

Central Wyoming College RIVERTON

he Robert A. Peck Gallery landscape of power and its on the campus of Central relationship to personal identity by T Wyoming College is a asking women to respond to the nontraditional, educational question: ‘What do you wear that teaching gallery and the site for makes you feel powerful?’” approximately ten exhibitions each The Trappings project has multiple year by regional, national, and parts: a site-specific exhibition international artists. Besides its with audio, print, and video growing collection of outdoor components; interview sessions sculptures, which is making the with local residents; a Web site college a must-see for those with an archive of all the passing through the region, the interviews; and a book on the gallery’s exhibitions display a wide An audience member views one of the project. The installation at the array of contemporary artwork in videos at the Trappings: Stories of Peck Gallery, from November 1- all media. Women, Power, and Clothing December 13, 2006, featured a installation at Central Wyoming College. Central Wyoming College received series of interviews by the artists Photo © Two Girls Working an NEA Challenge America grant with the community’s women of $10,000 to support a site- residents, including a specific installation at the Robert multigenerational group of an excerpt from the Peck Gallery A. Peck Gallery of Trappings: Stories Shoshone women. The artists also installation will be featured in the of Women, Power, and Clothing by gave a lecture on the exhibition book on Trappings, forthcoming artists Two Girls Working: Tiffany and their examination of people’s from Rutgers University Press in Ludwig and Renee Piechocki. The assumptions based on appearance October 2007. artists describe their project as “a and image. Approximately 1,500 dialogue about the complicated individuals viewed the exhibit, and

2006 Annual Report 127 NEA Literature Fellows David Kirby and Kim Addonizio at the National Book Festival’s Poetry Pavilion, sponsored by the NEA. Photo by Steve Purcell Literature Fellowships

Literature Fellowships

he NEA provides support to individual creative writers to pursue writing projects through NEA Literature T Fellowships. Among the writers who have benefited from an NEA Literature Fellowship are 21 U.S. Poet Laureates, 41 Pulitzer Prize winners, one Nobel Laureate, and six recipients of the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the federal government. Many of these writers have received the fellowships during the early stages of their careers, as they have struggled to write, given the demands of work and family. The fellowships offer a temporary abatement to chasing a paycheck, thus allowing the writer the time to concentrate on writing. More important than the financial support, many writers credit the receipt of the Literature Fellowship with giving them the fortitude to keep working at their craft. In all, 3,060 prose writers and poets have benefited from NEA Literature Fellowships since the program was formally inaugurated in 1967.

Noted novelist Ernest J. Gaines received an NEA Literature Fellowship in 1968, 25 years before he received the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Lesson Before Dying. He has said, “The NEA grant—a thousand dollars at that time—encouraged me to keep writing. . . . The young writer needs that. He needs the money, yes—but he also needs a little recognition now and then to keep pushing himself.”

Although artistic merit always has been at the heart of the fellowship awards, today it is the sole basis on which the grants are given. Over several months, a diverse panel of readers, composed of distinguished American writers and two knowledgeable laypersons, read through the blind submissions. All applicants must be U.S. citizens. Panelists do not know the identities of the writers, their publishing histories, academic achievements, or previous awards. The highest ranked applications are recommended to the National Council on the Arts and the NEA Chairman as meriting individual writing fellowships.

2006 Annual Report 129 Literature Fellowships

In FY 2006, 50 fiction and nonfiction writers from 25 states, out of an applicant pool of 915, received NEA Literature Fellowships of $20,000 each for a total federal investment of $1,000,000.

Literature Fellowships also are awarded for the translation into English of literary works written in foreign languages. Unlike the creative writing fellowships, translation fellowships are awarded for specific projects, and the panelists are aware of the identity of each applicant. The art of literary translation facilitates the international exchange of fiction and poetry among cultures. Without translation, most Americans would not be able to enjoy Virgil, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Natalia Ginzburg, or Naguib Mahfouz. In 2006, 48 applications for Translation Fellowships were received, of which 13 translators in eight states and one living abroad were awarded grants totaling $200,000. Translators receive grants of either $10,000 or $20,000 depending on the translation project.

