National Endowment for the Arts

2002 

Annual Report
The National Endowment for the Arts exists to foster, preserve, and promote

excellence in the arts, to bring art to all Americans, and to provide leadership

in arts education. Established by Congress as an independent agency of the

federal government, the Endowment brings great art to all 50 states, including

rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.
The President

The White House

Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

It is my pleasure to submit the Annual Report of the National Endowment for the 

Arts for Fiscal Year 2002. 

Since its establishment in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts has been dedicated 

to fostering excellence in the arts and bringing art to all Americans. The largest annual 

funder of the arts in the United States, the Arts Endowment supports artistic creativity,

advances arts education, and works to improve access to the country’s rich and diverse 

cultural heritage. The Endowment has awarded approximately 120,000 grants to 

organizations and artists residing in all 50 states and the six U.S. jurisdictions. 

In 2002, the NEA funded a new initiative to bring high-quality art to a broad audience,

Shakespeare in American Communities. Believing that a great nation deserves great 

art, we are working with Arts Midwest to support six theater companies touring four 

of Shakespeare’s plays to more than 100 communities in all 50 states during 2003-2004. 

In addition to performances, the tours will include artistic and technical workshops, 

symposia about the productions, and educational programs in local schools, supplemented 

by teachers’ toolkits produced and supplied by the NEA.

The activities highlighted in this report illustrate the National Endowment for the 

Arts’ commitment to preserving and promoting excellence in the arts, providing 

leadership in arts education, and bringing art to all Americans.

Sincerely,

Dana Gioia

Chairman

The Nancy Hanks Center

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington DC 20506-0001

202/682-5400

Office of the Chairman

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
2002 National Heritage Fellow

Kevin Burke, Irish fiddler, performing at the annual celebratory

concert in Washington, DC. 

Photo by Tom Pich
2002: Year in Review...............................................................................................................1

National Council on the Arts................................................................................................3

National Medal of Arts...........................................................................................................4 

Challenge America..................................................................................................................5

• Access to the Arts ...........................................................................................................6

• Fast Track Grants...........................................................................................................7

• State Partnerships...........................................................................................................9

• Leadership Initiatives ..................................................................................................10

Grants to Organizations.......................................................................................................13 

• Creativity........................................................................................................................14 

• Arts Learning................................................................................................................19

• Access..............................................................................................................................23 

• Heritage/Preservation..................................................................................................25

• Organizational Capacity .............................................................................................27

• Arts on Radio and Television.....................................................................................28

Individual Fellowships.........................................................................................................30 

• Literature Fellowships.................................................................................................30 

• American Jazz Masters Fellowships .........................................................................34 

• National Heritage Fellowships ..................................................................................35 

State & Regional Partnerships.............................................................................................36

Save America’s Treasures .....................................................................................................38

Leadership Initiatives ...........................................................................................................39 

• AccessAbility .................................................................................................................39

• Folk & Traditional Arts Infrastructure Initiative ...................................................40

• Interagency Partnerships.............................................................................................41

• International Exchanges..............................................................................................42 

• Mayors’ Institute on City Design...............................................................................43

• Rural Residencies Program ........................................................................................44

Policy Research & Analysis..................................................................................................45

Financial Summary...............................................................................................................46

Appropriations History ........................................................................................................47

Credits .....................................................................................................................................48

Contents
1 2002: YEAR IN REVIEW

Untitled by Taibi MastElse, 15, LaGuardia

High School, New York,

part of the ARTifacts

exhibition of artwork by

students in response to

the September 11th

tragedy. Image courtesy

of the Alliance for Young

Artists & Writers

The start of fiscal year (FY) 2002 coincided with the horror and tragedy of the September 11 terrorist

attacks. In October 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts offered assistance to the arts community in

New York City by providing a $30,000 extraordinary action grant to the New York State Council on the

Arts for relief efforts in the wake of the September 11 disaster. The grant supported recovery activities such

as equipment purchases, office repair, disaster cleaning services, and addressing the forced disruption of

services. Extraordinary grants are provided by the Chairman for emergency situations where funds are

needed immediately—$30,000 is the maximum amount allowed for this type of grant.

In addition, the NEA also awarded $15,000 to the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers for ARTifacts:

Kids Respond to a World in Crisis, an exhibition at the Diane von Furstenberg Studio Gallery in New York

City in April 2002. The exhibition and companion publication featured art and writing created by New

York City area students in response to the September 11 tragedy. These student-created works highlight

the important role creative expression can play in helping young people cope with life-changing events and

work through grief.

The year 2002 also brought a personal tragedy to the Arts Endowment. In October 2001, Michael P.

Hammond, a proponent of early arts education for children and scholar in the relationship between neuroscience and music, was nominated for Chairman of the agency. On January 22, 2002, Hammond took

office but, sadly, passed away on January 29, 2002. Deputy Senior Chairman Eileen B. Mason was Acting

Chairman for the remainder of the fiscal year.

2002:YearInReview
One of the ideas Chairman Hammond suggested 

in his short term of office was a tour of

Shakespeare plays throughout the country to bring

the great playwright to new audiences and new

generations. After his death, this modest idea

mentioned only in passing blossomed into one of

the largest initiatives the NEA has ever undertaken, Shakespeare in American Communities. The

touring program will bring four of Shakespeare’s

greatest plays, presented

by six theater companies,

to more than 100 communities in all 50 states.

The tours will begin in

the fall of 2003. 

In FY 2002, the NEA

saw its second significant

budget increase in a row:

a $10 million increase for

Challenge America, the

initiative begun in FY

2001 to provide greater

access to the arts to

underserved areas of the country. This brought

the total amount of FY 2002 funding for this

important initiative to $17 million, and the total

NEA budget to $115,220,000. This year, Challenge

America supported more than 460 projects, such

as those that provide arts education for underserved youth and community arts development, in

addition to providing funds to state arts agencies

and regional arts organizations, and supporting

national initiatives such as Shakespeare in

American Communities. 

In addition to the $17 million for Challenge

America, the Arts Endowment awarded more

than 2,200 grants totaling more than $80 million in

the areas of Grants to Organizations, Individual

Fellowships, Partnership Agreements, and

Leadership Initiatives in FY 2002. Of that amount,

40 percent of the grantmaking funds was provided

to state arts agencies and their regional arts organizations. Complete grant lists for FY 2002, including breakdown of grants by state, can be found on

the NEA Web site at www.arts.gov.

These grants demonstrate the NEA’s commitment

to artistic excellence, access for all Americans, and

arts education. Projects such as the Chicago

International Children’s Film Festival, which

received an NEA Creativity grant of $60,000 in

FY 2002, reflect these NEA goals. The festival,

which began in 1984, is the largest and most

important festival of its kind and has become 

the preeminent U.S. venue for the release of new 

children’s films. It featured more than 200 films

and videos from 32 countries in 2002, reaching 

an audience of approximately 18,000 people,

including more than 14,000 children and teachers.

Because of the high quality of work that is 

presented at the festival, live action short films

awarded top festival prizes are now automatically

qualified for Academy Award consideration.

Many of these films shown during the festival 

will be available to audiences for the first time.

The festival includes

many activities and 

educational programs

for children. A 120-page

study guide was available to teachers, providing an introduction to

using media literacy in

the classroom and topics

of study for 50 films in

the festival. NEA funding helped to create 

a new Directors in the

Schools program to

bring directors into

classrooms following 

the screenings of their

films, and helped to

train a team of 14 media 

educators to conduct seminars throughout the

three weeks of the festival. In addition, a Young

Chicago Critics Program was held for the second

year, providing an intensive workshop to teach

children critical viewing skills while improving

their writing skills. 

It is innovative programs such as these that

embody fully the mission of the NEA. While

descriptions of all the grants the NEA awarded in

FY 2002 could complete several books, a selection

of successful projects is presented in this report. By

no means is this a complete list; rather, it provides

a glimpse of that special place the arts have in the

heart of American society. 

2002: YEAR IN REVIEW 2
Donald V. Cogman

Patron/Trustee

Scottsdale, AZ

Gordon Davidson

Theater Center

Director/Producer

Los Angeles, CA

Katharine Cramer DeWitt

Patron/Trustee

Cincinnati, OH

Hsin-Ming Fung **

Architect

Los Angeles, CA

Joy Harjo ***

Poet/Musician

Honolulu, HI

Nathan Leventhal ***

Patron/Trustee

New York, NY

Teresa Lozano Long

Patron/Trustee

Austin, TX

Marsha Mason ***

Actor/Director

Santa Fe, NM

Maribeth Walton McGinley

Art Director/Designer

Glendale, CA

Earl A. Powell, III

Museum Director

Washington, DC

Cleo Parker Robinson

Dance Company

Director/Choreographer

Denver, CO

Deedie Potter Rose

Patron/Trustee

Philadelphia, PA

Joan Specter ***

Patron/Trustee

Philadelphia, PA

Luis Valdez *

Theater Company Director

San Juan Bautista, CA

Ex officio members

(terms expired in 2002)

Cass Ballenger

U.S. House of Representatives

(R-North Carolina)

Mike DeWine 

U.S. Senate

(R-Ohio)

Richard Durbin 

U.S. Senate 

(D-Illinois)

Betty McCollum

U.S. House of Representatives

(D-Minnesota)

Howard “Buck” McKeon

U.S. House of Representatives

(R-California)

Jeff Sessions 

U.S. Senate

(R-Alabama)

3 NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THE ARTS

NationalCouncilontheArts

The National Council on the Arts advises the 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. 

The following indicate Council members who served in FY 2002: 

* Term expired in 2000, continues to serve until a successor takes office.

** Term expired in 2001, continues to serve until a successor takes office.

*** Term expired in 2002, continues to serve until a successor takes office.
Created by Congress in 1984, the National Medal of Arts is conferred annually by the President to honor

persons and organizations who have made extraordinary contributions to the excellence, support, growth,

and availability of the arts in the United States. Unlike other arts awards, the National Medal of Arts is not

limited to a single field or area of artistic endeavor.

The National Endowment for the Arts solicits nominations for the award, which are reviewed by the

National Council on the Arts and then forwarded to the President for final selection. The awards, which

are non-monetary, are presented each year at a special White House ceremony. The National Medal of Arts

was designed by internationally renowned sculptor Robert Graham. 

World events delayed awarding of the medals until March 2003, when President George W. Bush presented the 2002 National Medals in a ceremony at the White House. The Medal for Al Hirschfeld, who died 

in January 2003, was accepted by his wife. Mrs. Laura Bush and new National Endowment for the Arts

Chairman Dana Gioia hosted a reception for the medalists at the White House after the ceremony. 

NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS 4

NationalMedalofArts

Florence Knoll Bassett

Designer/Architect

Miami, FL

Trisha Brown

Dancer/Choreographer

New York, NY

Uta Hagen

Actor/Educator

New York, NY

Lawrence Halprin

Landscape Architect/

Environmental Planner

San Francisco, CA

Al Hirschfeld

Artist/Caricaturist

New York, NY

(deceased)

George Jones

Country Singer

Nashville, TN

Ming Cho Lee

Painter/Stage Designer

New York, NY

Philippe de Montebello

Museum Director

New York, NY

William “Smokey” Robinson

Singer/Songwriter

Detroit, MI

National Medalists for 2002

2002 National Medal of

Arts recipient Ming Cho

Lee with Mrs. Laura

Bush at the awards 

reception in March 2003. 

Photo by Joselyn Augustino
5 CHALLENGE AMERICA

Challenge America is a major National Endowment for the Arts initiative, begun in FY 2001, to strengthen America’s communities through the unique power of the arts. In FY 2002, Congress appropriated $17

million for the program, which focused on access to the arts, arts education, and community arts development initiatives. 

Organizations and individuals from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors—arts organizations and

artists, state arts agencies, local arts groups, social service and civic organizations, businesses, teachers, and

schools—were encouraged to strengthen and build innovative partnerships through this initiative. 

In the second year of the initiative, Challenge America funds were distributed in four ways: 

• Access to the Arts Grants, in which the NEA awarded 60 grants to provide artists and

art projects to underserved communities. 

• Fast Track Grants, in which the NEA awarded more than 400 small grants of $5,000 or 

$10,000 under a streamlined application and review process to support arts education 

projects for at-risk youth and community arts development projects. 

• State and Regional Partnerships, in which the NEA invested 40 percent of Challenge 

America in ongoing partnerships with state arts agencies to support the initiative’s goals.

• Leadership Initiatives, in which the NEA collaborated with other national organizations

and federal agencies in new community-based arts projects.

ChallengeAmerica

FISCAL YEAR 2002

FACTS AND FIGURES

Challenge America

Dollar Amount of Access

to the Arts Grants:

$2,272,000

Dollar Amount of

Fast Track Grants:

$3,680,000

Dollar Amount of 

Partnerships:

$6,760,000

Dollar Amount of

Leadership Initiatives:

$3,550,000

Hula Halau ‘O Lilinoe

brought ancient

Hawaiian dance and

music to the 64th

National Folk Festival

in Bangor, Maine. 

Photo courtesy of Bangor

Daily News
Access to the Arts Grants

The NEA offered, for the first time, Access grants

under Challenge America to broaden efforts to 

provide opportunities for the American people to

experience the excellence and diversity of the arts.

These grants sought to provide a wide range of art

forms and activities for people to experience and 

participate in, to enable arts organizations and

artists to expand and diversify their audiences, and

to emphasize the potential of the arts to help

strengthen communities. 

NEA Supports National Folk Festival

Held in Bangor, Maine

Since 1934, the annual National Folk Festival has

been held in 27 different communities across the 

country, providing a vast array of America’s finest

folk and traditional arts to the public. In FY 2002,

the National Council for the Traditional Arts—

with support from an NEA Challenge America

Access to the Arts grant of $80,000 given to the

Eastern Maine Development Corporation—

held the free-to-the-public event in Bangor, Maine, 

the first time the festival has been held in the state.

Bangor—with a population of 30,000, the smallest

city to sponsor the festival—will host the event 

for three years before it moves to a different 

community.

The National Folk Festival is the oldest multicultural, traditional arts celebration in the nation, featuring music and dance performances, workshops,

storytelling, craft exhibitions, and foods highlighting the richness and variety of American culture.

Programming embraces the heritage and traditions of all Americans—from those whose families

have been here for centuries to those of the most

recent immigrants. The festival has been on the

cutting edge of American culture since it began,

hosting the first performance by W.C. Handy on a

desegregated stage. It is the first festival to begin

involving arts of different cultures on equal footing, the first to use scholars as presenters, the first

to include craft demonstrations: these are staples of

folk festivals today. 

Recognizing the contributions that the French and

their descendants made to folk culture in Maine, a

portion of the 2002 National Folk Festival focused 

on the French legacy in North America, including

Quebecois, Cajun, and Creole acts, as well as

French food and craft offerings. The festival also

presented a diverse lineup of traditional artists 

representing many cultures, including NativeAmerican, Hawaiian, Tibetan, Afghan, Finnish,

and Mexican among others, as well as hybrids such

as Brian Marshall and his Tex-Slavik Playboys,

who played a bend of swing, country-western, 

and polka music. 

