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2023 NEA Jazz Master Regina Carter performing with the String Queens at the Tribute Concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Photo by Jati Lindsay

Man with short hair and beard on crutches dancing on stage.

Toby MacNutt during the Dancing Queerly Festival 2019. Photo by Robyn Nicole Film

Black man wearing tee-shirt and jeans playing guitar on a porch of house.

Cedric Burnside, 2021 NEA National Heritage Fellow at his house in Ashland, Mississippi, from the film The Culture of America, available on the NEA's YouTube channel. Photo courtesy of Hypothetical Films

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Seattle Queer Film Festival expanded its offerings this year to include 150 film showings from 27 countries. Courtesy of Three Dollar Bill Cinema

Black woman in black dress singing on stage.

2006 NEA National Heritage Fellow Mavis Staples performing at the concert at Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Photo by Tom Pich

a single actor on stage is photographed against a dark house

The Theater Offensive presented Queer Purgatory at the Liberty Hotel for Fashionably LATE Thursdays in October 2021.

Three elderly Black men in suits playing drums, bass, and sax on stage with purple background.

2022 NEA Jazz Masters Stanley Clarke, Billy Hart, and Donald Harrison, Jr. playing Ellington's "Take the Coltrane" at the tribute concert at SFJAZZ. Photo by Scott Chernis

What’s Happening at the NEA

Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson

Chair Jackson: Celebrating LGBTQ+ PRIDE Month

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Our Town FY24 Grant Guidelines and Summative Feedback Session

June 15, 2023
02:00 pm ~ 03:00 pm ET

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In Celebration of Artful Lives

New issue of American Artscape, NEA's magazine, now available!

Featured News

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A group of three people uses metal tools to refine a piece of glass-blown art.

National Endowment for the Arts Announces more than $760,000 in Creative Forces Community Engagement Grants

Supporting Military, Veterans, Their Families and Caregivers

Four individuals sit in chairs holding umbrellas and wearing blindfolds. Behind them, four people stand with their hands raised, prepared to drop something onto the umbrella.

National Endowment for Arts Announces Second Round of Grants for FY 2023

$103 Million to Organizations in All States and Jurisdictions

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Museums Nationwide Provide Free Admission to Military Families This Summer

Blue Star Museums will run May 20 – September 4, 2023

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Blog

Early Stats from the General Social Survey: How Virtual Arts Participation Fared in 2022  

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Podcast

Nicole Chung

Author
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Magazine Article

The Son of Go-Go

Wiley Brown of the Chuck Brown Band

Grants

The National Endowment for the Arts awards grants to nonprofit organizations, creative writers and translators, state arts agencies, and regional arts organizations in support of arts projects across the country.
Go to the Grants section »

Impact

See the impact of the Arts Endowment on your state, and how the agency's work in research, accessibility, and other areas has had a major impact in the arts and culture of the country.
Go to the Impact section »

Some Facts about the National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.
Approximately 2,300 Grants

Recommended for grant awards annually in all 50 states, DC, and U.S. territories.

More than 60 Percent

Percentage of Arts Endowment grants that go to small and medium-sized organizations (budgets up to $2 million).

35 Percent

Percentage of Arts Endowment grants reach low-income audiences or underserved populations.

Some Facts from the National Endowment for the Arts

These facts are based on the most recent data (2020) from the Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account (ACPSA), which is produced jointly by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Office of Research & Analysis and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Commerce Department. The ACPSA tracks the annual economic impact of arts and cultural production from 35 industries, both commercial and nonprofit.
$876.7 billion

Amount the arts and cultural industries contribute to the U.S. economy.

4.2 Percent

Percentage of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is accounted for by arts and cultural industries.

4.6 Million

Americans work in the arts and cultural industries on payroll.

Some Facts about the National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.
54 Cents

The Arts Endowment’s annual cost to each American.

0.003 Percent

The Arts Endowment’s percentage of the federal budget.

$5.6 Billion

Amount awarded by the Arts Endowment since its beginning in 1965.

Some Facts about the National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.
Around 41 Million Americans

Attend a live arts event supported by the Arts Endowment annually.

More than 36,000

Concerts, readings, and performances are supported annually.

More than 6,000

Exhibitions are supported annually as well.

Some Facts from the National Endowment for the Arts

These facts are based on the most recent data (2017) from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), a national survey conducted in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau that has allowed cultural policymakers, arts managers, scholars, and journalists to obtain reliable statistics about American patterns of arts engagement.
North Dakota

The state's residents attend live performing arts events at a higher rate than U.S. adults as a whole—with 62 percent for North Dakota residents versus 48.5 percent of U.S. adults.

Montana

Outperforms the national rate of attending art exhibits, with 33.5 percent of this state’s residents doing this activity versus 23 percent of Americans overall.

Oregon and Washington

Their literary reading rates (upwards of 60 percent) far exceed the U.S. as a whole (44 percent).

Some Facts about the National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.
Approximately $8 million

Amount of funding of arts education projects annually.

74.7 Percent

Arts education projects (preK-12) that directly engage with underserved populations.

3 Times More Likely

8- to. 12-grade students from low socioeconomic backgrounds who received arts education to earn a bachelor's degree than those who did not.