CREATIVE WRITING Emily Barton won the Bard Michener Fellowship in 2002. He FELLOWSHIPS— Fiction prize for her novel The teaches at the University of Texas PROSE: Testament of Yves Gundron. She at Austin. Book magazine named earned her MFA from the him one of “10 Writers to Watch” All grants are $20,000 University of Iowa Writers’ in 2003. Workshop and currently teaches Bay Anapol’s writing has May-Lee Chai’s second book, writing at the New School. Her appeared in Laurel Review, Story The Girl from Purple Mountain, work has appeared in Story, Magazine, Michigan Quarterly was nominated for a National American Short Fiction, and Review, Gulf Coast, Manoa, and Book Award in 2001. Her fiction Conjunctions. the 2001 Pushcart Prize Collection. and essays have been published in Formerly a Stegner Fellow at Sarah Shun-lien Bynum such places as the San Francisco Stanford University, she teaches at graduated from Brown University Chronicle and Missouri Review. the College of Santa Fe. and the University of Iowa Writers’ Terrence Cheng is the author of Workshop. She teaches at UC San Dean Bakopoulos’s novel Please two novels: Sons of Heaven and Diego. Her first novel, Madeleine is Don’t Come Back from the Moon Deep in the Mountains. He was a Sleeping, was a finalist for the was named a New York Times 100 James Michener Fellow at the National Book Award. Notable Books of 2005. Currently, University of Miami and currently he is the executive director of the Shannon Cain is the author of a teaches English and Creative Wisconsin Humanities Council. His story collection, The Necessity of Writing at Lehman College. second novel, Harmony, will be Certain Behaviors, and her work Jonathan Dee is the author of published in fall 2007. has appeared in The Massachusetts four novels, a staff writer for The Review, The Florida Review, and Joshua Barkan has taught New York Times Magazine, a Other Voices. writing at Harvard and Boston frequent contributor to Harper’s, University. He is the author of the Oscar Casares graduated from and a former senior editor of The collection of stories Before the University of Iowa Writers’ Paris Review. He teaches at Hiroshima. Workshop, and received a James Columbia University and the New School University.

130 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships

J. D. Dolan’s writing has Diana George was born in Bret Anthony Johnston is the appeared in Esquire, Shenandoah, Washington, DC. After studying author of Corpus Christi: Stories. The Antioch Review, The comparative literature at SUNY His work has appeared in The Paris Mississippi Review, New Stories Buffalo, she earned her MFA from Review and Tin House, and in from the South, and Best Brown University. She works as a numerous anthologies, including American Sports Writing. He technical editor. New Stories from the South: The teaches in the graduate creative Year’s Best 2003, 2004, and 2005. Rigoberto González won a writing program at Western Guggenheim Fellowship and is a Brad Kessler is the author of Michigan University. contributing editor for Poets and two novels, and several award- Michael Downs’s fiction has Writers Magazine. He has winning children’s books. His work appeared in The Gettysburg published poetry, fiction, two has appeared in The New Yorker, Review, The Georgia Review, bilingual children’s books, and a The Nation, and Bomb. He is a Michigan Quarterly Review, and memoir. recipient of the Lange-Taylor Prize Five Points. He lives in Missoula, from Duke University’s Center for Paul Greenberg’s essays and Montana, where he teaches Documentary Studies. fiction have appeared in The New journalism. York Times Magazine, GQ, and on Jhumpa Lahiri has been Tony D’Souza’s fiction has NPR’s All Things Considered. In the awarded the Pulitzer Prize for appeared in The New Yorker,Tin 1990s, he trained journalists in Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway House, and Iron Horse. In 2000, Siberia, and created Bosnia’s most Award, and a Guggenheim he was chosen as one of seven popular current affairs news Fellowship. Her published works fiction writers to represent the magazine. include Interpreter of Maladies and United States at the first U. S.- The Namesake. Andrew Sean Greer is the Cuba Writers Conference since recipient of both the Northern Kelly Link, winner of the World the Cuban Revolution. California Book Award and the Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo Debra Magpie Earling earned California Book Award. Author of Awards, has published two story her MFA from . three books, Greer’s work has collections, with work appearing in Her work has appeared in appeared in Esquire, The Paris The Best American Short Stories Ploughshares, Northeast Indian Review, and The New Yorker. 2005 and McSweeney’s. She and Quarterly, and multiple her husband run Small Beer Press Cary Holladay, winner of the O. anthologies. in Massachusetts. Henry Prize, has authored a novel Christina Fitzpatrick received and three story collections. Her William Luvaas has published her MFA from Sarah Lawrence work has appeared in New Stories two novels: The Seductions of College. She is the author of the From the South: The Year’s Best Natalie Bach and Going Under. His short story collection Where We 2005, The Florida Review, and The work has appeared in Antioch Lived and the novel What’s the Southern Review. Review, The American Fiction Girl Worth? Anthology (Vol. 9), Glimmer Train,