As part of the opening ceremonies of the festival,

Passamaquoddy basketmaker Clara Neptune

Keezer received her NEA National Heritage

Fellowship award from U.S. Senator Susan

Collins. Additionally, the festival presented 

traditional Maine artists and craftspeople, helping

residents and tourists discover the state’s rich 

culture. The festival proved popular in Bangor,

drawing one of the largest first-year crowds, 

estimated at more than 100,000 people. 

CHALLENGE AMERICA / ACCESS TO THE ARTS GRANTS 6

Luke Morneau, 6, of Biddeford, Maine, joins Nathan

Williams of Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas onstage

during the 64th National Folk Festival in Bangor, Maine. 

Photo by Kevin Bennett, courtesy of Bangor Daily News 
Fast Track Grants

Fast Track Grants in the second year of Challenge

America fell into two categories: Positive

Alternatives for Youth and Community 

Arts Development. These grants supported arts 

education and community-wide outreach projects

that served rural and other underserved areas.

Streamlined review and administrative processes

brought projects to communities on an accelerated

timetable. The small grants served the arts 

organizations in two ways: the NEA’s involvement 

provided credibility to their projects with the 

local communities, and the grants worked as 

seed money for the projects to help organizations

leverage additional funding from other public and 

private sources.

Washington State To Celebrate 

Lewis & Clark Bicentennial with 

Maya Lin-Designed Art Works

In January 1803, President Thomas Jefferson initiated funding for a small U.S. Army unit to explore

the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. The expedition, led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and

William Clark, traversed the continent from east

to west, across the newly acquired land of the

Louisiana Purchase, finally arriving at the Pacific

Ocean in 1805. Covering 5,000 miles of territory,

their discoveries helped define the continent’s interior, along the way collecting plant and animal

specimens for science and, most significantly,

developing relationships with diverse tribes of

Native Americans. 

To celebrate this important event in America’s 

history, in FY 2002 the NEA awarded three

Challenge America Community Arts

Development grants of $10,000 to each of the arts

organizations arranging the Confluence Project in

Washington state. This project—organized by

Pacific County Friends of Lewis and Clark of

Long Beach, Lewis and Clark Bicentennial

Commemorative Committee of Vancouver, and

Lewis and Clark Asotin County Bicentennial

Committee of Clarkston—will provide interpretative sites by internationally renowned artist Maya

Lin at or near key confluences along the Columbia

River where the Lewis and Clark expedition

encountered Native Americans. The confluences

are located in the homelands of three Washington

state tribes—the Nez Perce, the Confederated

Tribes of the Umatilla, and the Chinook Nation—

and represent not just confluences of rivers and

ecosystems, but also of Euro-American and Native

American cultures. The work is slated to be completed in conjunction with the 2005 bicentennial of

the completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition. 

Maya Lin, best known as the designer of the

Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC,

will include building and landscape designs as well 

as integrated artwork. The project will be a first

for Lin—the first time she designs a unified work

that will exist in multiple sites. Her ability to meld

natural and artistic elements together—like the

use of water and Martin L. King Jr.’s words at the

Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama

or the way the wall of the Vietnam Veterans

Memorial cuts into the earth—makes her an 

especially apt choice for creating artwork that

reflects both the natural and cultural confluences

at the sites. 

7 CHALLENGE AMERICA/ FAST TRACK GRANTS

Sacjawea State Park, one of the

sites for the Maya Lin-designed

art works to celebrate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark

expedition. Photo by Duncan Haas
NEA Provides Support for Artist Residencies

at Elementary Schools in Rural Kentucky

Clay County is an economically distressed rural

county in southeastern Kentucky, ranked 119th

out of 120 Kentucky counties for child well-being,

with a child poverty rate of 44 percent. It is not 

a place where the arts are readily available to 

children either in school or in the community. 

The Clay County Cooperative Extension

Service—in partnership with the Clay County

School District, Clay County Public Library, and

Eastern Kentucky Storytelling Guild—has created

a program to bring the arts to these underserved

youth. 

Using a Challenge America Positive Alternatives

for Youth grant of $10,000, the partnership assembled a series of short-term, before-school artist 

residencies and an after-school arts program that

serves approximately 700 underserved elementary

school students in Clay County. 

The artist residency program was designed 

specifically for rural areas of the county where 

transportation problems do not allow many of 

the disadvantaged children to participate in afterschool programs. However, most of the students

arrive at school 45 minutes before classes begin. 

To take advantage of this free time, an “Arts

Start” program was developed, presenting 36

short-term artist residencies in the family resource

centers located in or adjacent to the nine elementary schools during the school year. The residencies involved various artistic disciplines, including

visual arts, music, storytelling, creative writing,

and folk arts. After the residencies were completed, the time was used as an “arts club” for the students to practice, share, and further develop the

skills they learned during the residencies.

The after-school program was aimed at youth 

living in Manchester, the county seat. Many of the

children’s parents work out of the county and do 

not arrive home until late, so an “Arts at the

Library” program was developed to provide a

series of programs in collaboration with local folk

artists. The program, presented from 3:30 – 7:30

pm every Thursday for twenty weeks, culminated

in presentations of artwork by both the artists and

participating youth. 

The artists and key professional personnel have 

vast collaborative experience in youth arts, having

presented in-school programming to youth in folk

arts and storytelling, implemented more than 50

highly successful in-school artist residencies, and 

led the development of two regional community 

arts networks with an emphasis on youth and 

heritage education. Four of the participating artists

are current or former artists on the Kentucky Arts

Council Arts-in-Education roster and have 

conducted residencies throughout the state. 

CHALLENGE AMERICA/ FAST TRACK GRANTS 8

Storyteller Nana Yaa Asantewa shares traditional

African tales with students at Big Creek Elementary

School as part of Clay County Cooperative Extension’s

artist residency program. Photo courtesy of Clay County

Cooperative Extension
State and Regional Partnerships

State arts agencies and regional arts organizations

received Challenge America funds in FY 2002

through their Partnership Agreement awards 

(see page 36). Funds are designated for new or

ongoing projects that advance the goals of community arts development, arts education, cultural 

heritage/preservation, or access to the arts. 

Colorado Council on the Arts provides 

Online Arts in Education Project in Poetry 

for Colorado Schools

In 2001, the Colorado Council on the Arts began

developing an Online Arts in Education Pilot

Project, with support from NEA Challenge

America funds. In FY 2002, the Council used

$30,000 of these funds to support second-year

activities of the pilot project. Working in collaboration with the University of Colorado and the

Academy of American Poets in New York City,

the Council is providing the teacher training and

artists-in-residence program in poetry to three

underserved Colorado school districts. 

Nine teachers and three poets worked together

with curriculum and technology specialists to

develop standards-based curriculum units that

incorporate a wide range of contemporary poems

with telecommunications technology. This online

arts education training program will make teaching resources available on the Internet to teachers

and artists, especially those in underserved areas 

of Colorado. One of the goals of the project is to

create an active and ongoing community of

Colorado teachers and poets dedicated to incorporating poetry into the classroom and to sharing

innovative approaches for teaching poetry across

the curriculum. 

During the school year, high school English 

teachers from Alamosa, Antonito, Montrose, and

Denver have been working with the three poets 

to implement the curriculum units they developed

and conduct online and in-classroom poet residencies. Participating teachers across Colorado will

also be able to collaborate on lesson plans and 

projects. 

One of these units, for example, was created by

Bruce Grigsby of Montrose High School on

Shakespeare’s King Lear. The unit, using Act IV 

of the play as its centerpiece, explores not only

Shakespeare’s poetic verse but also draws connections to contemporary poems that reflect the

themes encountered in the play. The unit consists

of self-contained lesson plans that need not be 

used sequentially or completely to be effective.

The technology of the Internet and presentation 

softwares were used to explore background issues,

present selected vocabulary, find links to audio 

and video performances, and access contemporary

poetry. 

The pilot project is an opportunity to boost the 

quality of arts education and accessibility to 

arts-in-education resources. 

9 CHALLENGE AMERICA/ STATE AND REGIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

An example of the lesson plans available on the Online Poetry

Classroom Web site (www.onlinepoetryclassroom.org) 

supported by the Colorado Council on the Arts. 
Leadership Initiatives

One of the major Challenge America Leadership

Initiatives in FY 2002 was a $1.2 million grant to

Arts Midwest to sponsor the Shakespeare in

American Communities project. As mentioned in 

the Year in Review section of this report, the touring program begins in FY 2003. Other projects

funded under this category include Phase II of

Continental Harmony, a program started in FY

2000 to bring composers to American communities to create a work of art for them, and the New

Public Works program, which sponsored design

competitions throughout the country. 

Composer Philip Aaberg Creates 

Musical Composition for Kansas

The Continental Harmony initiative began in 2000

through a collaboration between the NEA and the

American Composers Forum in St. Paul,

Minnesota to help small towns and large cities all

across the United States celebrate community life

with music. From an initial applicant pool of 175,

58 organizations were chosen—with at least one

from each of the 50 states—to host a composer

who would work with the community to create a

new musical work celebrating each community’s

history and culture. The musical ensembles ranged

from choirs to jazz bands to symphony orchestras,

with the composers working with local musicians

to perform the pieces. The symbiosis between

composer and community led to a great pride in

the community and a greater interest in music, 

as well as the creation of many great new 

compositions. 

In FY 2002, the NEA funded Phase II of the initiative, with 35 communities across the country

being selected to host composer residencies

through 2005. One of the communities participating in the project is in southcentral Kansas, involving Arkansas City and Wichita. Philip Aaberg of

Montana is the resident composer. Aaberg’s work

has been favorably compared to Dvorák and

Sibelius, and he often uses the imagery of the

American West as the basis for his compositions.

Recent commissions include a work for cello and

piano based on Gary Snyder’s epic poem,

"Mountains and Rivers Without End.” 

The piece he created was entitled Headfirst into 

the Blue Fields of Grace, taken from the last line of

Kansas poet Harley Elliott’s poem “Waking in

Some Good Person’s Yard.” The piece consisted

of a concerto for three soloists—Aaberg on piano,

Darol Anger on violin, and Eugene Friesen on

cello—playing with a string quartet and a woodwind quartet. The Cowley County Community

College put together a coalition of community

groups, including Chamber Music at the Barn, 

to carry out the residency and have the music 

performed. The new work premiered in June 2003

at the annual PrairieFest in Arkansas City with a

second performance at the Barn in Wichita. The

concerts reached an estimated 37,000 people living

in rural Cowley County (which includes Arkansas

City) and 300,000 people living in the city of

Wichita. 

Aaberg’s residency in Arkansas City and Wichita

involved getting to know the people of the communities, researching local history and culture,

working with students, and making presentations

to community groups. He also participated in

activities in both urban and rural settings, such 

as preview house concerts, master classes, applied

creativity workshops, and rural chuck-wagon 

dinners. 

CHALLENGE AMERICA/ LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES 10

Philip Aaberg on piano and Eugene Friesen

on cello performing Aaberg’s composition

Headfirst into the Blue Fields of Grace, written

as part of the Continental Harmony initiative. 

Photo by Connie Bonfy
NEA’s New Public Works Initiative 

Supports Design of Mixed Income 

Housing in California

The New Public Works initiative helped fund

national design competitions that resulted in a

range of public projects from schools to housing 

to parks. The NEA’s support defrayed the costs 

of running these national competitions, including 

funding for honoraria to participating designers

and jurors. Bringing institutions from across the

country together with the best design talent, the

initiative raised the expectations and aspirations

for public work, and increased popular awareness

of the importance of design in daily life. The winning projects will develop the highest quality of

design for these community structures, involving

landscape architecture, urban planning, architecture, and industrial design. 

In FY 2002, the NEA awarded $850,000 for 13 

projects. An award of $50,000 was given to the

Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Livable

Spaces of Los Angeles, California to support a

national design competition for the urban design

and planning of a former industrial site. The site

will include approximately 50 units of affordable

housing, mixed-use commercial/retail, and other

amenities, and will be a prototype for new housing

throughout the country. 

The site of the competition is an 11.6-acre former

industrial site in Carson, California, an ethnically

diverse suburb of Los Angeles where the majority 

of residents are African-American, Asian, or

Latino. A portion of the “for sale” and rental 

housing will be marketed to families earning 

less than 80 percent of the area median income 

of $44,000. The design competition helped bring

in a greater range of high-quality designers and

architects, creating many innovative models for

the housing. 

Stage one of the competition was open to licensed

architects and architectural firms in the United

States. Nearly 100 applications were received. Five

finalists were selected by a competition committee 

to compete in stage two of the competition:

Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner of Los Angeles and

Berlin, Germany in partnership with Blackbird of

Santa Barbara, California; Central Office of

Architecture of Los Angeles; Brian Healy

Architects of Boston, Massachusetts; McCormick,

Smith and Others Architects in partnership with

Lloyd Russell, both of San Diego, California; and

Touraine and Richmond of Los Angeles. 

Each of the selected finalists received an honorarium of $10,000 plus a travel stipend to prepare an

urban design plan for the site, and schematic 

perspective, and elevation of the proposed 50 units.

The winner, McCormick, Smith and Others with

Lloyd Russell, was selected July 28, 2003. A show

of the finalists’ proposals will be held at the Los

Angeles Museum of Architecture and Design.

11 CHALLENGE AMERICA/ LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES
CHALLENGE AMERICA/ LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES 12

McCormick, Smith and Others’ 

winning design in the New Public

Works competition to create new

mixed-use units in a former industrial

site. Images courtesy of McCormick,

Smith and Others
The Sarah Skaggs

Dance company 

performing at the 

70th anniversary 

season of Jacob’s Pillow 

in Lee, Massachusetts. 

Photo by Mike van Sleen

13 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS

The National Endowment for the Arts offers assistance to a wide range of nonprofit organizations to 

support their arts programming. These grants to organizations account for more than 37 percent of the

Endowment’s annual grantmaking funds. The NEA awards grants for exemplary projects in all artistic

disciplines, including dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, media arts, music, musical theater,

opera, theater, and visual arts in addition to supporting arts education, museums, presenting, and multidisciplinary projects. All grants must be matched at a one-to-one minimum by non-federal sources of funds.

Many grants have multistate impact as they fund projects that tour or are distributed across state lines,

broadening the impact of federal investment. 

Panels made up of private citizens

review grant applications and 

recommend proposals for funding.

NEA staff selects artists, arts

administrators, arts patrons, and 

at least one layperson not employed

in the arts to serve on each panel,

ensuring diverse aesthetic, cultural,

ethnic, and geographic perspectives.

To avoid conflicts of interest, 

panelists do not consider applications from organizations with which they are forwarded to the National Council on the Arts for further

review. Applications approved by the Council are then forwarded to the Chairman, who has final authority

on all funding decisions.

The following pages contain examples of some of the projects that the NEA supported during FY 2002.

Complete listings of FY 2002 grants and panelists are posted on the Endowment’s Web site at

www.arts.gov.

