Talk:National Endowment for the Arts

Updates and Revisions to National Endowment for the Arts article
The NEA's Communications office proposes revising the article as follows:

First paragraph should be rewritten for accuracy:

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965. The NEA’s offices are in the Old Post Office building, in Washington, D.C.

Background

Update NEA mission to:

The NEA 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.Its slogan is "A great country deserves great art."

Update first sentence of second paragraph to:

Between 1965 and 2008, the agency has made in excess of 128,000 grants, totaling more than $4 billion.

Update second sentence of second paragraph to:

Congress provided the NEA an annual appropriation between US$160 and US$180 million from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

Update last sentence of second paragraph to:

For FY 2009, the budget is US$155 million.

Add the following background information:

NEA-sponsored research has helped shape the public dialogue on the arts. The NEA Office of Research & Analysis issues periodic research reports, brochures, and notes on significant topics affecting artists and arts organizations.

Since 1975, the NEA has administered the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program on behalf of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities to reduce the costs of insurance for American museums exhibiting collections from abroad or loaning their objects for exhibitions in other countries. The indemnity agreements are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury in the event of loss or damage. In December 2007, President Bush signed legislation amending the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act, to establish the domestic indemnity program.

Add this section:

Grant Making

The NEA offers grants in the categories of: 1) Grants for Arts Projects, 2) National Initiatives, and 3) Partnership Agreements. Grants for Arts Projects support exemplary projects in the discipline categories of artist communities, arts education, dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, local arts agencies, media arts, museums, music, musical theater, opera, presenting (including multidisciplinary art forms), theater, and visual arts.

The NEA also grants individual fellowships in literature to creative writers and translators of exceptional talent in the areas of prose and poetry.

The NEA has partnerships in the areas of state and regional, federal, international activities, and design. The state arts agencies and regional arts organizations are the NEA’s primary partners in serving the American people through the arts. Forty percent of all NEA funding goes to the state arts agencies and regional arts organizations.

Additionally, the NEA awards three Lifetime Honors: NEA National Heritage Fellowships to master folk and traditional artists, NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships to jazz musicians and advocates, and NEA Opera Honors to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to opera in the United States. The NEA also manages the National Medal of Arts, awarded annually by the President. The NEA created national initiatives that offer model programs of artistic merit and national reach:

•	The Big Read was designed by the NEA to revitalize the role of reading in American culture. As of February 2009, the NEA had given more than 500 grants to support local Big Read projects. Each local project includes events, such as read-a-thons, book discussions, film screenings, and library and museum exhibits.

•	Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience preserves the stories and reflections of U.S. military personnel and their families. Since 2004, the program has brought more than 60 writing workshops to troops at more than 30 domestic and overseas military installations. An open call for writing submissions resulted in more than 1,200 submissions; in 2006, Random House published an anthology of nearly 100 of those writings. Operation Homecoming inspired an Oscar®- and Emmy®-nominated documentary, and in 2008, the program began holding writing workshops to VA medical centers and affiliated centers in the U.S. and abroad.

•	The NEA Jazz Masters Initiative celebrates this distinctly American musical tradition through the NEA Jazz Masters Award; NEA Jazz Masters Live, a series of multiple event engagements in selected communities featuring NEA Jazz Masters; radio programming featuring NEA Jazz Masters; a compilation CD produced by Verve Music Group; educational resources through the NEA Jazz in the Schools program; publications and reports.

•	Poetry Out Loud: National Poetry Recitation Contest encourages the study of great poetry by offering educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition to high schools across the country. Approximately 225,000 students from 1,500 high schools nationwide participated in the 2007-2008 school year.

•	American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius reaches across all the arts, bringing the best of America’s creative legacy to a broad public in all 50 states.

•	Shakespeare in American Communities is the largest tour of Shakespeare in American history, having brought new Shakespeare productions and special in-school programs to more than 1,700 communities, military and civilian, across all 50 states.