2006 Annual Report 131 Literature Fellowships

The Village Voice, and The In the kitchen, the Presidente-in-Exile’s egg is boiling. It ticks in a pot Washington Post Book World. of water on the range. Cook cuts a small grapefruit in two. She Saran- wraps one half for the fridge, washes the other and pats it dry. A timer Rosemary Mahoney won the goes ding. She reaches into the boiling water with her fingers, plucks Charles E. Horman Prize for Fiction out the egg, holds it under the cold tap for five seconds, then seats it in Writing as an undergraduate at its special cup. Cook is a tiny woman, a Guaraní Indian of Harvard University. Her book, indeterminate age with jet black hair, the hard palms of a tenant Whoredom in Kimmage, was a farmer, and skin dark and smooth as burnished jatoba wood. She lays National Book Critics’ Circle finalist out breakfast on a tray—soft-boiled egg, grapefruit, two pink packets of in 1993. Sweet’N Low, two tablespoons of cottage cheese on a Rye-Krisp, six Vestal McIntyre’s stories have ounces of orange juice. Also, The London Financial Times. Also, three appeared in Open City and Tin aspirins; he was out and about late last night. An egg spoon, a grapefruit House, as well as several knife, a cloth napkin. Almost ready. Cook positions a single locust- anthologies. His short-story wood toothpick on a tiny copper salver. She then leans over the collection You Are Not the One grapefruit, purses her lips, and releases a modest pearl of spit onto its was a New York Times Book glistening surface. Done. Breakfast is served. Review Editors’ Choice. On the west patio, the Presidente-in-Exile prowls through the Tom McNeal has won an O. newspaper. The sun has just broken the ridge high above the villa. It is Henry Prize, a California Book light and already warm. “Buen desayuno, patrón,” cook murmurs as she Award, and a PEN USA award for places the tray before him. He rattles his paper. He does not speak to children’s fiction. His stories have cook, who came with the villa. She retreats, returns to the kitchen to been anthologized in Best prepare luncheon. Guests are expected today—that Italian, Bettinger, American Short Stories and and some others from the bank. No breakfast for the mistress. A late Pushcart Prize Stories. sleeper, Dinorah has yet to see the sun rise in Paraguay. Michael Mejia received a grant Daniel Orozco from the Ludwig Vogelstein excerpt from “Somoza’s Dream,” Foundation in 2003, and his published in McSweeney’s, Issue 18 (2005) fiction, nonfiction, and reviews Used by permission of the author have appeared in Agni, Denver Quarterly, and Quarterly West. His England Review, Southwest Lance Olsen has authored seven novel Forgetfulness was published Review, and Best American Short novels, one hypertext, four story in 2005. Stories. collections, and also written books Barbara Klein Moss of poetry and criticism. His work won a Manuel Muñoz is the author of has appeared in a variety of MacDowell Colony fellowship and two short-story collections. A publications, including Fiction two Individual Artist awards from graduate of Harvard University, he International and Best American the Maryland State Arts Council. received his MFA from Cornell Non-Required Reading. Her fiction has appeared in New University.