GrantsToOrganizations

Grants

Category

Creativity

Arts Learning

Access

Heritage/Preservation

Organizational Capacity

Arts on Radio and Television

Amount

Requested

$61,000,000

$25,600,000

$23,700,000

$16,600,000

$04,600,000

$14,300,000

Amount

Awarded

$16,670,000

$05,800,000

$04,375,390

$03,452,000

$02,762,000

$03,860,000

Number

Received

1,187

489

505

342

79

112

Number

Awarded

723

212

235

170

61

56

Applications Grants FISCAL YEAR 2002

FACTS AND FIGURES

Grants to

Organizations

Number of Grant 

Applications Received:

2,714

Number of Grants 

Awarded: 1,457

Dollar Amount of Grants 

Awarded: $36,919,390
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ CREATIVITY 14

Creativity

The NEA’s Creativity grants support all aspects 

of the creation and presentation of artistic work,

including commissions, residencies, rehearsals,

workshops, performances, exhibitions, publications, and festivals. Creativity is by far the largest

of the Arts Endowment’s grantmaking categories,

723 grants in FY 2002 across 47 states, as well as

the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. 

Of these, 184 grants had multistate impact.

Jacob’s Pillow of Lee, Massachusetts

Celebrates Seventieth Anniversary of

International Dance Festival

Founded in 1933 by dance pioneer Ted Shawn,

Jacob’s Pillow of Lee, Massachusetts has been 

producing an acclaimed international dance festival

during the summer months for seven decades, the

longest running dance festival in the United States.

Recognized as one of America’s Irreplaceable

Dance Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition

and named to the National Register of Historic

Places, the Pillow was originally a family farm and

station of the Underground Railroad in the 1800s.

Since then, it has turned into one of the premier

dance venues in the country. In addition to the 

festival, Jacob’s Pillow also houses a professional

dance school, offers artist residencies, and serves

the community with year-round education 

programs. 

Jacob’s Pillow is a part of the unique cultural

industry of the Berkshires, a tourist destination 

for people from New York, New Jersey, Boston,

Philadelphia, and Florida. This audience has more

disposable income than the residents of Lee, who

are primarily working class, bringing additional

revenue to the small businesses in the area. 

In FY 2002, Jacob’s Pillow received an NEA

Creativity grant of $70,000 to support the celebration of its 70th anniversary festival season. To celebrate the anniversary, Jacob’s Pillow commissioned

and presented new works by some of the biggest

names in dance, including the Bill T. Jones/Arnie

Zane Dance Company, Ronald K. Brown/

Evidence, Eiko and Koma with legendary 

choreographer/dancer Anna Halprin and cellist

Joan Jeaneraud, David Gordon’s Pick-up

Company, and MOMIX, who presented the 70th

anniversary finale performance of Passion, which

explored spiritual to sensual exaltation to the music

of Peter Gabriel. International acts included Grupo

Corpo from Brazil and the Cloud Gate Dance

Theatre of Taiwan. 

In addition to performances, Jacob’s Pillow offered

many community outreach activities, such as 

pre- and post-show talks with the artists, including

audience question-and-answer sessions; community dance classes; participatory workshops and open

studios; free outdoor previews of performances;

and intimate, in-depth conversations with artists,

musicians, and guest speakers, moderated by 

resident Pillow scholars. Nearly 200 free events

were given during the 2002 season, with more 

than 70,000 people attending the festival. 

A member of the Cloud Gate Dance

Theatre of Taiwan in performance at

the 70th anniversary season of Jacob’s

Pillow in Lee, Massachusetts. Photo by

Mike van Sleen
15 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ CREATIVITY

NEA Supports 2002 National Black Arts

Festival in Atlanta, Georgia 

Recognized as the world’s largest gathering of

African-American creative minds, the National

Black Arts Festival (NBAF) in Atlanta, Georgia

has presented more than 25,000 artists to audiences

numbering more than 5 million since 1987. For 10

days starting the third weekend of July each year,

the festival presents a “Who’s Who” of AfricanAmerican arts and artists, including in the past

such luminaries as Maya Angelou, August Wilson,

Sweet Honey In the Rock, Wynton Marsalis,

Phildanco, and 2003 NEA American Jazz Master

Abbey Lincoln. Since 2000, the NBAF has evolved

into a year-round producing and educational 

institution.

In FY 2002, NBAF received an NEA Creativity

grant of $40,000 to support performances by 

a variety of artists during the 2002 festival.

Performers at the festival included jazz greats

Oliver Lake, Steve Turre, and NEA American

Jazz Master Randy Weston; dance company Urban

Bush Women with the National Song and Dance

Company of Mozambique, Africa; and multidisciplinary arts group Fred Ho and the Afro Asian

Music Ensemble. In addition to performances,

there also were exhibitions at local museums, such

as Retreat: Palimpset of a Georgia Sea Island Plantation

at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; film

screenings, such as Anna Deavere Smith’s film of

her one-woman show, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992;

and readings by authors such as E. Lynn Harris

and Marita Golden. 

Premieres at the festival included Shadow’s Child,

combining dance, music, and storytelling to impart

the story of a young girl’s journey from South

Africa to the American South, as performed by

Urban Bush Woman and the National Song and

Dance Company of Mozambique; Na’akan (Life

Trace), performed by Atlanta’s Ballethnic Dance

Company and Burkina Faso’s Compagnie Salia Ni

Seydou, which blended American blues, African

contemporary dance, traditional drumming, and

ballet; and an “African Rhythms” musical performance by Randy Weston and

South African trumpeter Hugh

Masekela.

Performances included residency 

activities, open rehearsals, workshops,

and educational forums with the audience members. For example, Urban Bush

Women conducted a master dance class

for festival-goers interested in learning

their dance techniques while Anna

Deavere Smith led a discussion about her

film Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and the

related events: the Rodney King police

brutality trial and the subsequent Los

Angeles riots. 

The festival also included a Children’s

Education Village, where children and

youth could explore interactively the

theme of the 2002 festival, “Migrations.”

Presenting the history of African-Americans 

during the post-emancipation period of 1865-1920,

the Village allows visitors to investigate the journeys of newly freed slaves as they went north to

look for jobs, west to pan for gold, or back across

the ocean to Africa. Approximately 5,000 youth

visited the Village during the festival.

The 2002 festival was one of the most successful in

the organization’s history, with record ticket sales

and attendance by an estimated 500,000 people. 

Jazz great Randy Weston (2001 NEA

American Jazz Master) performs at 

the 2002 National Black Arts Festival in

Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Susan J. Ross
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ CREATIVITY 16

Ohio Exhibition Examines Contemporary

Residential Design

Spaces is a nonprofit, artist-run alternative space

gallery in Cleveland, Ohio that, since 1978, has

given more than 6,500 artists in the visual and 

performing arts a place to present their artwork

and challenging new ideas. In FY 2002, the gallery

received an NEA Creativity grant of $15,000 to

support an exhibition that investigated contemporary residential design in a Midwestern context.

Ten regional architects exhibited design proposals

for an aesthetically provocative, technologically

advanced, single-family home that met all the

needs of a middle-income family.

Using the California Case Study House program

from more than 50 years ago, the exhibition and 

competition—entitled House: Case Study

Cleveland—examined the relationship of superior,

architect-designed housing and typical American

families. This is the first time such an examination

has been made in the context of a 21st century,

post-industrial, economically and racially diverse

urban setting. Part of the exhibition was a competition for the best design, with all competing architects’ designs on display. Competing architects

were given few limitations other than a maximum

construction budget of $180,000. The panel judging the competition was led by internationally

renowned architect Rafael Vinoly, who designed

the Cleveland Museum of Art’s new expansion

project and the Tokyo International Forum. 

The exhibition/competition took play May 3 – June

14, 2002, with the winning design awarded to PLY

Architecture and Design of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Cleveland Mayor Jane L. Campbell announced the

winner, saying, “Their project combined a custombuilt ground floor with prefabricated ‘loft’ modules

that can be added to the house as needed, enhancing affordability as well as domestic diversity and

flexibility.” Therefore the house could be completed as either a one-story unit or with one, two, or

three second-floor lofts. The house is designed to

be occupied efficiently by a single or an extended

family, or for rental situations: the interior plan

and site strategy allow for one of the second-story

lofts to become a one-bedroom rental unit, 

if desired. The winning house design is to be built

in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood in 2003 and

offered for sale on the open market. 

A lecture series and multidisciplidiscussion regarding high 

quality, affordable design also

accompanied the exhibition, and 

a catalogue was published with 

an essay on residential design in

the 21st century.

The winning design by PLY Architecture

and Design of Ann Arbor, Michigan of the

House: Case Study Cleveland competition

and exhibition at the Spaces art gallery in

Cleveland. Image courtesy of PLY

Architecture and Design
17 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ CREATIVITY

NEA Supports American Premiere of

Opera Flight in St. Louis, Missouri 

Commissioned by England’s Glyndebourne Opera

in 1998, Jonathan Dove’s opera Flight, with libretto

by April de Angelis, made its United States premiere at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in June

2003. In FY 2002, the Opera Theatre received an

NEA Creativity grant of $50,000 to support 

production of the premiere. 

The premiere took place at Webster University’s

Loretto-Hilton Center in St. Louis, where an

audience of approximately 5,700 was estimated to

have attended the six performances. An additional

600 people attended the free final dress rehearsal.

In addition, Dove conducted a symposium on

Flight during the Opera Theatre’s spring festival

season. 

Flight, sung in English, explores the interplay

among 10 travelers stranded at an airport for one

long night. The comic opera involves a young 

couple trying to recover some romance in their

marriage, a steward and stewardess who cannot

stop smiling or keep their hands off each other, 

a refugee and immigration officer, an older

woman waiting for her lover, a diplomat and his

pregnant wife heading back to Minsk, and the

controller in the tower overseeing them all.

During the night, the passengers’ lives are turned

upside down, and with both pathos and humor,

alliances and relationships are changed. 

De Angelis’ libretto was an original story based 

on the composer’s observations in a busy airport.

The librettist is an active playwright in the British

theater and is director of Playwrighting Studies at

Birmingham University. 

Dove is considered one of the most versatile 

and prolific composers of his generation, having

worked in various musical forms. Flight was his

first of three full-length operas to date.

Additionally, he has written a number of community operas, choral works, song cycles, a wind 

serenade, a flute concerto, as well as works for 

theater, film, and dance. In 2001, Dove became 

the artistic director of the Spitalfields Festival in

England. 

Cohn Graham was director of the production, and

William Lumpkin conducted the members of the 

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra providing musical

accompaniment. Flight was performed during the

Opera Conference 2003, an international gathering 

of more than 140 opera companies from the U.S.,

Canada, and Europe, which was hosted by the

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in June 2003. 

Myrna Paris as the Older Woman, with

Flight Attendants Carleton Chambers and

Angela Horn in the Opera Theatre of St.

Louis’ U.S. premiere of Jonathan Dove’s

opera, Flight. Photo by Ken Howard
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ CREATIVITY 18

Seattle Children’s Theatre Brings Tibet to

Washington State Audiences 

Peter Sis’ book for young readers, Tibet Through

the Red Box, is based upon the experiences of his

father, a documentary filmmaker who fell in love

with the people and landscapes of Tibet. This

book—part tribute, part travelogue, part fairy

tale—is an artful, dreamlike introduction to

Tibetan culture. The Seattle Children’s Theatre

(SCT), with assistance from a FY 2002 NEA

Creativity grant of $35,000, commissioned

renowned playwright David Henry Hwang to

create an adaptation of Sis’ book for production 

in the theater’s 2003-2004 season. 

Tibet Through the Red Box documents the story 

of Vladimir Sis, Peter’s father, a filmmaker who 

is sent by the Communist government from his

home in Czechoslovakia to the Himalayas in the

mid-1950s to allegedly teach his craft to Chinese

film students. He comes to realize that the real

purpose of the project is to document the building

of a Chinese highway through the mountains 

to the western province of Tibet, and journeys

through the country to warn the Dalai Lama of an

impending invasion. The book, based on stories

and journals passed down from father to son, is a

blend of reality, memory, and magical fantasy. 

David Henry Hwang is a Tony Award-winning

playwright whose works, such as M. Butterfly and

Golden Child, have been produced in dozens of

countries around the world. Attempting his first

play for young people since his 1981 work The

Dance and the Railroad, Hwang will focus the new

play on the book’s primary theme, children’s 

universal yearning to connect with their parents.

The Tibet of the book exists primarily in the son’s

imagination as he tries to vicariously bond with his

father, evoking a powerful spirituality within himself. Hwang is using that aspect of the book to

offer audiences an opportunity to appreciate the

creativity and spirituality of others while cultivating it within themselves. The world premiere of

the play at the Seattle Children’s Theatre will take

place in January 2004. 

Seattle Children’s Theatre produces six productions each season for a variety of age levels, reaching approximately 260,000 children, parents, and

teachers from western Washington each year. 

The theater also provides more than 6,000 free

tickets per year to underserved children in the

Seattle area. In addition, teachers receive an

Educator Resource Guide, which provides a 

comprehensive curriculum guide for the entire

season. 

Right: Playwright David Henry Hwang. 

Left: Illustration for Tibet Through the Red Box by Peter Sis. 
19 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ARTS LEARNING

Arts Learning

The Arts Endowment supports the arts as an integral part of education, in settings both inside and

outside the classroom. The direct involvement of

artists, as well as the use of original works of art

and live performances, is crucial to the success of

arts education projects. Those supported by NEA

Arts Learning grants include arts instruction,

artist residencies, performances, workshops, and

training and professional development for artists

and teachers. The types of projects were either

school-based or community-based programs. 

Nearly 500 applications were reviewed in FY 2002

for Arts Learning grants, and 212 were awarded

in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The

projects awarded involved more than 170,000

artists, teachers, and school administrators and

affected an estimated five million children and

youth.

Idaho School Children Learn the 

Importance of Writing through 

Writer Residencies

The Log Cabin Literacy Center (LCLC) of Boise,

Idaho is a learning center for literature and 

language arts, providing classes and workshops 

for all skill levels and for writers working in all

genres. In addition, LCLC provides education

programs such as a summer writing camp and

writer residencies in Idaho schools, serving more

than 3,000 students and more than 100 teachers

over the course of the programs. In FY 2002,

LCLC received an NEA Arts Learning grant 

of $36,000 to support their residency program,

Writers in the School.

Yearlong residencies by 15 writers focused on a 

curriculum of reading and writing for Boise area

and rural Idaho school children in 3-12 grades.

The program also provided professional development programs for the host teachers. Working in

school settings for the full year, writers became

part of the educational fabric. The residents served

the same three classes weekly with hour-long writing workshops. In the course of the residencies,

connections were drawn between written and

visual arts through collaborations with artists 

in those disciplines and visits to the Boise Art

Museum. The museum presented the students’

writing and artwork in a spring exhibit. 

The program helps students become more

involved in and excited by writing. They learn to

express and understand themselves better. In addition, they find more pleasure in reading.