Add the following links to See Also

Apply for an NEA grant: NEA National Initiatives: NEA Lifetime Honors: NEA Research: NEA Publications:

NEACommunications (talk) 18:08, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I've made some of the suggested changes, for others, it would be better if you could provide reliable sources for the figures mentioned (perhaps cite where in NEA's website where the information is located). Thanks. DHN (talk) 20:41, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Controversy section
I don't have a problem with including an even-handed discussion of the recent Yosi Sergant kerfuffle here. It's in the news, it belongs here. I do, however, think that the text would be improved by the use of less obviously POV sources. I would try to implement this suggestion myself, right now, but the Google News server appears to be out of commission at the moment so I can only mark this for further editing later.

More seriously, the article in its current state smacks of severe recentism: a section entitled "Controversy" in an article about the NEA that discusses only Yosi Sergant?? Just for starters, where are Jesse Helms, Karen Finley, Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe? A neutral, factual discussion of these earlier, and much more prominent, controversies is surely needed.--Arxiloxos (talk) 20:02, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A further note. I've now come across a brief stub article entitled NEA Four, but it currently lacks any sources other than a cite to the court decision in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569.  More appropriate secondary sources would benefit in both places.--Arxiloxos (talk) 20:12, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I was merely starting the section with the most recent examples. Obviously, other examples can be added. Furthermore, with all due respect, I don't think POV really enters into the discussion. Yeah, FOX News is right-of-center, but there's not really much you can do to spin what's on the tapes. What was said was said. They didn't manipulate the audio to make it seem worse. --Kevin W. 00:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added some references to info in that article to this one, and have wikilinked it from here. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:01, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

In light of the additions made today by User:Charmingtedious, adding information about other major controversies involving the NEA, I've deleted the tag I previously placed on this section due to my concerns (expressed above on 22 Sept) about undue weight being placed on the recent Yosi Sergant incident. The article can always be improved further, of course, but it seems much more balanced now. Thanks to Charmingtedious for the effort. --Arxiloxos (talk) 20:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Sources for future expansion
The NASA "worm" logotype was designed as part of the NEA's Federal Graphics Improvement Program. - Dravecky (talk) 11:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

More about the structure of the NEA
The article lacks information about the structure of the organization. There's almost nothing about its offices, divisions, departments, etc. I came here from a link in Disability in the Arts looking for further information about the NEA's Office for Accessibility, but the cupboard is bare. Roger (talk) 08:01, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I do agree that there needs to be more information included with regards to the structure of the organization. There seems to be very little information with regards to the organization's structure, as well as the founding information of the organization. I believe that this article could be improved upon to include such information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Verokokitas (talk • contribs) 15:18, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Predecessor?
I came looking for the predecessor to the NEA - was there one?

A quote from Toby in The West Wing, Season 1:
 * "Arthur Miller did need the NEA to write Death of a Salesman, but it wasn't called the NEA back then, it was called the WPA."

I wondered if this was true - but it looks doubtful. Miller worked with the Federal Theatre Project, (which later closed in 1939 when its funding was cancelled), part of the WPA - Work Projects Administration - which closed in late 1943.

So Toby could only have been right in a very loose sense, if the WPA was a predecessor to the NEA. But it sounds more like one closed and a new body was set up later. Anyway, I figured that someone else watching this old TV drama might come here with the same idea (& possibly try and edit the article accordingly), so I wanted to share what I'd worked out so far. --Chriswaterguy talk 12:03, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

See. "The National Endowment for the Arts differs greatly from the prior federal arts programs established earlier under theWorks Progress Administration (WPA) with which historians have most often compared it [...]" Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:46, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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External links modified
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External links modified (February 2018)
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150711225650/http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/after-inappropriate-nea-conference-call-white-house-pushes-new-guidelines.html to http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/after-inappropriate-nea-conference-call-white-house-pushes-new-guidelines.html
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080517164019/http://www.nea.gov/about/Chronology/Chronology.html to http://www.nea.gov/about/Chronology/Chronology.html

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"Background" - ?
Usually when one sees the word "Background" in an article (whether on Wikipedia or in periodical literature) one expects information that leads up to the formation of the topic. In this article the heading "Background" is used incorrectly when the heading should be something akin to "Mission." The article lacks any historical backround on the NEA which actually includes several years of Senate hearings. This would be valuable information to have. - kosboot (talk) 16:10, 6 June 2019 (UTC)