Washington, DC -- National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced today that the NEA plans to award $26.3 million in grants to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations nationwide. These grants support exemplary projects in thirteen artistic disciplines and fields: arts education, dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, local arts agencies, media arts, museums, music, opera, presenting, theater and musical theater, and visual arts. Art Works grants support the

• creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence
• public engagement with diverse and excellent art,
• lifelong learning in the arts
• enhancing the livability of communities through the arts.

Acting Chairman Shigekawa said, "The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these exciting and diverse arts projects that will take place throughout the United States. Whether it is through a focus on education, engagement, or innovation, these projects all contribute to vibrant communities and memorable opportunities for the public to engage with the arts." The grants included in this announcement may be viewed through a state-by-state listing or a discipline/field listing. In addition, the NEA recently launched an online grant search system. This system will allow members of the public to search all of the NEA's grants since 2000 using a variety of attributes to customize your results. The NEA received 1,547 eligible applications under the Art Works category, requesting more than $80 million in funding. Of those applications, 817 are recommended for grants for a total of $26.3 million. Grant amounts range from $4,000 to $125,000 with an average grant amount of $32,122 and a median of $25,000. All NEA grants must be matched at least 1:1 with non-federal support. Please see below for more information about the types of projects funded within each discipline during this round of grantmaking, as well as examples of projects recommended for funding:

• ARTS EDUCATION: This round of grants supports school-based projects that are aligned to and enhance the school curriculum, as well as professional development projects to equip principals, teachers, and teaching artists with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to effectively engage students in curriculum-based arts learning.A grant to the Gates County Board of Education in Gatesville, North Carolina, of $36,000 will support Gates County A+, a professional development program in arts integration for teams of teachers and administrators from three North Carolina schools, qualifying them to become part of the North Carolina A+ Schools Program. Through this project, Gates County will be the first district in North Carolina to include all of its schools in the A+ network.
• DANCE: This round of grants supports projects focused on engagement, learning, and livability, such as festivals, dance training and education for young people, outreach to underserved audiences, touring, and preservation and conservation of dance heritage. In addition, a number of grants support site-specific work that seeks to engage audiences to rethink the role and definition of dance.A grant to Allison Orr Dance (aka Forklift Danceworks) in Austin, Texas, of $10,000 will support the creation and presentation of Journeyman by choreographer Allison Orr, in collaboration with the employees of Austin's Municipal Energy Department. This is the third in a series of large-scale civic spectacles and will include original music by Graham Reynolds performed by the Austin Symphony and led by conductor Peter Bay, and feature 75 employees performing on 35-foot utility poles and ten bucket trucks and cranes.
• DESIGN: This round of grants covers all FY 2013 Art Works grants under the design discipline and supports projects in architecture, landscape architecture, graphic design, product design, historic preservation, community and urban design, fashion design, as well as design education.A grant to Regents of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis of $35,000 will support the development of design curricula and educational programming targeted to high school students. A partnership between University of Minnesota College of Design and Juxtaposition Arts, a youth design education organization, the project will include as many as five courses taught in an underserved north Minneapolis neighborhood, and introduce approximately 150 youth to new pathways to college and design professions.
• FOLK AND TRADITIONAL ARTS: This round of grants supports projects focused on learning and engagement, including living cultural heritage, preservation, and education projects. Central to many of these grants is addressing ways that traditional arts can be presented to new audiences or re-presented to the communities in which they originated.A grant to Northwoods NiiJii Enterprise Community, Inc. in Flambeau, Wisconsin, of $20,000 will support artist fees and related supplies for the Lac du Flambeau Deep Roots New Growth. Teresa Mitchell, director of the George W. Brown, Jr. Ojibwe Cultural Museum, will train Native artists to lead museum tours and present workshops at the Woodland Indian Art Center, as well as work with students in painting a mural for the museum.
• LITERATURE: This round of grants supports projects focused on creation, engagement, learning, and livability, including audience development projects such as book festivals, readings, writing workshops, mentorships, services to the field, and digital archives.A grant to Clarion West in Seattle, Washington, of $10,000 will support the 2013 Summer Writers Workshop on speculative fiction as well as monthly one-day workshops for Pacific Northwest writers. Speculative fiction refers to fiction that portrays human nature and societal issues by imagining alternate realities -- past, present, and/or future. The Summer Writers Workshop will provide an intensive educational and training experience for up to 18 emerging writers. The ongoing workshops will help writers on such topics as honing character and setting, writing scenes, and jump-starting a novel.
• LOCAL ARTS AGENCIES: This round of grants supports projects focused on creation, engagement, learning, and livability, including community arts journalism projects, projects exploring the intersection of art and science, and projects which enhance public spaces through festivals and art commissions.A grant to the City of Sacramento, California, (on behalf of Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission) of $20,000 will support Broadway Augmented, a temporary public art project. Using "augmented reality" technology (a process that combines computer-generated environments with real environments) and is visible on smartphones, the arts commission will create virtual public artworks in one of Sacramento's most diverse transitional neighborhoods. This project will lay the groundwork for funding and commissioning a permanent work of public art; give the arts commission, city planners, and designers an opportunity to experiment with and develop smartphone applications to assist the planning and development of future city projects; and inform the preliminary master plan for this neighborhood.
• MEDIA ARTS: This round of grants supports projects focused on creation and engagement, and many will offer unprecedented access to the arts through multi-platform distribution of content as well as the development of new ways to engage the public.A grant to Independent Television Service in San Francisco, California, of $100,000 will support the Online Video Engagement Experience (OVEE), a digital screening series that brings together anyone with a computer, tablet, or mobile to watch and actively engage with the programs. OVEE is free and streams full-length films from multiple online sources to digital platforms with which audience members can interact in real time.
• MUSEUMS: This round of grants supports projects focused on engagement, learning, and livability. Projects supported both provide insight into the ways that our nation's museums are fulfilling their traditional obligations, such as conservation of important art works, while also implementing innovative ways of reaching and expanding their audiences.A grant to the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of $30,000 will support the conservation of Rest on the Flight into Egypt, an early 16th-centry Flemish tapestry. Acquired as part of the museum's founding collection, the tapestry is woven with the finest wool, silk, and silver-and-gold-wrapped threads, and combines a painterly approach with the northern Renaissance love of narrative detail.
• MUSIC: This round of grants supports projects focused on engagement, learning, and livability. These projects display the benefits of collaborative work, the use of technology, as well as new ways to engage with audiences.A grant to the University of Chicago of $15,000 will support Benjamin Britten: Spheres of Influence, a festival celebrating the centenary of the composer's birth, and will include performances, lectures, coaching and master classes, radio broadcasts, educational activities, and an artist residency by the Jupiter Quartet.
• OPERA: This round of grants supports projects focused on engagement, learning, and livability, including festival opera, educational programming, regional touring, and artists' training.A grant to Opera Memphis in Tennessee of $15,000 will support 30 Days of Opera, a new opera festival that will include structured concerts, educational workshops at community centers, pop-up or guerilla opera on street corners and in parks, and backstage tours of the costume and scenic shops at the opera house. 
• PRESENTING: This round of grants supports projects focused on creation, engagement, learning, and livability. Projects focus on multidisciplinary works, as well as engaging a wide range of audiences.A grant to the Maui Arts & Culture Center in Hawaii of $70,000 will support MACC Presents, a series of music, dance, and theater performances from local, national, and international artists including MAU Dance Company (Samoa), Debasish Battacharya (India), Mummenschanz (Switzerland), Harlem Quartet (U.S.), Kumu Kahua Theatre (U.S.), and Kū Mai Ka Hula (U.S.), with accompanying community engagement activities.
• THEATER: This round of grants supports projects focused on engagement, learning, and livability. Projects supported represent a diverse range ofvoices and cultures, with attention paid to cultural historical significance.A grant to Appalshop, Inc. in Whitesburg, Kentucky, (on behalf of Roadside Theater) of $15,000 will support the ongoing development of the bilingual musical play Betsy. Through the play, Roadside Theater (Whitesburg, Kentucky) and Pregones Theater (Bronx, New York) will explore the reality of an American identity as shaped by the forces of race, place, and class, and also create a structure for collaboration and engagement among theBetsy project team, community members, and audiences.
• VISUAL ARTS: This round of grants supports projects focused on engagement, learning, and livability, including innovative uses of technology or new models to exhibit new work, lectures and symposia, and the enhancement of public spaces through commissioning and/or installation of art works.A grant to the City of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of $20,000 will support the creation of We Stand in Honor of Those Forgotten, a public art project to memorialize a recently discovered 18th-century African and African American burial site. Selected through a competitive process undertaken by the city, Georgia-based artist Jerome Meadows and a team of landscape architects will transform an urban block into a pedestrian-friendly public space for reverence and reflection, paying homage to the site's history.

For information about the first round of Art Works grants, please visit the NEA's newsroom. In addition, last week the NEA announced 17 new research grants that measure different characteristics and contributions of the arts. Later this Spring, the NEA will also be announcing the 2013 Partnership grants to state arts agencies and regional arts organizations. The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector.  To join the discussion on how art works, visit the NEA at arts.gov