Writers participating in the residencies are drawn

from Idaho’s writing and publishing community,

including authors and poets with national publication credits. They are prepared for their residencies

with training sessions and meetings with the teachers and principals of the schools they will be working in. Teachers work with the residents to learn

good writing techniques and how to engage and

challenge their students to write better and more

often. The writers teach from their own creative

processes, developing lesson plans based on the 

students’ needs and interests. In addition to the 

in-class teaching, the resident writers also bring

their art and the art of their students to the 

community through public readings and the 

publication of a student writing anthology. 

An anthology of poems and stories by the 

Franklin Elementary School’s sixth grade class, 

created as part of the Log Cabin Literacy Center’s 

Writers in the School project. 
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ARTS LEARNING 20

Richmond Ballet In Virginia Provides Dance

Instruction to Fourth-Graders

Richmond Ballet, the State Ballet of Virginia, 

provides the Richmond area with classic ballets

and newly created dance works, as well as dance

instruction and pre-professional training at the

School of Richmond Ballet. The dance company

also offers education and outreach programs such

as Minds in Motion (MIM), a yearlong program

that teaches fourth-grade students the basic skills

of dance. In FY 2002, Richmond Ballet received an

NEA Arts Learning grant of $25,000 to support

the Minds in Motion program.

MIM is not an extracurricular or ballet

class, but instead is an integral component

of each participating school’s fourth-grade

curriculum. The first half of the school year

covers the elements of rhythm and rudimentary movement vocabulary. Once the

students have acquired these basic skills,

they are taught a series of choreographic

movements that must be memorized and

expanded upon with each new class. This

simple process of building upon weekly

achievements helps not only in building

their body and dance skills, but in improving their mental abilities to confront challenges. Richmond Ballet faculty members,

all artists and teachers with years of experience, plan and teach the hour-long classes. 

The program culminates each year with 

a performance that brings MIM students

from all of the participating schools together onstage for a gala production. The production provides the students with the opportunity

to demonstrate their new skills before their family,

friends, and members of the community. 

Richmond Ballet initially launched MIM in 1995

in two Richmond elementary schools. With the

success of the program and the support of the

NEA and other funding partners, the program has

expanded to nine area elementary schools, many of

which serve underprivileged and rural communities. The program currently reaches more than 800

fourth-graders in the cities of Richmond and

Hopewell, and the counties of Chesterfield and

Hanover. 

The Ballet works with its participating schools

and area cultural institutions—such as the

Virginia Historical Society and the Science

Museum of Virginia—to develop a programmatic

theme that complements the Virginia Standards 

of Learning for fourth-grade history, science, and

social science.

As MIM often serves as an introduction to dance

for the children participating in the program, it is

not surprising that many discover a real enthusiasm and talent for dance. To encourage these 

students to explore their interest and talent, the

Richmond Ballet has added several components to

the program, such as an “Adopt a Dancer” 

program, a mentoring initiative that pairs MIM

participants with a member of the Richmond

Ballet; Team XL/XXL, an after-school program

designed for MIM students who exhibit an 

aptitude and interest in dance to participate in

more formal dance training at the Ballet’s studios;

and the Stoner Winslett Scholarship Class, which

offers formal ballet instruction to select MIM 

students and graduates who exhibit exceptional

potential as dancers but lack the financial

resources to pursue serious dancing. 

The gala performance of the spring 2002 class 

of Richmond Ballet’s Minds in Motion program,

which featured 900 students from schools spanning the entire Richmond metropolitan area.

Photo by Suzanne Grandis
21 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ARTS LEARNING

Innovative Program Provides

Theater Arts Skills to Underserved

Youth in Portland, Oregon

The Haven Project of Portland, Oregon pairs 

underserved children with professional writers,

actors, designers, musicians, and directors to create

original theater pieces, providing important experience and skills in the theater arts to the children.

The project is, in essence, an artistic mentoring

program that teaches both the child and the artist.

The Haven Project provides three primary 

programs: one-on-one pairings of children with

professional actors and writers to create short,

two-character plays; a playwriting program; and

the Afield program, in which underserved youth

take residencies with professional theater artists

from the Haven Project to develop short scripts

and perform them at the end of the sessions. In FY

2002, the Haven Project received an NEA Arts

Learning grant of $8,000 to support the Afield

program, which since 1997 has successfully collaborated on 21 residencies.

In 2002-2003, the Haven Project paired 65 underserved youth with professional artists to offer 

one-on-one mentoring as each youth writes a play. 

The Haven Project engages approximately 125

artists as mentors, actors, and workshop leaders.

Six intensive two-week residencies take place, for

two hours a day. Ten artists work with ten youth

in each residency. The first week involves physical

and writing exercises to help the young writers

create characters and understand dramatic conflict. During the second week, each young writer

is paired with a specific artist and writes a short

two-character play. The final day is spent rehearsing, with the mentor serving as director and casting two professional actors to perform the student

play. This complex maze of activities and writing

projects leads to a final product, a play written by

the student. The ten plays are then performed in

public. 

The Afield program accomplishes two goals: to

help underserved youth find a new and powerful

way to express and understand themselves by

exposing them to the theater arts (in many cases,

for the very first time); and to create high quality,

original theater. The goals are well integrated—

the youth are motivated to create and communicate their feelings, which motivates the professional theater artists to work even harder. Together,

they produce short, 10-minute plays that are

impressive in their scope and substance. 

Artist and youth work one-on-one to create a

short, two-character play to be performed publicly

at the end of the program. Photo courtesy of Haven

Project 
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ARTS LEARNING 22

Mobile Symphony Brings Music Instruction

to Elementary Schools in Alabama

The Mobile Symphony of Mobile, Alabama is the

premiere producer of live symphonic music for 

the Gulf Coast region. Not only does it provide

opportunities for the community to experience the

magic of live music, it also provides music education programs for youth and adults. In FY 2002,

the Mobile Symphony received an NEA Arts

Learning grant of $7,500 to support one of its 

education programs, Preludes.

Preludes was created by a team of musicians, 

teachers, and school principals to supplement

music classes offered in the public school system.

With the NEA funding, the Mobile Symphony

was able to provide the Preludes program of basic

music education to nine elementary schools and

violin instruction to 13 elementary schools in the

Mobile area. The program enhances the efforts of

the eight district music specialists who currently

teach for only 10 days per school per year in each

of the 52 Mobile County elementary schools. 

A professional musician teaches music to children

in first grade for 20 minutes and in second grade

for 30 minutes each week during the school year,

using lesson plans designed to meet State

Education guidelines. Qualified string instructors

from the Mobile Symphony also give students in

third, fourth, and fifth grade group violin instruction for one hour per week. In addition, a string

quartet of the Mobile Symphony performs two 

45-minute concerts for each participating Preludes

school. More than 1,500 first and second graders

are participating in the basic music instruction,

and 350 students in the higher grades are receiving

violin instruction.

The eventual goal of the Preludes program is to

make music education available to all children, to

establish string instrument instruction in elementary schools, and to encourage classroom teachers

to integrate music into the curriculum. They are

well on their way to achieving this goal. In the

2000-2001 school year, the second year of Preludes

(which also was partially funded by the NEA), 52

second-grade classes received music lessons from

professional musicians of the Mobile Symphony.

Through this program, children were able to

increase their knowledge and skills 

in music, use the arts to express their

feelings and increase their interest in

learning, and improve their social

interaction and ability to relate to 

others. 

The Mobile Symphony providing supplemental 

violin instruction classes to Westlawn Elementary

School through its Preludes program. Photo courtesy

of Mobile Symphony 
23 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ACCESS

Access

The NEA’s Access grants perform a vital community service by taking the arts to people and places

where few such opportunities exist. Disseminating

the arts is accomplished in several ways: through

regional touring of performances or exhibitions,

artist residencies, radio and television broadcasts,

publication of books and magazines, and distribution over the Internet. Of the 505 Access applications received, 235 were awarded grants in 40

states and the District of Columbia. The NEA also

funded Access grants under Challenge America in

FY 2002, awarding 60 grants totaling $2.3 million. 

Asian Arts Initiative Provides

Educational Training to Artists Teaching

in Philadelphian Community

The Asian Arts Initiative (AAI) began in 1993

with Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s first Asian

American Arts Festival. Since then, it has worked

to broaden the pool of artists working in community-based arts, providing a variety of programs to

benefit underserved community groups and local

artists. Besides support for public performances

and exhibitions, AAI offers art-making classes to

adults and youth; resource and referral services,

such as an artists’ directory, newsletter, and Web

site; and a training program targeted to artists who

want to teach in the community. 

In FY 2002, AAI received an NEA Access grant 

of $40,000 to support its Artists in Communities

Training program, a professional development 

program for artists who want to conduct workshops and residencies in schools and community

settings. By training artists to be effective educators, the program helps to build human resources

that can support high-quality community arts 

programs throughout Philadelphia and the region,

putting the power of art making in the hands of

everyday people. 

Since the program began in 1997, AAI has assisted

Philadelphia-based artists to construct and implement lesson plans in artistic disciplines ranging

from classical Indian dance to

Japanese taiko drumming to visual

arts, video making, and creative writing. Nearly 300 students have benefited from teaching placements in

schools and community settings in

Philadelphia. Working with the

Mural Arts Program and Spiral Q

Puppet Theater, AAI broadened the

range of artists who receive the training by focusing on two new art forms,

murals and puppetry. 

The training program comprises 

two distinct phases: an introductory

series of workshops that impart basic

skills in communication, lesson 

planning, group facilitation, and 

cultural sensitivity; and continued

skills development consisting of mentorship and support to artists conducting longterm residencies. In 2002, 17 multidisciplinary

artists participated in the training program, with

more than ten artists now working in community

settings such as a student union, a women’s prison,

and a young women’s arts program in North

Philadelphia. 

Puppetry was one of the

new art forms offered 

in 2002 in the Artists in

Communities Training 

program, designed by 

the Asian Arts Initiative to

provide professional development to Philadelphiabased artists who want to

conduct workshops and

residencies in schools and

community settings. 

Photo courtesy of Asian Arts

Initiative
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ACCESS 24

Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago Teaches 

Visual Arts to Urban Underserved

Founded in 1939, the Hyde Park Art Center in

Chicago, Illinois is one of the city’s oldest community art centers. For six decades—using a cadre of

more than 35 professional teaching artists each

year—the Art Center has presented the visual 

arts to the community through a broad range of

exhibitions featuring work by young and emerging artists from Chicago; a year-round schedule 

of high quality visual arts instruction

for children and adults; and artsbased community outreach programs

offering direct art-making opportunities to future generations living in

underserved areas of the city. 

In FY 2002, the Art Center received 

an NEA Access grant of $10,000 

to support its outreach program,

Partners in Art. Since 1997, the Art

Center and Chicago Park District

have worked together to offer 

after-school arts programming and

mentoring to inner-city youth at five

park locations on Chicago’s south

and west sides in some of the poorest

African-American and Latino communities. As the cornerstone of the

Art Center’s outreach programs,

Partners in Art reaches more than

500 teens each year, and helps artists

become more strongly connected

with the community. 

The program provides teenagers

with the opportunity to work closely

with skilled artists for three hours

after school, two days a week during the academic

year, providing free, high quality, hands-on artmaking activities. The teens, ages 14-18, develop

their own artistic skills and simultaneously plan

and lead, under the guidance of the teaching

artists, two 12-week after-school sessions for 

children ages 6-13 during the school year. At the

end of each twelve-week program, the teenage

students receive certificates and free art supplies 

to cultivate their interest in the visual arts. 

By participating in Partners in Art, the teenagers

nurture their own creative potential, learn artistic

techniques from professional working artists, and

develop leadership skills by serving as mentors to

younger children. The program has an admirable

success rate, with a high record of attendance and

return rate. Partners in Art is evaluated throughout the school year, with progress meetings

between the artists and Art Center staff taking

place every few weeks, a midpoint evaluation, and

a final evaluation report at the conclusion of each

session. 

The Art Center’s ability and reputation in providing community outreach programs is excellent,

having offered them since 1984. These programs

have served nearly 4,000 individuals annually

through visual art workshops and classes at

Chicago public schools, parks, community centers,

public housing developments, and retirement

homes throughout the city. 

Through the Partners in Art project by the Hyde Park Arts

Center, Trumbul Park students collaborated to create this

ambitious large-scale mural, a mixed-media art work that

combined sculpture, painting, collage, and photography,

which hangs in the entrance hallway of the park. 

Photo courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center
25 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ HERITAGE/ PRESERVATION

Heritage/Preservation

The NEA’s Heritage/Preservation category

embraces the twin concepts of celebrating our

nation’s evolving cultural heritage and preserving

important works of art that are products and 

symbols of this heritage. This involves supporting

the presentation and conservation of both performances and works of art. In FY 2002, 342 

applications were received for Heritage/

Preservation grants, of which 170 were funded.

These projects represent 35 states and the District

of Columbia.

Historic Daguerreotypes of Southworth 

and Hawes Exhibited by Eastman House 

in Rochester, New York

The George Eastman House in Rochester, New

York was established as a nonprofit museum in

1947 in the house of the Eastman Kodak founder.

The museum is home to unparalleled collections

of photography, films, literature, and equipment,

including one of the largest holdings of 19th and

20th century American photography in the United

States. Among these holdings are the majority of

daguerreotypes by Albert Southworth and Josiah

Hawes.

In FY 2002, the Eastman House received an NEA

Heritage/Preservation grant of $55,000 to support

the touring exhibition Young America: The

Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes and the

accompanying education programs. The Eastman

House is working together with the International

Center of Photography (ICP) of New York City

on the exhibition. 

Daguerreotype was the earliest photographic 

medium in the United States—creating images on 

a polished silver plate instead of film—and Albert

Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes

have long been recognized as the masters of the

medium. More than any other photographers of

the pre-Civil War period, they transformed photography into an art form, eschewing the portrait

and documentary techniques of the day. The two

men experimented with lighting, poses, multiple

exposures, scale, and even motion.

The majority of images and objects to be included 

in the exhibition comes from the Eastman House’s

vast collection. These include portraits of historic 

figures such as Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo

Emerson; unique, for the time, natural portrayals 

of children; events and places in and around

Boston, Massachusetts; and exhilarating artistic

works, such as a landscape with clouds—an image

many thought was impossible at that time because

of the slow exposure time of the daguerreotype. 

The exhibition of approximately 150 images is 

scheduled to appear at both the Eastman House 

and ICP in early 2004, and then will travel to

other national and international venues.

Accompanying the exhibition will be education

programs, such as lectures, gallery talks, panel discussions, K-12 curriculum materials and activity

workbooks for teachers and students, as well as

Web site materials.

Daguerreotype by Southworth & Hawes of unidentified

child with painting of George Washington, 1850. 

Image courtesy of George Eastman House
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ HERITAGE/ PRESERVATION 26

Calista Elders Council Preserve

Yup’ik Tradition in Alaska

The southwestern area of Alaska, including the

Yukon-Kuskokwim delta region, is home to the

largest Alaskan Native tribe, the Yup’ik. Close to

20,000 Yup’ik people make their home along the

delta, with the Yup’ik language being the first 

language of many of the children in the village 

communities.To help the Calista Elders Council of

Anchorage, Alaska preserve the Yup’ik traditions,

in FY 2002 the NEA

awarded the organization a Heritage/

Preservation grant of

$40,000 to support and 

document a key cultural

and artistic Yup’ik

event—the Messenger

Feast. 