132 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships

Regina Ochsner was born and Daniel Asa Rose won an O. Maureen Stanton’s essays have raised in Salem, Oregon, and she Henry Prize and two PEN Fiction appeared in Creative Nonfiction, graduated from Iowa State Awards, and has two books American Literary Review, and The University. Her collection of stories, published, Small Family with Sun, and have been listed as People I Wanted to Be, was Rooster and Flipping for It. The “notable” in Best American Essays published in 2005. editor of the international literary (1998, 2004, 2005). magazine The Reading Room, he Daniel Orozco was a MacDowell Amy Stewart is the author of two also reviews books for New York Colony fellow in 2005 as well as a books of creative nonfiction, Magazine. Jones Lecturer in Fiction at including The Earth Moved: On Stanford University. His stories Patrick Ryan’s first novel, Send the Remarkable Achievements of have appeared in the Best Me, was published in 2006. His Earthworms. Her work has been American Short Stories, Best stories have appeared in The Iowa selected for the Barnes & Noble American Mystery Stories, and Review, Ontario Review, Denver “Discover Great New Authors” Pushcart Prize anthologies. Quarterly, and other journals. He is Program. a graduate of the MFA Writing Eric Puchner is the Marsh Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is the Program at Bowling Green State McCall Lecturer at Stanford author of a short-story collection University in Ohio. University, where he was a and two novels. A recipient of Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories Matt Ruff graduated from previous grants from the Kentucky have appeared in The Chicago Cornell University. His novel, Set Arts Council and the NEA, Hall has Tribune, The Missouri Review, and This House in Order: A Romance published in The Paris Review and Glimmer Train. of Souls, won a Washington State Ploughshares. Book Award and was nominated Emily Raboteau is an assistant Lysley Tenorio’s stories have for the 2005 International IMPAC professor at the City College of appeared in Ploughshares, Manoa, Dublin Literary Award. New York. Her short stories have and The Best New American appeared in Callaloo, Tin House, Josh Russell is the author of the Voices 2001. A recipient of a Best American Short Stories 2003, novel Yellow Jack. His stories have Wallace Stegner Fellowship at and elsewhere. Her first novel, The appeared in Epoch, French Quarter Stanford University and a Pushcart Professor’s Daughter, appeared Fiction, New Stories from the Prize, he earned his MFA from the in 2005. South, and elsewhere. He teaches University of Oregon. English and Creative Writing at Ron Rash holds the John Parris Dawn Turner Trice is an editor Georgia State University. Chair in Appalachian Studies at for the Chicago Tribune. Her novel Western Carolina University. In Margot Singer is assistant Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven 1994 he was awarded an NEA professor in the English won the American Library Literature Fellowship for his poetry. Department at Denison University. Association’s Alex Award. She has His third novel, The World Made Her prose has appeared in also been awarded two Illinois Arts Straight, was published in 2006. numerous journals, including Council grants. Shenandoah, AGNI, Third Coast, and Ascent.

2006 Annual Report 133 Literature Fellowships

Ashley Warlick was the Butler University. His other Rhonda Buchanan is a professor of youngest-ever recipient of the translations of Karasu’s work Spanish at the University of Houghton Mifflin Literary include The Garden of the Louisville. She has translated Fellowship in 1996 for her book, Departed Cats in 2004, winner of Limulus: Visions of the Living Fossil The Distance from the Heart of the National Translation Award by Brian Nissen and Alberto Ruy Things. She graduated from given by the American Literary Sánchez, and is currently Dickinson College and now lives in Translators Association, and Death translating the fourth book in Greenville, South Carolina. in Troy in 2002. Sánchez’s Mogador series, tentatively titled Dance of the Fire. Elizabeth Wetmore graduated Patrick Barron from the University of Iowa San Francisco, CA • $20,000 Rebecca Fanany Writers’ Workshop. Her writing To support the translation from Vermont South, Australia • $10,000 has appeared in Crab Orchard Italian of selected poems by To support the translation from Review, Del Sol Review, and Many Andrea Zanzotto. Born in a small Indonesian of the novel Mountains Moving. village in northern in 1921, Entanglement and the novella Zanzotto has become one of the Under the Waning Moon by Ismet Nancy Zafris graduated from most important living Italian poets. Fanany, the translator’s husband. Columbia University. She was Born in West Sumatra in 1952, awarded her first NEA Literature Patrick Barron is an assistant Ismet Fanany has spent much of Fellowship in 1993. Her novel The professor of English and his adult life in the West, namely Metal Shredders was a New York Humanities at the City College of the United States and Australia, Times Notable Book in 2002. San Francisco and managing affording him a unique editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary understanding of the differences Studies in Literature and the TRANSLATION between two cultures. PROJECTS Environment. His most recent book-length translation is Italian Rebecca Fanany is a professional Aron Aji Environmental Literature: An translator and lecturer in Indianapolis, IN • $20,000 Anthology, published by Italica Indonesian at Deakin University in To support the translation from Press in 2003. Melbourne, Australia. She has lived and worked in Indonesia, Turkish of the novel The Evening Rhonda Buchanan Malaysia, and Singapore of the Very Long Day by Bilge Louisville, KY • $10,000 periodically since her first contact Karasu. Born in Istanbul in 1930, To support the translation from with the region in 1981. Karasu is the author of 11 book- Spanish of The Secret Gardens of length works of fiction, including Mogador: Voices of the Earth by George Hochfield nine novels and two collections of the Mexican author Alberto Ruy Berkeley, CA • $10,000 short stories. Sánchez. Born in Mexico City in To support the translation from

