On December 20, 1965, Vice President Hubert Humphrey presented a check for $100,000, representing the National Endowment for the Arts' first grant, to the American Ballet Theatre. Humphrey, as a...
In September 1965 screenwriter Budd Schulberg started the Watts Writers' Workshop in response to the devastation of the infamous riots, which had taken place in the primarily African American South...
In 1967, the U.S. film industry was more than 75 years old, and many groundbreaking films of early cinema were rapidly aging past the point of preservation. In response to...
Stamped on everything from the city's letterhead to its garbage trucks, Alexander Calder's La Grande Vitesse is much more than a landmark. It's the ubiquitous symbol of Grand Rapids, Michigan...
Washington D.C.'s Arena Stage celebrated its 50th anniversary season in 2000 with a revival of Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope . Nearly 33 years earlier, Arena Stage established its...
When Bell Laboratories put its building at West and Bethune Streets in New York's Greenwich Village up for sale in 1966, the building already had a storied past. It had...
In 1964, a pair of Louisville, Kentucky, theater companies -- Actors, Inc. and Theatre Louisville -- merged to become the Actors Theatre of Louisville. From a small company performing in...
"I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things you learn about the little...
It's a museum on wheels, chugging through America bringing art to isolated pockets of the country. Since 1971, it's visited more than 725 communities in 44 states and the District...
"I believe that we all can find that the arts have a great deal more to contribute to what we in government are seeking to accomplish -- and that this...
Born in Washington in 1940, Charles Thomas Close -- he professionally became Chuck thanks to a misunderstanding with a reporter -- knew he wanted to be an artist from the...
"I was looking out [Nancy Hanks's] window, and I saw two old buildings. One was the Pinkham building, which is now the American Museum of Architecture; the other was the...
Artist Thomas Hart Benton was reviewing his completed work illustrating the origins of country music when he died of heart failure on January 19, 1975. The colorful six-by-ten foot mural...
Priceless canvases painted by Picasso, fragile terra cotta warriors from ancient China, a gilded baroque silver tea service used by nobility in one of Russia’s most opulent palaces. These and...
"It was May in Minnesota and the ice was slowly receding into the woods. It was still cold. Some tulips who jumped the gun had to be rescued and some...
On January 30, 1976, public television viewers nationwide had the best seats in the house at New York City's Lincoln Center as PBS broadcast the first episode of Live From...
In 1977, Jazz bassist Milt Hinton received a music fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; sixteen years later, the Arts Endowment again honored Hinton, this time as an...
"Here at any rate is Ignatius Reilly, without progenitor in any literature I know of--slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into...
Today, flight attendants routinely provide information to passengers using sign language. Many movie theaters offer assisted hearing devices. Most television shows are available with closed captioning. But it hasn't always...
In 1919, at the end of World War I, a group of New York City writers gathered at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown Manhattan for a lunchtime "roast" to celebrate...
In November of 1980, the Council for the Arts approves a funding request from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to support a competition to select the design team for the...
Independent films - originally conceived as an alternative to Hollywood's big-budget blockbusters - are now so successful they've even been adopted by Tinseltown's major studios. In large part, moviegoers have...
In February of 1978, the Folk Arts Program was established at the NEA, three years after Bess Lomax Hawes became the Arts Endowment’s specialist in the field. Under her leadership,...
The following is an excerpt of author Bobbie Ann Mason's account of the effects of her 1983 NEA Literature Fellowship in the 1993 NEA publication Generation of Fellows . "I...
Bill Strickland founded the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in 1968, after being introduced to ceramics as a teenager. Initially an informal, neighborhood-based art program for inner-city children, the Guild has become...
With his ten-gallon hat, seated on horseback with lasso in hand, the fictitious cowboy has captured the popular imagination as a strong, silent type. A group of Western folklorists set...
In January 1985, Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, South Carolina wrote a letter to Jaquelin Robertson, the University of Virginia's Chair of Architecture, suggesting that an Institute be created, in...
"[ The Rite of Spring ] is an astonishing ballet, no less so today than in 1913. Nijinsky's genius as a choreographer bursts forth here in the originality of his...
"How did I become involved in Mingus projects? Simply, I was here at home and had access to the material. Charles and I did not discuss my carrying on his...
For more than two decades, the National Endowment for the Arts focused on bringing the arts to underserved communities - including minority and inner city communities - through its Expansion...
"Ultimately, the motif of Hydrogen Jukebox , the underpinning, the secret message, secret activity, is to relieve human suffering by communicating some kind of enlightened awareness of various themes, topics,...
Although Riley "B.B." King wanted to be a preacher or a gospel singer, he grew up to be a legendary bluesman whose distinctive economical phrasing, precise bent notes, and unique...
String quartets were a rarity in the small town of Jesup, Iowa. In fact, many people had grown up in Jesup without ever hearing the sound of a cello or...
Houston artist Rick Lowe had a dream. The transforming power of the arts would be used to rebuild an impoverished neighborhood and, in the process, help rebuild the lives of...
In 1981, the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts - a nonprofit organization that presents and produces performance and education programs for local, national, and international audiences - established...
In 1995, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz received a grant of $20,000 "to support costs related to the jazz and National Basketball Association project," a new program at the...
Hispanic artist Carlos Rael is a santero , a carver of religious icons known as santos . Santo carving is an art form that originated centuries ago in Europe and...
The vitality of the American theater is strongly connected to the work of new and emerging theater artists, with a unique emphasis on the artistic voice of the playwright. Throughout...
On this date, the NEA released the American Canvas report, an analysis and examination of the current state of the nonprofit arts in America. The report, the culmination of a...
Creased canvases, cracked paint, warped frames, and discolored mats were just some of the problems conservators faced as they delved into a treasure trove of art long hidden from public...
"I am proposing a public-private partnership to advance our arts and humanities, and to celebrate the millennium by saving America's treasures, great and small." -- President William Jefferson Clinton, 1998...
The Alaska Native Heritage Center was founded by the Alaska Federation of Natives in response to the need for a community gathering place for the state's native peoples. Sited on...
David City, Nebraska (pop. 2,500) is usually a rather quiet place. All that changed when it was chosen to become part of the Arts Endowment's Continental Harmony National Millennium Project,...
In 2001, the NEA launched Challenge America, a new national program to expand the reach and impact of NEA activities. Through this program, nearly $7 million was earmarked for arts...
"It would be premature--even presumptuous--to claim that after a half a year, we can select works which show the effects of 9/11 on young people. Instead, they have offered to...
In 2002 the National Endowment for the Arts, Mexico's National Fund for Culture and the Arts, and the U.S. Mexico Fund for Culture collaboratively created the U.S-Mexico Bi-national Alliance of...
On the occasion of William Shakespeare's 439th birthday, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia announced a gift of immeasurable value to the American people: a nationwide, 100-community tour...
"The vitality of the arts depends more than most people think on lively and informed criticism, especially local reviews and coverage from their own communities," commented Chairman Dana Gioia in...
President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush hosted the 2005 recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal along with other luminaries in the arts...
In the late morning of January 13, 2006, a crowd of onlookers formed, necks craned, for a peek at a group gathered for a photo shoot in the lobby of...