The Messenger Feast

was an annual intervillage event during

which two villages took

turns hosting each other

for a three-day celebration with feasting, dancing, and gift exchanges.

In the fall, messengers

were sent to invite the

guest village. A series of

back-and-forth visiting

occurred in which hosts

and guests communicated their desire for specific hard-to-find gifts.

The three-day festival 

in March culminated these exchanges with a 

variety of specific song-and-dance performances,

including “asking songs,” “songs of solicitation,”

and “song of indigestion,” sung to tease guests 

and publicly reprimand them for any misdeeds

committed by community members during the

previous year. These performances have not been

seen in Alaska for decades, as the Messenger Feast

was last held in Toksook Bay in 1979. Elders have

identified the Messenger Feast as the most important of their traditional celebrations.

The Messenger Feast was held in March 2003,

attended by dancers and residents of the guest and

host villages as well as two elder observers from

each of the surrounding 56 remote villages.

Participating in this significant Yup’ik tradition

were Native dance leaders and tradition bearers

from Toksook Bay, St. Marys, Kotlik, and Bethel.

To aid in documentation, well-known photographer James Barker and filmmaker Lenny

Kamerling were invited to participate in the 

project. An anthropologist and translator will

work on translating and processing the information gathered during the feast to create a walkthrough exhibit and bilingual catalog. The exhibition will be shown at Bethel’s Yup’ik Piciryarait

Cultural Center and the Anchorage Museum of

History and Art. 

Having traveled 70 miles across the frozen Norton Sound 

from Stebbins, 34 snow machines pulling sleds loaded with 

gifts arrive in preparation for the Messenger Feast in Kotlik,

Alaska. Photo by James Barker
27 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY

Organizational Capacity

The Organizational Capacity grant category

focuses on developing future arts leaders and

enhancing the skills of those already working in

the field. Funded projects help organizations and

agencies assess their strengths and weaknesses in

bringing the arts to communities throughout the

country. The Arts Endowment awarded grants to

61 organizations in 25 states, as well as the District

of Columbia. 

Bronx Council on the Arts in New York

Provides Funds To Assist Arts Organizations

in Developing Business Plans

The Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) was founded in 1962 to increase the community’s awareness

of and participation in the arts. It nurtures the 

professional development of the performing, 

visual, and literary artists and arts organizations 

in the Bronx. BCA serves a diverse population of

approximately 1.5 million people, primarily of

Latino and African-American background, and

serves roughly 300 member organizations. In FY

2002, BCA received an NEA Organizational

Capacity grant of $78,000 to support the Cultural

Venture Fund, which provides funding and 

consultants to assist Bronx arts organizations in

the development of arts-related entrepreneurial

ventures.

The Cultural Venture Fund is a competitive

grants program that provides both professional

consultant services and grants of up to $25,000 for

the development of an arts-related business plan,

as well as the implementation of certain aspects of

that plan. The fund focuses on identifying and

developing cultural assets and existing resources,

and helping arts organizations develop cultural

ventures that build capacity, growth, and stability. 

The first program cycle of the fund began in fall

2000, and the NEA grant supports continuation of

the program for a second cycle. In the first round,

nine organizations were funded with grants ranging from $10,000 to $25,000. Before the funds

could be released, each organization was required

to develop and submit a business plan to BCA. In

the second round, five of these nine organizations

received additional grants of $10,000 each to help

implement the cultural venture plans. The Side

Street Kids, a local dance company, for example,

used their original $10,000 grant to develop a 

two-pronged earned income plan that involved

creating a promotional video and implementing

dance classes. The second grant of $10,000 will

help them create an advertising campaign and

press kits for their popular musical comedy, 

Latin Madness. 

In addition, grants of up to $25,000 were made 

available for six new applicants. Consultant 

services are being provided to assist organizations

during the business planning stage, to monitor 

and assist with the implementation phase, and to

assist in the preparation of cultural assets inventory. Consultants also conduct roundtable discussions for arts organizations on all aspects of 

arts-related business planning. 

This project will provide the necessary skills to

assure the long-term impact, stabilization, and

self-sufficiency of Bronx arts organizations. 

The Cultural Venture Fund is introducing a 

new management culture conducive to local 

arts organizations’ well-being and growth. 

Side Street Kids is using their grant from the

Bronx Council on the Arts’ Cultural Venture 

Fund to create an advertising campaign for 

their popular musical comedy Latin Madness. 

Photo by Pablo Munoz
GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ARTS ON RADIO AND TELEVISION 28

Arts On Radio And Television

The NEA’s Arts on Radio and Television grants 

support the development, production, and national

distribution of radio and television programs on 

the arts. Priority was given to artistically excellent 

programs that have the potential to reach a significant national audience. In FY 2002, 112 applications were received, of which 56 were funded.

Projects supported include ongoing series, such as

American Masters and Marian McPartland’s

Piano Jazz, and new series such as National Folk

Festival Radio Series and Dance of Life.

Three-Part Television Series Highlights

Latino Art and Culture in U.S.

One of the fastest growing segments of the United

States, Latinos make up 12 percent of the country’s

population, according to the 2000 Census, surpassing African-Americans as the largest minority

group. The Latino culture has become an important part of the country’s traditions as well, 

especially in terms of music, dance, theater, 

language, and food. 

The National Association of Latino Arts and

Culture (NALAC) of San Antonio, Texas received

a FY 2002 grant of $100,000 to support production

of a three-part television series, Visiones: Latino Art

and Culture, which examines the cultural and artistic expression of Latino communities in the United

States. 

Each of the three one-hour episodes highlights a 

different medium: the first looks at Latino theater

tradition and its evolution; the second delves into

the music and dance aspects of Latino life; and the

third examines various forms of Latino art and 

its relationship to social change. The growth of

cultural arts centers, dance and theater companies,

and other cultural institutions—such as GALA

Hispanic Theater in Washington, DC; Ballet

Hispanico in New York; and Galeria de la Raza 

in San Francisco—will be featured in the series.

Latino cultural centers were created to renew and

perpetuate the language, national and regional

dances, musical traditions and songs, and folk 

stories of the Latino community. 

The series will be directed and produced by

Hector Galan, who has created many critically

acclaimed programs on the Latino community,

such as Chicano! History of the Mexican American

Civil Rights Movement, Vaquero: The Forgotten

Cowboy, and Accordion Dreams. NALAC will hold

community outreach screenings of Visiones at

Latino cultural arts centers throughout the United

States, setting the stage for the national PBS

broadcast. 

Visiones will be enhanced by an extensive educational component developed by the Intercultural

Development Research Association, as well as 

an interactive companion Web site and DVD. 

The series is scheduled to be broadcast on PBS 

in the fall of 2003. 

Lalo Guerrero, considered the “Father of

Chicano Music” and 1996 National Medal of

Arts recipient, is one of the artists featured 

in the three-part television documentary series,

Visiones: Latino Art and Culture. Photo courtesy of

Galan Productions, Inc.
29 GRANTS TO ORGANIZATIONS/ ARTS ON RADIO AND TELEVISION

St. Paul Sunday Radio Program Features the

Best of Contemporary Chamber Music 

Although it seems to be getting more and more

difficult to hear new classical music on the radio, 

a series produced by Minnesota Public Radio in 

St. Paul helps keep contemporary classical music

alive and accessible to hundreds of thousands of

Americans. 

An NEA FY 2002 grant of $70,000 supported the

production and national broadcast of the 2002-

2003 season of St. Paul Sunday, a weekly, one-hour

radio series presenting the vitality, diversity, and

excellence of chamber music. The Peabody

Award-winning series features the world’s best

musicians and composers, who are brought into

the recording studio to perform and discuss their

works exclusively for the listening audience.

Heard on 215 radio stations throughout the

United States, the program reaches approximately

465,000 listeners per week. 

The series frequently presents music or musicians

not normally heard on the radio—such as the

Kronos Quartet, who performed and discussed

their radical interpretations of Mexican music;

choro music from Brazil, a complex popular musical form based on improvisation; and the music of

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt—as well as segments on the chamber pieces of composers such as

Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Schumann as

played by new, young chamber musicians. 

St. Paul Sunday plays an important role not only 

in the broad dissemination of classical music in

America, but also in building a deeper understanding and appreciation of classical music as a

living, dynamic art form. The program is committed to presenting the works of the 20th century,

especially music of the past ten years. 

The show is hosted by William McGlaughlin, who

has served as an educator, performer (trombonist

with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Pittsburgh

Symphony), conductor, and composer. He has also

participated in the NEA Continental Harmony

project, composing a work for 800 voices and

orchestra for the community of Missoula,

Montana. His humor, engaging personality, and

depth of knowledge help to create an entertaining

and enlightening discussion with the guest musicians. 

The program’s Web site, www.stpaulsunday.org,

complements the radio series, providing extensive

portraits of the composers, music, and artists for

each of the shows, which can be heard on the Web

site as well. The program also does residencies at

primary and secondary schools in the Midwest,

which includes recording sessions, performances,

and question-and-answer sessions with

McGlaughlin, the musicians, and the students.

Soprano Dina Kuznetsova, pianist Brian Zeger, mezzo-soprano

Marilyn Horne, and baritone Troy Cook, with host William

McGlaughlin (third from left) during the recording of a segment

for the radio series St. Paul Sunday. Photo by Stormi Greener
INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIPS/ LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS 30

The National Endowment for the Arts funds individual artists through its fellowship programs:

Literature, American Jazz Masters, and National Heritage Fellowships. All fellowship recipients must be

U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Literature Fellowships in poetry, prose, and translation are awarded

competitively to writers of exceptional promise. The American Jazz Masters and National Heritage

Fellowships are awarded, based on nominations, to master artists with distinguished careers. 

Literature Fellowships

Unlike most other national awards, the NEA Literature

Fellowships for creative writing have sought to encourage

new work and allow emerging and mid-career writers the

time and means to write. Since 1967, the NEA has awarded

$38 million through these fellowships to more than 2,400

writers, resulting in more than 2,300 books, many of which

are highly acclaimed works of art. Since 1990, 38 of the 56

recipients of the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, and

National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and Fiction

have received Literature Fellowships from the NEA, often

more than 10 years earlier. 

This year’s Literature Fellowships are for Prose (Prose and

Poetry fellowships alternate years). Of the 1,257 applications

received, 36 writers from 21 states and the District of

Columbia were awarded $20,000 grants. In addition to the

creative writing fellowships, every year Literature Fellowships are awarded for translation projects to translate literary

works written in foreign languages into English (alternating

between prose and poetry to coincide with the creative writing fellowships). The art of literary translation has made available to the American public some of the most

important literature in the world, from Fydor Dostoevsky to Umberto Eco. In 2002, 54 applications for

Translation in Poetry grants were received, of which nine translators from six states were awarded grants. 

IndividualFellowships

FISCAL YEAR 2002 

FACTS AND FIGURES

Individual Fellowships

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS:

Number of Grants Awarded: 45

Dollar Amount of Grants Awarded: $820,000

AMERICAN JAZZ MASTERS FELLOWSHIPS:

Number of Grants Awarded: 3

Dollar Amount of Grants Awarded: $60,000

NATIONAL HERITAGE FELLOWSHIPS:

Number of Grants Awarded: 13

Dollar Amount of Grants Awarded: $130,000
31 INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIPS/ LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS

Adrian, Chris

Norfolk, VA

Allen, Mary

Iowa City, IA

Antrim, Donald E.

Brooklyn, NY

Bender, Karen E.

New York, NY

Block, Ronald D.

North Platte, NE

Brockmeier, Kevin

Little Rock, AR

Budnitz, Judith

New York, NY

Chadwick, Cydney Marie

Petaluma, CA

Clark, George

Lafayette, LA

Doenges, Judith A.

Fort Collins, CO

Doerr, Anthony

Bosie, ID

Eggers, Paul Samuel

Forest Ranch, CA

Franzen, Jonathan

New York, NY

Hendrickson, Paul J.

Takoma Park, MD

Hill, Ingrid M.

Iowa City, IA

Hodgen, Christie

Louisville, KY

Hurd, Barbara

Frostburg, MD

Jones, Stephen

Lubbock, TX

Klam, Matthew

Washington, DC

Klimasewiski, Marshall N.

St. Louis, MO

Labiner, Norah

Minneapolis, MN

Montemarano, Nicholas

Warrensburg, MO

Mulligan-Webb, Sheila

Gettysburg, PA

Novakovich, Josip A.

Blue Creek, OH

Paola, Suzanne

Bellingham, WA

Paterniti, Michael

Portland, ME

Roorbach, William F.

Farmington, ME

Schmidtt, Richard

Sparr, FL

Searcy, David

Dallas, TX

Sherrill, Kenneth Steven

Altoona, PA

Skibell, Joseph F.

Atlanta, GA

Small, Catherine

Kirkland, WA

Sullivan, Robert

Brooklyn, NY

Varallo, Anthony

Yorklyn, DE

Waters, Mary Yukari

Long Beach, CA

Wysong, Maurice Brennen

Geneva, NY

Literature Fellowships—Prose: Excerpt from “Circling the Hondo” (short story)

by Mary Yukari Waters

from the collection, The Laws of Evening,

Scribner, 2003

Used by permission of the author

Several days before her sixty-fifth birthday,

Mrs. Kimura officially relinquished her position as lady of the house. She did this during a

natural break in which water was coming to a

boil for that evening’s somen noodles. Her

daughter-in-law, in anticipation of the ceremony, had already taken off her apron. The entire

process – the mutual bows, the long-rehearsed

gracious phrases -- lasted but five minutes, with

only a slight sourness on Mrs. Kimura’s part.

Mrs. Kimura was past her prime. There was

word on the alley that (to use a local expression) 

a stitch or two was coming loose. Even before

her change in roles, Mrs. Kimura’s eyes had

taken on a vague, inward cast; when greeted by

neighbors at the open-air market, it took her

just a shade too long to respond. Mrs. Kimura

would pay for an expensive aji fillet, the fish

vendor reported, only to walk off without it.

Her five-year old grandson Terao, who had

grown two whole centimeters that summer,

boasted that Grandma sometimes mistook him

for his father. Maa maa, the neighbors could

only imagine what went on in that household.

It had not been this hot and muggy in years.

“Must be the global warming effect,” was

Kanayagi District’s greeting of choice that summer. Cicadas shrilled up in the ginkgo trees

whose leaves, sticky with dust, cast slow-stirring shadows on the pavement. Moss pushed

up through cracks in the asphalt, where housewives tossed out buckets of water to cool the

alley when the sun went down.

“It’s all this humidity, that’s what it is,” 

Mrs. Kimura told her son Jiro at dinner. “It

plays on everybody’s mind! Ne, who can

remember anything in all this heat!”

“Soh soh,” he agreed from behind the

evening paper. He turned a page. His wife,

Harumi, shot her an inscrutable glance but said

nothing.