Aron Aji is professor of English and 1951, Sánchez is currently the Italian of Songbook, a collection of the Associate Dean of the College director of the renowned editorial more than 400 poems, by of Liberal Arts and Sciences at house Artes de México. Umberto Saba. Hochfield will

134 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships

collaborate with Leonard Nathan. James G. Kates William O’Daly Songbook is viewed as a major Fitzwilliam, NH • $10,000 Auburn, CA • $10,000 work in 20th-century Italian To support the translation from To support the translation from literature. Begun in 1921, Saba Russian of the poetry of Mikhail Spanish of two volumes of poetry continued to add to this collection Aizenberg. Born in Moscow in previously not translated into until his death in 1957, thus 1948, Aizenberg is a crucial part English, The Hands of Day and comprising the entirety of his work of the last generation of Russian World’s End, by Chilean Pablo as a poet. poets that came to maturity under Neruda. Born in Parral, , in the regime of the . 1904, Neruda published his first George Hochfield is a retired book of poetry in 1922 and went professor, whose career has Recipient of an NEA Literature on to receive the Nobel Prize for featured three full books of Fellowship in poetry in 1984, Literature in 1971. translation, including The Officer’s James Kates is also the translator Camp by Giampiero Carocci, of Self-Portraits and Masks by William O’Daly has translated six numerous excerpted translations Isaac Goldemberg and The Score of Pablo Neruda’s books, including of novels, various poem of the Game by Tatiana The Book of Questions, The Yellow translations, and two Fulbright Shcherbina. Heart, and The Sea and the Bells. Lectureships in Italy. The Hands of Day and World’s End Chana Kronfeld would complete O’Daly’s William Hutchins Berkeley, CA • $20,000 translations of eight volumes of Todd, NC • $20,000 To support the translation from poetry from Neruda’s late and To support the translation from Hebrew of The Selected Works of posthumous publications. Arabic of The Seven Veils of Seth, Dahlia Ravikovitch. Kronfeld will a novel by Libyan author Ibrahim collaborate with Chana Bloch. Gregory Pardlo, Jr. al-Koni. Born in 1948, al-Koni Born in 1936 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Brooklyn, NY • $10,000 spent his childhood in the desert Ravikovitch has published to date To support the translation from as part of the Tuaregs, pastoral ten volumes of poetry and two Danish of the three most recent nomads who speak Tamasheq, a collections of short stories, which books of poetry by Niels Lyngsoe. Berber language written in an has won her numerous awards, Born in 1968, Lyngsoe is regarded ancient alphabet and related to including the Israel Prize in 1998 as one of the most original poets ancient Egyptian. (the highest national honor). working in Denmark today.

William Hutchins is a professor in Chana Kronfeld is a professor of Gregory Pardlo received an MFA in the Philosophy and Religion Hebrew, Yiddish, and Comparative Poetry from New York University Department of Appalachian State Literature at the University of and currently teaches at Medgar University. He has translated more California, Berkeley. Her Evers College in Brooklyn. His than a dozen book-length works collaborative translations with translations include a collection of of Arabic literature, including al- Chana Bloch include Yehuda Lyngsoe’s poems titled Pencil of Koni’s Anubis. Amichai’s award-winning volume Rays and Spiked Mace. Open Closed Open in 2000.