“It gives me strange dreams at night, even,” 

Mrs. Kimura said.

While she was lady of the house, Mrs.

Kimura had rarely dreamed. Now she awoke

each morning engulfed in some residual mood,

which spread over the day like an expanse of 
INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIPS/ LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS 32

Excerpt from The Bird Is Gone (novel)

by Stephen Jones

Used by permission of the author

LP Deal, five-ten in boots, but then he can’t wear

boots at work, either, as part of his job is traipsing

down the alleys to retrieve busted pins, motionless

balls, the occasional beer bottle. Once a prosthetic

arm. Fool’s Hip gives mercy strikes if your arm

falls off mid-bowl, but the limit is three per game;

some of the veterans were taking advantage. LP

tried wearing a pair of the house moccasins when

he first signed on, hand-sewn the old way, from

the soft leather interior of thousands of abandoned

golf bags, but found he couldn’t stand up on the

waxed lanes. It was funny for a while, but then he

had work to do. Now he wears simple canvas basketball shoes – standard Indian issue - dingy grey

at the toes from mopping afterhours, and monochromatic coveralls, once brown but long since

gone tan, from washing them every night in the

dishwasher with the last load of the night, steam

filling the room, scouring his lungs. Sometimes,

standing there naked and blurry, he sings, his

voice resounding off the stainless steel kitchen,

over the polished counter, spilling out into the

hardwood lanes, but then other times he just stares

at his indistinct reflection, the roadburn all down

his left side expanding in the heat. 

On his application for employment, under

Tribal Affiliation, he checked Anasazi—a box he

had to draw himself—and under the story and 

circumstances of his name, he recounted what he

could remember of the Skin Parade fourteen years

ago, when he was twelve. Him and his mom had

been hunting and gathering at the supermart in

Hoopa, California when the wall of television sets

said it, that the Dakotas were Indian again, look

out, and three weeks and two and a half cars later,

LP and his mom rolled across the Little Missouri

at Camp Crook with nearly four million other

Indians. It wasn’t the Little Missouri anymore,

though, but something hard to pronounce, in

Lakota. The grass was still black then, from the

fires. When LP and his mom ran out of gas they

just coasted through town, and when they finally

rolled to a stop, it was in front of a record store,

florescent letters splashed onto the plate glass. For

a moment LP could have been either LP Deal or

Vinyl Daze, but then in a rush of nostalgia his

mom took the second name. Within a week the

guys at the bar were calling her VD. LP didn’t get

it until years later, months after he’d lost track of

her at one of the pandances, and by then he was

old enough to pretend not to care. 

He did cut his hair off when he got home that

night, though, part of the Code, and hasn’t let it

grow back yet, wears it blocked off at the collar

instead, muskrat-slick on top. His right hand is

forever greasy from smoothing it back, out of his

eyes. Mary Boy, LP’s boss, offered him a hairnet in

passing once, but LP declined: by then he’d grown

accustomed to the ducking motion necessary to

smooth it down. Had come to depend on it, even,

as cover for leaning down to the inside of his left

wrist, speaking into the microphone carefully

band-aided there, its delicate lead snaking up his

arm, embracing his shattered ribcage, plugging

into the wafer-thin recording unit tucked into the

inner pocket of his overalls. 

calm and deepening water. Sometimes no details

remained, but other times she could vaguely link

her emotion to some throw-away instant from her

past: the play of late-afternoon sunlight in the

maple trees of a schoolyard, or a certain way her

late husband’s shadow would fall upon the wall,

almost twenty years ago, when he went over

finances in the evening. 
33 INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIPS/ LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS

Excerpt from A Place to Live and Other Selected

Essays of Natalia Ginzburg

Seven Story Press, 2002

Translated from Italian by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Used by permission of the author

In October of 1944 I came to Rome to find work.

My husband had died the previous winter. In

Rome there was a publishing house where he had

worked for years. The publisher was away in

Switzerland at the time, but the firm had resumed

business right after the liberation of Rome, and I

thought that if I asked, they would give me a job.

The prospect of asking was burdensome, however,

because I thought they would be hiring me out of

pity, as I was a widow with children to support. I

would have liked someone to give me a job without knowing me, on the basis of my skills. The

trouble was that I had no skills.

I had brooded over all this during the months

of the German occupation, which I spent in the

country, in Tuscany, with my children. The war

had passed through there, followed by the usual

silent aftermath, until finally, in the quiet countryside and the villages thrown into turmoil, the

Americans arrived. We moved to Florence, where

I left the children with my parents and went on to

Rome.

I wanted to work because I had no money.

True, if I had remained with my parents I could

have managed. But the idea of being supported by

my parents was also very burdensome, and

besides, I wanted to make a home for myself and

my children again. 

We hadn’t had a place of our own for a long time.

During those last months of the war, we lived with

relatives and friends, or in convents and hotels.

Driving to Rome in a car that stalled every halfhour, I dallied with fantasies of adventurous jobs,

such as being a governess or covering crime for a

newspaper. The major obstacle to my career plans

was the fact that I didn’t know how to do anything. I had never taken a degree, having dropped

out when I failed Latin (a subject no one ever

failed back then). I didn’t know any languages

except a little French, and I didn’t know how to

type. Aside from caring for my children, doing

housework very slowly and ineptly, and writing

novels, I had never done a thing in my life.

Moreover, I was very lazy.

My laziness didn’t run to sleeping late in the

morning—I have always awakened at dawn, so

that getting up was no problem—but to losing an

infinite amount of time idling and daydreaming.

As a result, I had never been able to complete any

studies or projects. I told myself the time had come

to uproot this weakness. Applying for work at the

publishing house, where they would take me on

out of pity and understanding, suddenly seemed

the most logical, practical idea, even though their

motives would be painful to me. Just around that

time I had read a beautiful book called Jeunesse

sans Dieu, by Aden di Norvath, an author I knew

nothing about except that he died young, hit by a

falling tree while leaving a movie house in Paris. I

thought that as soon as I began work at the publishers I would translate this book, which I loved,

and have them bring it out.

Batki, John J.

Syracuse, NY

To support the translation from Hungarian

of Geza Ottlik’s novel Buda. 

Batt, Herbert

Buffalo, NY

To support the translation from Chinese of

Horatio Alger Comes to China, a collection of

short stories by different authors about the

self-made person. 

Bononno, Robert 

New York, NY

To support the translation from French of

Seven Years in the Life of a Woman: Isabelle

Eberhardt, Letters and Journals. 

Felstiner, Jr., Louis John

Stanford, CA

To support the translation from French of

the collected correspondence from 1951-

1970 between poet Paul his wife, French

artist Giséle Celan-Lestrange. 

Frye, David L. 

Ann Arbor, MI

To support the translation from Spanish of

El Periquillo Sarniento (The Mangy Parrot)

by Mexican writer José Joaquin Fernández

de Lizardi. 

Merrill, Christi Ann 

Charlottesville, VA

from Hindi and Rajasthani of selections

from Vijay Dan Detha’s Baton ri Phulwari

(A Garden of Tales).

Schwartz, Lynne Sharon

New York, NY

To support the translation from Italian of a

collection of essays and memoirs by Natalia

Ginzburg.

Sengupta, Sagaree

Madison, WI

To support the translation from Hindi of

Ek naukrani ki diary (The Diary of an Indian

Maidservant), a novel by Krishna Baldev

Vaid. 

Valentino, Russell 

Iowa City, IA

To support the translation from 

Serbo-Croatian of Predrag Matvejevi’s

Between Exile and Asylum: An Eastern

Epistolary. 

Translation Projects In Prose
INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIPS/ AMERICAN JAZZ MASTERS FELLOWSHIPS 34

American Jazz Masters

Fellowships

“Jazz lives at the very center of the American 

vernacular,” A.B. Spellman, deputy chairman at

the NEA and author of Four Lives in the Bebop

Business, had written in the introduction to the

NEA publication American Jazz Masters

Fellowships: 1982-2002. “The American Jazz

Masters Fellowships program was created to say 

to jazz musicians that their government values the

way that they keep our culture rich by producing

such fabulous music.” These fellowships honor 

living jazz masters for their artistic excellence and

impact on the music field. Named each year since

1982, the NEA American Jazz Masters form a veritable jazz hall of fame, including such luminous

past members as Dizzy Gillespie, Ornette

Coleman, Marian McPartland, and Ella

Fitzgerald. This year’s recipients of the $20,000

awards, presented at the annual International

Association for Jazz Education conference, were 

saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath, percussionist Elvin Jones, and vocalist Abbey Lincoln.

Jimmy Heath,

Saxophonist/Composer

Along with his brothers—Percy, a bassist and

American Jazz Master

Fellowship recipient,

and drummer Albert

“Tootie”—Jimmy Heath

has had a profound

impact on today’s jazz.

Playing early in his

career with such legends

as Howard McGhee,

Benny Golson, and

Dizzy Gillespie, Heath’s

versatile performance

style on tenor saxophone, combined with his outstanding writing and arranging abilities, established him as a unique jazz artist. He has composed more than 100 original works and continues

to perform with his brothers and other jazz greats,

such as Wynton Marsalis. He currently serves on

the board of the Thelonious Monk Institute of

Jazz. 

Elvin Jones, Percussionist

Like Heath, Elvin Jones

was also born into a jazz

family: his brother Hank

plays piano and was a

1989 American Jazz

Master, and his brother

Thad was an accomplished trumpet and

flugelhorn player. Jones

established his unique

polyrhythmic percussive

style during his six-year stint with the John

Coltrane Quartet in the 1960s. In his later solo

career, his complex performances greatly influenced other artists, particularly in his improvisation. In addition to session work, Jones tours

extensively with his group, Jazz Machine, and 

frequently performs free for schools and other

institutions. 

Abbey Lincoln, Vocalist

Born Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago,

Lincoln developed a distinctive vocal style 

influenced by Billie Holiday and Louis

Armstrong. Her critically acclaimed recordings

include Abbey Sings Billie, Over the Years and 

the collaboration with her then husband, 1984

American Jazz Master Max Roach, Freedom 

Now Suite. She has performed with such greats 

as Benny Carter, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis,

and Stan Getz in addition to Roach. Lincoln also 

is an actor, teacher, and poet. Her emotionally

honest, mature, and committed style is still being

heard as she enjoys a renewed career and continues to perform and tour with a new trio.

Jimmy Heath.

Photo by John Sann

Abbey Lincoln.

Photo by Mephisto

Elvin Jones. 

Photo by 

Michiko Hoshi
35 INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIPS/ NATIONAL HERITAGE FELLOWSHIPS

National Heritage Fellowships

Since its inception in 1982, the National Heritage

Fellowships have been awarded to 272 artists 

who have dedicated their lives to celebrating 

the nation’s diverse cultural heritage. Previous 

honorees have included bluesman John Lee

Hooker, Dakotah-Hidatsa storyteller Mary Louise

Defender Wilson, duck decoy carver Lem Ward,

and old-time musician Ralph Stanley. 

The 2002 National Heritage Fellowships, the

country’s most prestigious honor in the folk and

traditional arts, were

awarded to 12 artists.

The fellowships

include a one-time

award of $10,000.

Artists who received

the award included

performers, such as

Irish fiddler Kevin

Burke, and craftspeople, such as

Passamaquoddy 

basketmaker Clara

Neptune Keezer.

Several new artistic 

traditions were included in 2002: Buddhist

sand mandala painting,

Sephardic Jewish

music, and New

England contra 

dancing. 

In addition, Jean Ritchie, Appalachian musician

and songwriter, was presented the Bess Lomax

Hawes Award, given to those who have made

major contributions to the excellence, vitality, and 

public appreciation of the folk and traditional 

arts through teaching, collecting, advocacy, and

preservation work. 

Interviews with the 2002 awardees, as well as 

presentations of their work, can be found on the

NEA Web site (www.arts.gov). In addition, a 

publication celebrating the 20th anniversary of the

program is available in the publications section of 

the Web site. 

2002 National Heritage Fellows

Ralph Blizard

Old-Time Fiddler

Blountville, TN

Loren Bommelyn

Tolowa Tradition Bearer

Crescent City, CA

Kevin Burke

Irish Fiddler

Portland, OR

Rose & Francis Cree

Ojibwe Basketmakers/Storytellers

Dunseith, ND

Luderin Darbone/Edwin Duhon

Cajun Guitarist and Fiddler

Sulphur, LA/Westlake, LA

Nadim Dlaikan

Lebanese Nye (Reed Flute) Player

Southgate, MI

David “Honeyboy” Edwards

Blues Guitarist/Singer

Chicago, IL

Flory Jagoda

Sephardic Musician/Composer

Falls Church, VA

Clara Neptune Keezer

Passamaquoddy Basketmaker

Perry, ME

Bob McQuillen

Contra Dance Musician/Composer

Peterborough, NH

Domingo “Mingo” Saldivar

Conjunto Accordionist

San Antonio, TX

Losang Samten

Tibetan Sand Mandala Painter

Philadelphia, PA

Jean Ritchie

Appalachian Musician/Songwriter

Port Washington, NY/Viper, KY

2002 National Heritage Fellow Loren Bommelyn,

Tolowa tradition bearer, performs at the annual 

celebratory concert in Washington, DC. 

Photo by Tom Pich
STATE AND REGIONAL PARTNERSHIPS 36

The National Endowment for the Arts greatly extends its impact through its partnerships with the 56 state

and jurisdictional arts agencies and six multistate regional arts organizations. Forty percent of the NEA’s

grant funds are distributed through these Partnership Agreements, helping support local, state, and regional arts activities for children and adults across the nation. A complete listing of Partnership Agreements in

FY 2002 is available online at www.arts.gov.

State arts agencies used their federal and state appropriated funds in 2002 to promote access to the the best

of America’s cultural heritage through assistance for arts groups and artists, artist residencies, performances

and exhibitions, arts education, programs in the traditional arts, and cultural tourism initiatives among

other projects. 

StateandRegionalPartnerships

FISCAL YEAR 2002

FACTS AND FIGURES

Partnership

Agreements

Dollar Amount of State

Partnership Agreements:

$26,060,200

Dollar Amount of Regional

Partnership Agreements:

$4,743,600

LaTonya Williams and

Octavia Williams (Todich

íi’nii/Náneeshlézhi Táchii’nii

Clans), Sisters, Steamboat,

Arizona, a photo from In the

Fifth World: Portrait of the

Navajo Nation, one of the

exhibitions offered as part 

of the Arizona Commission

on the Arts’ Traveling

Exhibitions Program. 

Photo by Kenji Kawano

Arizona Commission on the Arts 

Provides Access to Visual Arts through

Traveling Exhibitions Program

The Arizona Commission on the Arts received

$665,500 in FY 2002 through its State Partnership

Agreement to forward the NEA goals of access to

the arts for underserved communities, arts education, and artistic excellence. Matching NEA funds

with more than $4 million in state and other

funds, the Commission reached 6.6 million people

through the more than 600 projects it supported. 

One way the Commission provides access to the

arts is through its Traveling Exhibitions Program

(TEP). Since 1967, the Commission has toured

exhibitions of contemporary and historical artworks to communities throughout Arizona and

nationally. The goals of the program have been 

to provide cultural experiences to rural and underserved communities and to facilitate the promotion of quality art and curatorial projects produced

in Arizona on a state and national level. All exhibitions included in the program are selected by a

panel of experts in the art and museum fields on

the basis of artistic quality and appropriateness for

travel.

The rental fees are kept low by covering only 

the basic costs of exhibitions, including loan of 

artwork, labels and wall text, and promotional

materials. By offering engaging, high-quality 

visual arts exhibitions at very affordable prices,

TEP provides substantial savings to museums, 

art centers, libraries, schools, and other venues

across the country. 
37 STATE AND REGIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

The NEA also awarded Partnership Agreements

to six regional arts organizations, created to 

transcend state boundaries and provide access 

to a greater variety of arts experiences, especially

in underserved areas. One of the ways the Arts

Endowment works with the regional arts organizations is through the NEA Regional Touring

Program, which provides assistance for the presentation of touring performing artists and companies, especially in underserved communities. 

In most cases, the evening performances are 

supplemented by educational programs in the

community.

Jazz-Influenced Version of The Nutcracker

Plays in New Hampshire

Ever since hearing a performance of jazz greats

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s arrangement

of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, percussive

dance artist and choreographer Drika Overton wanted to create a tap dance production based upon it.

Percolating the concept for more than a decade,

Overton assembled a top notch team of fellow tap

artists and put together the production entitled

Clara’s Dream, premiering it in 2000 at Plymouth

State College in New Hampshire. The show was a

hit, selling out all performances.

Overton, who teaches dance at the University of

New Hampshire in addition to her dance and 

choreography work, has studied extensively with

such notable tap legends as Jimmy Slyde, Honi

Coles, and Eddie Brown, as well as body musician

Keith Terry and rhythm dancer Kimi Okada. 

Margaret Lawrence, Hopkins Center Director of

Programming at Dartmouth College in Hanover,

New Hampshire decided to engage the quirky

holiday show for December 2001 during its second-year run. The Hopkins Center received the

support of a New England Foundation for the

Arts grant from the New England States Touring

program, part of the NEA Regional Touring

Program, for three evening shows along with

three daytime matinees for public school students.

The Center also produced a study guide for the

school performances. 

“We had three matinees to accommodate young

people from primary and secondary schools and

felt a study guide was the best way to tie the show

to the public school curriculum,” said Lawrence.

“It was an opportunity to teach about jazz music

and tap dance. We also wanted to share the guide

by making it available to the general public

through the Hopkins Center’s Web site.”

The production features many types of dance,

while focusing on the African and Irish influences

on the history of American tap dance. Clara’s

Dream includes such dance styles as the shim

sham, buck and wing, Lindy Hop, variations on

Middle Eastern dance, and BS chorus—a traditional tap chorus that includes time steps, wings,

over-the-tops, and through-the-trenches performed in an uptempo groove.

Clara’s Dream is on its way to becoming a new 

holiday classic, having sold out every show to date.

The work actively sustains the legacy of two of

our truly American art forms: jazz and tap dance,

Old World hybrids born into forms that are now

uniquely American. 

The traditional Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies in the

original Nutcracker was transformed into a beautiful

tango in Clara’s Dream. Photo by Nancy G. Horton
SAVE AMERICA’S TREASURES 38

FISCAL YEAR 2002

FACTS AND FIGURES

Save America’s

Treasures

In FY 2002, NEA funding

for Save America’s

Treasures totaled

$1,614,004.

The National Endowment for the Arts works with other agencies to protect the nation’s threatened 

cultural resources. The program was launched in 1998 by the White House Millennium Council, National

Park Service, National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute

of Museum and Library Services, and the NEA. In FY 2002, the NEA funded 12 grants to nonprofit

organizations for the preservation or conservation of nationally significant collections of cultural artifacts—

such as historical documents, works of art, maps, and journals—that illuminate the history and culture of

the United States. 

SaveAmerica’sTreasures

NEA Assists Preservation of Alan Lomax

Archives, Documenting American’s 

Cultural Heritage 

The son of folklorist John A. Lomax, Alan Lomax

pioneered field recordings of American and world

folk music in the 20th century, documenting the

interweaving currents of history and evolving national life that created the rich cultural legacies of

Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, Cajun country, 

the Southwest, and other distinct areas of this country. In addition, he traveled the world and was often

the first to record the folk and traditional music of

these foreign lands, such as Indonesia, Spain, and

Italy. For his contributions to the culture and music

of America, Lomax received a National Medal of

Arts in 1986. 

When he died in 2002, Lomax left a substantial

archive of writings, photographs, and audio and

video recordings of folk music and dance from many

parts of the United States and the world that he had

collected over 60 years. In FY 2002, the Association

for Cultural Equity in New York City received a

Save America’s Treasures grant of $250,000 to assist

in the preservation of the Alan Lomax Archives. 

The archive focuses on core aesthetic styles and 

traditions nurtured in the backwoods, farms, and

urban neighborhoods of this country, and on the

known and unknown folk masters as well as on 

the elders who are the embodiment and primary

sources of these traditions. The bulk of Lomax’s

taped field recordings were made between 1947 

and 1962, on paper, acetate, and plastic backings,

totaling approximately 1,200 reels of tape recorded 

by Lomax himself and an additional 4,000 reels 

made by his colleagues. Hundreds of hours of 

materials now stored on fragile and deteriorating

media will be copied using the highest possible 

quality analog-to-digital methods. 

Thus far, 600 hours of field recordings have been

preserved and copied and an audio conservator is

assessing the restoration and preservation needs of

another large body of recordings. Copies of the

remastered footage will be housed at the New York

Public Library and regional repositories as well as 

at the Alan Lomax Archives, thereby ensuring the

greatest possible access to scholars and the public.

Sid Hemphill (quills) and

Lucius Smith (banjo) in

Senatobia, Mississippi,

October 1959, two of the

musicians recorded by

Alan Lomax whose

music is being preserved

under the Save America’s

Treasures grant. Photo by

Alan Lomax, Courtesy of

the Alan Lomax Archives
39 LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES/ ACCESSABILTY

In FY 2002, funding

for Leadership

Initiatives totaled

$9,054,380. 

Cleveland Signstage Theatre’s performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

as part of the Deaf Way II International

Arts Festival in Washington, DC. Photo

courtesy of Deaf Way II International 

Arts Festival

LeadershipInitiatives

AccessAbility 

The AccessAbility Office serves as the advocacy

and technical assistance arm of the NEA for older

Americans, individuals with disabilities, and 

people living in institutions and long-term care settings. The Office assists staff, grantees, and applicants in achieving the NEA’s goal of increased

access to the arts for all Americans. The Office’s

efforts include providing technical assistance, such

as convening panels, workshops, and symposia for

arts service groups and organizations, and working

through interagency agreements with other federal

agencies.

The Office received two national awards from the

private sector in 2002: the Telecommunication and

Disability Corporation’s “Arts and Culture Award”

for its work to make the arts fully accessible and the

National Business & Disability Council’s annual

award for NEA’s Careers in the Arts for People

with Disabilities program.

NEA Supports Deaf Way II Arts Festival 

in Washington, DC 

In 1989, the first-ever international Deaf Way

Festival was convened in Washington, DC, where

deaf and hearing-impaired people from around the

world gathered to celebrate their culture and the

arts. More than 10 years later, in July 2002, the 

second Deaf Way Festival was hosted by Gallaudet

University in Washington, DC, attracting more

than 10,000 people from 121 countries. Deaf Way II

included a week-long arts festival—supported by

NEA AccessAbility Office funds through a Careers

in the Arts Leadership Initiative—that brought

more than 400 artists from places as far away as

India, China, and Ethiopia to perform and exhibit

art of the highest aesthetic level, which offered

many insights into the human experience.

People who are deaf or hearing-impaired represent

the largest disability group in the country, more

than 28 million Americans. The arts festival helped

bring more prominence and attention to the deaf

community’s culture by reaching out to the general

population through their art. It took place at venues

throughout DC, including performances and exhibitions at the John F. Kennedy Center for the

Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, the

National Zoo, and Gallaudet University, a university designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. 

From visual artists such as Chinese watercolor

artists Ko Nam, Shu Xiaoming, Gao Xiaodi, and

Ma Yuxiang to the Cleveland Signstage Theatre 

to the master of contemporary Indian dance Astad

Deboo, deaf performers showcased their art to

large, enthusiastic crowds during the festival. 

Through its Leadership Initiatives, the National Endowment for the Arts develops and implements 

projects that address special needs to advance the arts in American life. These initiatives are frequently

undertaken in collaboration with nonprofit organizations or other federal agencies. Some of the many

excellent projects under this category are highlighted in the pages that follow. 
LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES/ FOLK & TRADITIONAL ARTS INFRASTRUCTURE INITIATIVE 40

Folk & Traditional Arts

Infrastructure Initiative

For more than 20 years, the NEA has helped to 

create and support a network of folk and traditional arts programs, many of which are run by

state arts agencies and regional arts organizations.

The Folk & Traditional Arts Infrastructure

Initiative, now in its fourth year, addresses the

need to strengthen the infrastructure for these 

programs. Arts Endowment funds go toward

technical assistance, research, programming, and

documentation in the folk and traditional arts. 

In FY 2002, 32 grants were awarded to organizations in 29 states as well as Guam and the District

of Columbia for a total of $840,000. An additional

ten organizations were awarded grants in this 

category for a total of $300,000 under Challenge

America Leadership Initiatives. 

Louisiana Division of the Arts Offers

Education Program on State’s Folk Arts

The Louisiana Voices Folklife in Education

Project provides teachers and other K-12 

education programmers with tools for teaching

Louisiana folklife—including teaching materials,

research strategies, concepts, and content—

via the Louisiana Voices Educator’s Guide at

www.louisianavoices.org. Louisiana Voices supports

educators with instruction and assistance on the

use of these tools and provides forums through

which individuals may share information and

offer evaluative feedback. In FY 2002, the

Louisiana Division of the Arts received a $35,000

NEA Folk & Traditional Arts Infrastructure

Initiative grant to support the continuation of 

the project. 

Louisiana has a unique array of cultures and 

traditions that not many states in America share:

African-American, Caribbean, Cajun, NativeAmerican, and European, just to name a few.

Educators in Louisiana have the unique opportunity to augment their curricula with these traditions to help students discover the diverse cultures

and arts around them. The goal of the online 

education guide is to provide an academically

sound basis for the study of culture and art using

the students’ own community traditions. 

The study units of the guide include extensive

Internet links to videos, music, and stories related

to the rich Louisianan culture, marrying the traditional and the technological. 

Students have responded enthusiastically to the

folklife content—such as stories, music, dance,

beliefs, and artifacts—facilitating the integration

of the material into Social Studies, English, Art,

Foreign Language, and Science content standards.

The education guide also allows students to interact with the culture around them, through interviewing folk artists, analyzing the folk arts’ impact

on their community, and other similar assignments. Classroom instruction is further augmented by folk artists visiting classes and sharing their

experiences and talents with the students. With

such a wealth of culture right in their own community, students can learn about the importance 

of artistic traditions, experience the diversity of

culture around them, and be better connected to

the folk customs that shape their lives. 

Gladys Leblanc Clark, 1997 NEA National Heritage Fellow, of

Duson, Louisiana, is a master spinner and weaver in the Acadian

style, one of the important local traditions presented in the Folklife

in Education project. Photo by Nicholas R. Spitzer
41 LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES/ INTERAGENCY PARTNERSHIPS

Interagency Partnerships

The NEA works with more than 20 other federal

agencies on projects that provide opportunities for

thousands of Americans to experience quality arts

programming throughout the country. These joint

projects help to expand the reach and impact of 

federal arts dollars, and provide a national model

for the types of partnerships the NEA encourages

at the state and local levels. Federal partnership

programs range from after-school arts education

for youth, recognized annually by the Coming Up

Taller Awards, to arts initiatives in rural communities under the NEA-USDA Forest Service Arts

and Rural Community Assistance Initiative. 

Conference on Building Creative Economies

Held in Asheville, North Carolina

Appalachia is a large, mountainous region, following the Appalachian Mountains from southern

New York to northern Mississippi and including

parts of ten other states (and all of West Virginia).

Many of the counties of this area are economically

distressed, remote, rural areas in need of new

strategies to revitalize their communities. It was

with this in mind that the NEA partnered with

the Appalachian Regional Commission and Kenan

Institute for the Arts at the North Carolina School

of the Arts to hold the conference “Building

Creative Economies: The Arts, Entrepreneurship,

and Sustainable Development” in Asheville, North

Carolina in April 2002. 

More than 300 artists and representatives from

nonprofit organizations, state and local arts 

agencies, and federal, state, and local government

agencies came to the conference to discuss how 

the arts can factor into economic development,

encourage more entrepreneurial activities by artists

and arts organizations, and determine how to

increase access to economic development funds.

Specifically, participants shared information about

the successful use of arts and heritage in revitalizing Appalachian communities. This provided an

opportunity for those community leaders in

Appalachia and other rural areas, who are still

attempting to develop their economies through 

the arts, to see the strategies and options available

to them, and learn about those that were successful

in other communities. 

U.S. Representatives Charles H. Taylor and Cass

Ballenger (a member of the National Council on

the Arts), both from North Carolina, spoke about

the importance of the arts in boosting local

economies. Success stories, such as HandMade in

America establishing Western North Carolina as a

major leader for handmade craft objects and the

Southern Highland Craft Guild’s operation of the

Blue Ridge Parkway’s Folk Art Center, were

shared in various sessions during the three-day

conference. Also discussed were ways other communities could create similar projects and organizations, such as identifying their cultural assets

and determining how to integrate those into community economic development plans. The example of Asheville was eye-opening: more than $60 

million of economic activity in FY 2000 related to

arts events, supporting 2,100 full-time jobs and

generating $1.7 million in local government revenue and $3.9 million in state revenue. 

A publication of the results of the conference, 

including successful case studies and staples for

developing a local creative economy, was published in March 2003 by Americans for the Arts

through a partnership with NEA. 

Bill Strickland Jr., founder and president of

Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, addresses the

Building Creative Economies conference. 

Photo by Anna Vogler
LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES/ INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES 42

International Exchanges

To share the excellence and diversity of American

arts, the NEA supports international activities that

showcase our nation’s arts abroad and also enrich

the artists’ work through new experiences with

different cultures. The NEA works with CEC

International Partners on ArtsLink, an exchange

program with Central and Eastern Europe,

Russia, the Newly Independent States, and the

Baltics. Another program, the Fund for U.S.

Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions,

administered by Arts International, supports the

participation of American artists in international

festivals and exhibitions across the globe. The

NEA’s partners in the Fund are the U.S.

Department of State, the Rockefeller Foundation,

and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The NEA also

works with the Japan/U.S. Friendship

Commission on the U.S./Japan Creative Artists’

Program, which provides six-month residencies in

Japan for artists in any discipline to explore aspects 

of Japanese culture that are relevant to their 

creative work. 