2006 Annual Report 135 Literature Fellowships

Mark Schafer We already know: First we must agree Cambridge, MA • $20,000 on which they are; but let us acknowledge that they exist: To support the translation from they resound in all their weight and gravity Spanish of a book-length selection down Nievsky’s Prospekt, in the mutterings of Raskolnikov, of poetry by Mexican poet David and Cortázar mocks them at every opportunity, Huerta. Born in 1949, Huerta has lightens them up, musses their hair, reconciles them published 17 volumes of poetry, though only a dozen of his poems with the rest of the vocabulary so they may rub benignly and fragments of poems have against each other and liberty won’t do too much harm, been published in English. with its tonnage of Greek marble and its whiff of existentialism and its undeniable tragic greatness, Recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship for translation in 1993, to janitor, tenedor, bibelot—although the greatness of this last one Mark Schafer has translated book- is suspect, for which we have Mallarmé to blame, length works by Gloria Gervitz, there are also the short and decisive words: yes, no, now, never, Jesús Gardea, Alberto Ruy turbid love, clean death, rattled poetry, Sánchez, Eduardo Galeano, and other words that are like art for art’s sake: sandalwood, Virgilio Piñera. Schafer’s translations for instance, and words like deoxyribonucleic, telescopic of 12 of Huerta’s poems appeared in Copper Canyon Press’s and possessing an undeniable scientific elegance, a diffuse, anthology Reversible Monuments: intense, and labyrinthine character, all at once, linked Contemporary Mexican Poetry to that other word, life, and of course there are the combinations, (2002). your mouth, this letter, dozens of verbal objects Timothy Sergay that are only important for inexplicable reasons, Worthington, OH • $20,000 spoken at night or during the day, said To support the translation from or held in silence, in the velvety net Russian of the novel A Gloom is of memory, in the transparent and energetic fortress Cast Upon the Ancient Steps by Aleksandr Chudakov. Born in of forgetting, that body or fabric from which Soviet Northern Kazakhstan in are also made the great words, time, so many things. 1938, Chudakov has published “Before Saying Any of the Great Words” by David Huerta more than 200 articles on classical Translated from the Spanish by Mark Schafer Russian authors of the 19th forthcoming in Before Saying Any of the Great Words: Selected Poetry century and the history of Russian of David Huerta, 1972-2003 (Copper Canyon Press) Used by permission of the author philology, as well as five books.

136 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships

Ya se sabe: primero tenemos que ponemos de acuerdo Timothy Sergay is the former en cuáles son, pero convengamos en que existen: recipient of a PEN Translation Fund se escuchan con todo su peso y gravedad award for his work with por la Perspectiva Nievski, en el murmullo de Raskolnikov, Chudakov. His translations have been featured in numerous y Cortázar se burla de ellas a cada rato magazines and collections, y las aligera, las despeina, las reconcilia including the first chapter of con el resto del vocabulario, para que puedan rozarse Chudakov’s A Gloom is Cast Upon sin daño con las demás y libertad no lastime demasiado the Ancient Steps, published in con su tonelaje de mármol griego 2004 in Words Without Borders: y su tufillo existencialista y su indudable grandeza trágica The Online Magazine for International Literature. a tenedor, a janitor, a bibelot—aunque esta última es sospechosa de grandeza por culpa de Mallarmé, Anne W. Twitty también están las cortas y decisivas, sí, no, ahora, nunca, Brooklyn, NY • $20,000 la turbia amor, la limpia muerte, la zarandeada poesía, To support the translation from Spanish of the novel Ursula’s otras que son como el arte por el arte, sándalo, Dream by the Argentine author por ejemplo, y algunas como desoxirribonucleico, telescópica María Negroni. Negroni has y de indudable elegancia científica, de una manera vaga published 11 volumes of poetry, e intensa y laberíntica, al mismo tiempo, conectada five collections of critical essays on con esa otra, vida, y están las combinaciones, claro, topics such as the Gothic Imagination and Latin American tu boca, esta carta, docenas de objetos verbales Women Poets, and one novel. que sólo tienen importancia por razones inexplicables, pronunciadas en la noche o el día, dichas Anne Twitty has translated works from such Hispanic writers and o guardadas en el silencio, en la red aterciopelada artists as Torres-García, Cecilia de la memoria, en la fortaleza transparente y enérgica Vicuña, and Magali Alabau. She del olvido, ese cuerpo o tejido del que también has translated two other works of están hechas las grandes palabras, el tiempo, tantas cosas. Negroni’s, including Night Journey in 2002 and Islandia in 2001. “Antes de decir cualquiera de las grandes palabras” by David Huerta [from Lápices de antes, Guadalajara, Mexico: Toque de Poesía, 1994] Used by permission of the author

2006 Annual Report 137 NCA member Mark Hofflund (right) with National Assembly of State Arts Agencies CEO Jonathan Katz at a 2006 NCA meeting. Photo by Kathy Plowitz-Worden National Council on the Arts

National Council on the Arts

he National Council on the Arts advises the T Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts on agency policies and programs. It reviews and makes recommendations on applications for grants, funding guidelines, leadership initiatives, and nominations for the National Medal of Arts. The Council meets three times a year.

Fourteen voting members of the Council—all private citizens—are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for six-year terms, and are selected for their distinguished service or achieved eminence in the arts. In 1997, Congress enacted legislation that required the appointment of six members of Congress, three from the House of Representatives and three from the Senate, to serve in an ex officio, non-voting capacity for two-year terms. Current Council members can be found on the NEA Web site at www.arts.gov.

NEA National Heritage Fellow Wayne Henderson performs at the November 2005 National Council on the Arts meeting. Pho to by Kathy Plowitz-Worden

2006 Annual Report 139 National Council on the Arts

The following Council members served in FY 2006: James K. Ballinger David H. Gelernter Deedie Potter Rose Museum Director Author/Critic/Educator Patron/Trustee Phoenix, Arizona Woodbridge, Connecticut Dallas, Texas Don V. Cogman Mark Hofflund Gerard Schwarz Patron/Trustee Theater Administrator Symphony Orchestra Conductor Scottsdale, Arizona Boise, Idaho Seattle, Washington Mary Costa Teresa Lozano Long Terry Teachout Opera Singer Patron/Trustee Critic/Author Knoxville, Tennessee Austin, Texas New York, New York Katharine Cramer DeWitt Maribeth Walton McGinley Karen Lias Wolff Patron/Trustee Art Director/Designer Music Educator Cincinnati, Ohio Glendale, California Ann Arbor, Michigan Makoto Fujimura Jerry Pinkney Visual Artist Artist/Illustrator New York, New York Croton-on-Hudson, New York

Ex officio members Robert Bennett Betty McCollum U.S. Senate U.S. House of Representatives (R-Utah) (D-Minnesota) Mike DeWine Howard “Buck” McKeon U.S. Senate U.S. House of Representatives (R-Ohio) (R-California) Patrick Leahy Patrick Tiberi U.S. Senate U.S. House of Representatives (D-Vermont) (R-Ohio)

140 National Endowment for the Arts Financial Summary

Financial Summary

SUMMARY OF FUNDS AVAILABLE FY 2006

Appropriated Program and State/Regional Grant Funds 100,654,308

Appropriated Balance, Prior Year1 4,333,620

Nonfederal Gifts1 3,483,184

Interagency Transfers1 4,377,606

TOTAL PROGRAM FUNDS AVAILABLE 112,848,718

TOTAL PROGRAM SUPPORT FUNDS AVAILABLE2 2,298,763

TOTAL SALARY AND EXPENSE FUNDS AVAILABLE34 25,307,862

TOTAL FUNDS AVAILABLE 140,455,343

1 Includes FY 2005 unobligated funds brought forward into FY 2006 and prior year deobligations carried forward into FY 2006.

2 Includes appropriated funds including FY 2005 unobligated funds brought forward into FY 2006 and prior year deobligations brought forward into FY 2006.

3 Includes appropriated funds, nonfederal gifts, and interagency transfers including FY 2005 unobligated funds brought forward into FY 2006 and prior year deobligations brought forward into FY 2006.