U.S./Mexico Regional Arts Organizations

Alliance Nurtures Artistic Exchange 

Between Countries

In 2002, the NEA launched a special initiative in

collaboration with Mexico’s National Fund for

Culture and the Arts and the U.S.-Mexico Fund

for Culture to create a network of U.S. and

Mexican regional arts organizations; out of this

initiative, the U.S.-Mexico Binational Alliance of

Regional Arts Organizations was created. The

Binational Alliance operates on the premise that

the regional arts organization structures in the two

countries have certain similarities that are well

suited to act as catalysts to bring about sustained

arts exchange across the border. 

The Binational Alliance held its landmark meeting to identify potential projects in May 2002 with

six participating U.S. regional arts organizations

and five from Mexico. Twenty-eight potential

projects were proposed in arts education, dance,

folk arts, music, and visual arts exhibitions. The

NEA provided modest seed money of $25,000 to

each of the six U.S. regional arts organizations’

Partnership Agreements to support the projects.

The Mexican organizations also received $25,000

each from a variety of sources. 

One project initiated by the May meeting was a 

conference in Mexico of U.S. and Mexican puppetry artists and organizations in April 2003. With

support from the New England Foundation for

the Arts and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, 20

New England and Mid-Atlantic puppetry artists

and presenters met with a large contingency of

Mexican puppeteers in Mexico City for three days.

During the conference, 17 Mexican puppet companies put on performances for their American

guests. Early outcomes from the trip included a

better understanding of the puppetry form in the

two countries and possibilities for artist collaborations, identification of Mexican puppetry companies that may be engaged to tour in the Mid

Atlantic, and collaboration on articles in Puppetry

Journal, the national publication for puppeteers in

America, and Inside Arts, the publication of the

Association of Performing Arts Presenters. 

The puppets of Teatro Tinglado, one of the Mexican

puppet companies who participated in a conference of

U.S. and Mexican puppetry artists and organizations

supported by the U.S.-Mexico Binational Alliance of

Regional Arts Organizations. Photo by Rebecca Blunk
43 LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES/ MAYORS’ INSTITUTE ON CITY DESIGN

Mayors’ Institute on City Design

In 1986, the NEA Design Arts Program established the Mayors’ Institute on City Design to help

mayors throughout the country develop an appreciation for the importance of their roles as designers of their cities. The Institute involves sessions in

which small groups of mayors and design professionals discuss civic design issues related to their

respective cities. The design professionals often

include not only architects and planners, but also

developers, preservationists, bankers, and community activists—all important participants in a 

successful civic design. 

The Institute now sponsors six annual three-day

sessions and is administered in partnership with

the American Architectural Foundation and the

U.S. Conference of Mayors. Since its inception, the

Mayors’ Institute has provided design resources 

for more than 600 mayors of American cities.

Mayors Discuss Urban Design Issues at

Annual Sessions and Publish Books on Urban

Strategies and Excellence in City Design

The first sessions in FY 2002 of the Mayors’

Institute on City Design was held in October 

2001 in La Jolla, California and New Orleans,

Louisiana. Fourteen mayors participated in 

these two sessions to discuss development 

projects in their cities. The mayors were

from larger cities such as Kansas City,

Missouri and Sacramento, California

and from smaller ones such as

Brownsville, Texas and Augusta,

Georgia.

Issues discussed included a riverfront

park in Sacramento; a 23-acre waterfront landfill site in Bradenton, Florida;

rehabilitation of historic train stations

and the surrounding area in

Hattiesburg, Mississippi and Macon,

Georgia; revitalization of a historic

neighborhood in Columbus, Missouri;

and creation of a heritage trail linking

downtown Brownsville with a historic

battlefield. Additional sessions during

FY 2002 were held at University of

Texas in Austin and the National Institute in

Charleston, South Carolina in April 2002 and 

the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 

June 2002. 

In addition to holding the annual conferences, 

the Mayors’ Institute—in collaboration with the

NEA—printed two publications in 2002 through

the Princeton Architectural Press on topics particularly important to mayors. The Mayors’ Institute:

Excellence in City Design provides an overview 

of the Mayors’ Institute, describing the various

sub-disciplines involved in city design, detailing

successful case studies, and offering tools and

methods for achieving excellence in city design.

The publication is an important resource in understanding and successfully using city design to

improve the way cities and communities are 

conceived and built.

The other publication, Schools for Cities: Urban

Strategies, focuses on identifying ways in which

schools can operate as catalysts for community

redevelopment. A result of a Mayors’ Institute

conference in March 2000, the publication provides

essays on the importance of schools, enhancing the

urban community not just providing a building

for pedagogical routines, as well as case studies

involving historical schools in downtown centers,

school reuse in suburban settings, and the design

of new school buildings. 

The approach to Los Angeles International Airport, one of the

examples of improved street design presented in the Mayors’

Institute on City Design publication, Excellence in City Design.

Photo courtesy of Selbert Perkins Design
LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES/ CHAMBER MUSIC RURAL RESIDENCIES PROGRAM 44

Chamber Music Rural

Residencies Program

The Chamber Music Rural Residencies program

was created in 1992 through a partnership between

the Arts Endowment and Chamber Music

America to provide access to classical chamber

music to underserved communities. The program

is also supported by the Helen F. Whitaker Fund

and JPMorgan Chase. Chamber ensembles are

placed in selected rural communities for several

months, performing, teaching, and providing a

range of community-based activities.

Communities wishing to enhance the musical

lives of their citizens participate in and support 

the residencies while the chamber music artists

involved develop their repertoire as well as 

performing and teaching experiences. Through

the program, more than 35,000 students were

introduced to chamber music through classroom

assemblies and workshops in FY 2002. In addition,

more than 200 community concerts took place,

reaching an estimated audience of more than

25,000 individuals, many of whom were not 

regular concert attendees or previously familiar

with chamber music.

Fry Street Quartet Takes Up Residency in

Hickory, North Carolina

The Western Piedmont Symphony in Hickory,

North Carolina hosted the Fry Street Quartet 

during their three-year residency in the community as part of the NEA’s Chamber Music Rural

Residencies program. Founded in 1997, the Fry

Street Quartet took their name from a street in

Chicago where they lived at the time.

The residency clearly paid off for the Quartet.

Over the three-year period, the Quartet developed

and honed their sound, winning first prize in two

national competitions. Following the completion

of their three-year residency in May 2002, the

Quartet was sponsored by Carnegie Hall and the

U.S. Department of State to participate in a 

concert tour of the Balkan States as ambassadors

of the Carnegie Fellows Program. They toured

composer J. Mark Scearce’s first quartet, Y2K,

written specifically for them. In September 2002,

they became the Faculty String Quartet in

Residence at Utah State University. Their debut

recording of works by Janácek and Beethoven was

issued in December 2001. 

The residency paid off for the community as well.

The Quartet conducted several types of outreach

in addition to their performances. They held master classes both to ensembles and individual string 

players, enhancing the skills of the next generation 

of musicians. Their work with elementary schools,

targeting grades 1-6, involved identification of

instruments, discussing how melodies are passed

between the instruments and how the string quartet functions as a group, and providing musical

examples of string quartet masterpieces to illustrate the discussions. The Quartet also performed

what they called “informances,” in which they

would engage audiences by discussing the background of the music in addition to playing it. 

Support from the community was strong: 

the transformation from few attendees at the

Symphony’s Classical Chamber Music Series

before the Quartet’s residency to sold out concerts

in the spring of 2002 demonstrated the overwhelming desire for this music in Hickory and its

surroundings. Perhaps the most satisfying legacy

for the Fry Street Quartet is that the community 

is working toward creating a permanent string

quartet through the Symphony—one of the few

towns of 35,000 people who could boast of having

their own string quartet. 

Violinist Rebecca McFaul of the Fry Street Quartet conducting 

a lecture demonstration during their Rural Residency in Hickory,

North Carolina. Photo by Kingmond Young

ˆ
45 POLICY RESEARCH & ANALYSIS

The Office of Policy Research & Analysis (OPRA)

supports the Chairman and NEA staff with statistical and other information about the agency’s

applications and awards, including grantee and

applicant profiles, the distribution of awards by

state and artistic discipline, and analysis of overall

trends in NEA funding. The Office’s Research

Division issues periodic reports on larger issues

affecting artists and arts organizations that are 

distributed to Congress, the arts community, and

the public. These reports and analyses help shape

changes in the NEA’s grantmaking policies. 

One of OPRA’s projects is a geographic database 

that provides a comprehensive picture of the broad

reach of NEA-supported activities. In FY 2002,

the NEA awarded more than 2,200 grants and

other awards. Through touring and outreach

activities in communities beyond grantee homebase locations, these grants resulted in approximately 7,200 additional activities in approximately

4,000 different communities.

In 2002, the Research Division continued to 

support work on several major projects to improve

the quantity and quality of data and analyses on

the condition and needs of individual artists, arts

organizations, and arts audiences.

The Division oversaw the completion of the

NEA’s fifth national arts participation survey. 

The 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the

Arts (SPPA) was conducted by the Census Bureau

as a supplement to the Current Population Survey

in August 2002. The Division sponsored a research

report and research note based on the results of the

2002 SPPA, released in July 2003. The research

report not only summarizes the survey results but

also makes comparisons to the prior surveys over

the last 2 decades (1982 and 1992). Also funded in

2002 were eight research monographs, which will

provide more in-depth analysis of topics such as

differences in participation by age and geographic

location.

In 2002, the Division published Research Report

#43, Changing the Beat: A Study of the Worklife of

Jazz Musicians. This report described a study 

of jazz artists in four U.S. cities: Detroit, New

Orleans, New York, and San Francisco, conducted

by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at

Columbia University. The study included two 

surveys—the first was a telephone survey of a 

random sample of musicians (totaling 2,500) in the

four cities who were members of the American

Federation of Musicians, and the second was a

personal interview survey that used a communitybased sampling technique called Response Driven

Sampling (RDS). RDS was used in each city to

allow jazz artists to identify other jazz musicians

to survey and therefore penetrate more deeply into

the jazz community. This project provides a context that documents how the jazz community is

organized in each of the study cities, the condition

of jazz artists in each location, the resources and

support systems employed in each site, as well as

the challenges faced by jazz artists in each community. A detailed needs assessment created from

comments from the jazz artists themselves is also

part of the report.

PolicyResearch & Analysis
FINANCIAL SUMMARY 46

SUMMARY OF FUNDS AVAILABLE1 FY 2002

Program and State Grant Funds2 $78,835,000

Challenge America 17,000,000

Total Federal Appropriations $95,835,000

Nonfederal Gifts3 00176,458

Interagency Transfers3 2,365,504

Unobligated Balance, Prior Year3 2,150,671

TOTAL FUNDS AVAILABLE $100,527,633

SUMMARY OF FUNDS OBLIGATED 

Challenge America

Access to the Arts $ 2,272,000

Positive Alternatives for Youth 2,265,000

Community Arts Development 1,415,000

State and Regional Partnership Grants 6,760,000

Leadership Initiatives 3,550,000

Grants to Organizations

Creativity 16,670,000

Arts Learning4 7,882,000

Access 4,375,390

Heritage/Preservation 3,452,000

Organizational Capacity 2,762,000

Arts on Radio & Television 3,860,000

Individual Fellowships

Literature Fellowships 820,000

American Jazz Masters Fellowships 60,000

National Heritage Fellowships 130,000

State & Regional Partnership Agreements5 31,655,846

Save America’s Treasures 1,614,004

Leadership Initiatives

AccessAbility 551,602

Folk & Traditional Arts Infrastructure Initiative 840,000

International Exchanges 1,080,000

Other Initiatives 6,582,778

TOTAL FUNDS OBLIGATED6 $98,597,620

FinancialSummary

1 Excludes salaries and expenses and program 

support funds.

2 The FY 2002 appropriation includes $25,118,000

for support of state arts agencies and regional 

arts organizations and $6,805,000 for support

through the underserved communities set-aside,

and reflects reprogramming of $915,000.

3 Only grantmaking funds, including unobligated 

commitments totaling $516,061.

4 Includes $2,082,000 of NEA grantmaking funds

obligated under State and Regional Partnership

Agreements for art learning activities.

5 Includes awards to the National Assembly of

State Arts Agencies for activities providing services

to the field.

6 Program obligations reflect FY 2002 transactions

and in some cases may differ from final allocations

due to variations in the obligations of prior year

funds or receipts of gifts and funds from other 

agencies. 
47 APPROPRIATIONS HISTORY

Fiscal Year Total Funds

1966 $ 2,898,308

1967 $ 8,475,692

1968 $ 7,774,291

1969 $ 8,456,875

1970 $ 9,055,000

1971 $ 16,420,000

1972 $ 31,480,000

1973 $ 40,857,000

1974 $ 64,025,000

1975 $ 80,142,000

1976 $ 87,455,000

1976T* $ 35,301,000

1977 $ 99,872,000

1978 $123,850,000

1979 $149,585,000

1980 $154,610,000

1981 $158,795,000

1982 $143,456,000

1983 $143,875,000

1984 $162,223,000

1985 $163,660,000

1986 $158,822,240

1987 $165,281,000

1988 $167,731,000

1989 $169,090,000

1990 $171,255,000

1991 $174,080,737

1992 $175,954,680

1993 $174,459,382

1994 $170,228,000

1995 $162,311,000

1996 $ 99,470,000

1997 $ 99,494,000

1998 $ 98,000,000

1999 $ 97,966,000

2000 $ 97,627,600

2001 $104,769,000

2002 $115,220,000

* In 1976, the Federal government changed the beginning of the fiscal year from

July 1 to October 1, hence the 1976 Transition (T) Quarter.

AppropriationsHistory

Fiscal Years 1966 – 2002
CREDITS 48

Credits

2002 Annual Report published by:

National Endowment for the Arts

Office of Communications

Felicia Knight, Director

Don Ball, Publications Manager

November 2003

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

and information. Special thanks to Christy

Crytzer for assistance in editing, contacting

grantees, and obtaining materials for the

report. 

This annual report, as well as all grant and

panel information for FY 2002, can be accessed

electronically at the NEA Web site:

www.arts.gov.

National Endowment for the Arts

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20506-0001

(202) 682-5400

2002 Annual Report designed by:

New Vision Communications, 

Alexandria, VA

Cover Photo: Luke Morneau, 6, of

Biddeford, Maine, joins Nathan Williams of

Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas onstage

during the 64th National Folk Festival in

Bangor, Maine. The National Endowment

for the Arts supported the National Folk

Festival through a Challenge America grant

to the Eastern Maine Development

Corporation. Photo by Kevin Bennett, 

courtesy of Bangor Daily News. 

Voice/TTY: (202) 682-5496

For individuals who are deaf or 

hard-of-hearing.

Individuals who do not use 

conventional print may contact 

the Arts Endowment’s Office for

AccessAbility to obtain this 

publication in an alternate format.

Telephone: (202) 682-5532

This publication was printed on 

recycled paper.


1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20506-0001

202-682-5400

www.arts.gov