4 Includes nonfederal gifts and interagency transfers held on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

2006 Annual Report 141 Financial Summary

Summary of Funds Obligated for FY 20061 FY 2006 ($ in thousands)

Access to Artistic Excellence Direct Endowment Grants Project Support2 37,416 Challenge America: Reaching Every Community 11,107 National Initiative: American Masterpieces 5,410 Total Access to Artistic Excellence 53,933 Learning in the Arts Direct Endowment Grants Project Support 8,913 Partnerships for the Arts 1,750 National Initiative: American Masterpieces 500 Total Learning in the Arts 11,163 Partnerships for the Arts State Partnerships State & Regional 23,359 Underserved 6,282 Challenge America: Reaching Every Community 7,063 National Initiative: American Masterpieces 4,730 Subtotal State Partnerships 41,434 Direct Endowment Grants 460 Total Partnerships for the Arts 41,894 Total Program Funds 106,990 Total Program Support 1,870 Total Salaries & Expenses3 23,498 TOTAL 132,358

1 Includes appropriated funds, appropriated funds balances brought forward into FY 2006, nonfederal gifts, and interagency transfers.

2 Includes $1,963K for Save America’s Treasures and $3,700K for Arts on Radio and Television.

3 Includes funds from nonfederal gifts obligated on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities of which $259K was obligated in support of grants and cooperative agreements.

142 National Endowment for the Arts Appropriations History

Appropriations History

Fiscal Years 1966 – 2006

Fiscal Year Total Funds Fiscal Year Total Funds Fiscal Year Total Funds 1966 $ 2,898,308 1979 $ 149,585,000 1993 $ 174,459,382

1967 $ 8,475,692 1980 $ 154,610,000 1994 $ 170,228,000

1968 $ 7,774,291 1981 $ 158,795,000 1995 $ 162,311,000

1969 $ 8,456,875 1982 $ 143,456,000 1996 $ 99,470,000

1970 $ 9,055,000 1983 $ 143,875,000 1997 $ 99,494,000

1971 $ 16,420,000 1984 $ 162,223,000 1998 $ 98,000,000

1972 $ 31,480,000 1985 $ 163,660,000 1999 $ 97,966,000

1973 $ 40,857,000 1986 $ 158,822,240 2000 $ 97,627,600

1974 $ 64,025,000 1987 $ 165,281,000 2001 $104,769,000

1975 $ 80,142,000 1988 $ 167,731,000 2002 $115,220,000

1976 $ 87,455,000 1989 $ 169,090,000 2003 $115,731,000

1976T* $ 35,301,000 1990 $ 171,255,000 2004 $120,970,815

1977 $ 99,872,000 1991 $ 174,080,737 2005 $121,263,000

1978 $ 123,850,000 1992 $ 175,954,680 2006 $124,406,353

* In 1976, the Federal government changed the beginning of the fiscal year from July 1 to October 1, hence the 1976 Transition (T) Quarter.

2006 Annual Report 143 2006 Annual Report published by: CREDITS National Endowment for the Arts Office of Communications Felicia Knight, Director Don Ball, Publications Manager/Editor

October 2007

Researched and written by Elizabeth Stark, Rebecca Ritzel, Paulette Beete, and Don Ball.

With thanks to NEA staff for their assistance, and to grantees for their photographs and information.

This annual report, as well as all grant and panel information for FY 2006, can be ordered free of charge and accessed electronically at the NEA Web site: www.arts.gov.

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2006 Annual Report designed by: Fletcher Design, Inc. Washington, DC

Front Cover: Rachel Gellert as Collette (far right) in Love’s Labor’s Lost at Taconic High School in Massachusetts, part of Shakespeare & Company’s Shakespeare in Action program. Photo by Elizabeth Aspenlieder

Back Cover: Nora’s Necktie Flower Garden by Nora Ezell, part of the Montgomery Museum of Arts’s collection of African-American quilts. Photo by Emily Stuart Thomas

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144 National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities and military bases.

Rufino Tamayo's Retrato de Olga (Portrait of Olga), 1964, was part of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art's exhibition Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted. Photo courtesy of Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, CONACULTA-INBA, © Herederos de Rufino Tamayo N A T I O

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2006 Annual Report

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