Dear Mr. President:

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

for the Arts for Fiscal Year 2005. 

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

awarded more than $3.9 billion in grants to organizations and artists residing 

in all 50 states and the six U.S. jurisdictions, in communities large and small. 

The activities highlighted in this report illustrate the National Endowment 

for the Arts’ continuing commitment to a nation in which artistic excellence is

celebrated, supported, and available to all Americans. 

Sincerely,

Dana Gioia

Chairman
200 5 ANN U AL REPORT iii

Chairman’s Statement 1

National Initiatives 9

State & Regional Partnerships 17

Lifetime Honors 19

National Medal of Arts 19

NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships 20

NEA National Heritage Fellowships 22

Grant Highlights 25

State-by-State listing

Literature Fellowships 128

National Council on the Arts 135

Financial Summary 137

Appropriations History 139

Credits 140

Table of Contents

Untitled, 1996 by Jerry

Uelsmann, one of the works

to be featured in the

retrospective exhibition 

of the photographer by

Florida’s Cummer 

Museum of Art. 

Image courtesy of Jerry Uelsmann

200 5 ANN U AL REPORT 1

40 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE

I

n Fiscal Year (FY) 2005, the National Endowment

for the Arts achieved the important milestone of

40 years of service to the country. Created in 1965

by President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of “The Great

Society,” the NEA has been a leader in creating public

access for arts and arts education in the United States. 

Before the NEA was founded, access to the arts was

limited primarily to large cities. The NEA has provided

critical seed funds to develop regional theater, opera,

ballet, symphony orchestras, museums, and other art

organizations in small and mid-sized cities across the

country. For instance, over the past three decades, the

number of nonprofit professional theaters has grown

from 50 to a network of 600. Some of the organizations

that received critical early support from the NEA have

developed worldwide acclaim, such as Spoleto USA, a

performing and visual arts event in Charleston, South

Carolina, and A Prairie Home Companion, a weekly radio

series hosted by writer and humorist Garrison Keillor. In

its 40-year history, the NEA has awarded more than

124,000 grants, totaling more than $3.9 billion.

The grants that the Arts Endowment has provided over

the years have supported virtually every major arts

organization in the country, as well as thousands of

smaller ones that received much needed support to

keep them going. The NEA provided crucial early

support for such esteemed organizations as the

American Film Institute and the Sundance Film Festival,

as well as funding projects of smaller organizations

such as Mississippi Cultural Crossroads in Port Gibson

and Pennsylvania’s Williamsport Symphony Orchestra.

One of the most successful grants program the Arts

Endowment created is the NEA Literature Fellowships.

These grants have provided crucial support to emerging

and established writers over the last 40 years, including

Chairman’s Statement

CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

2004 ANNUAL REPORT 1 Photo by Vance Jacobs

President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Arts and 

Humanities Act, creating the National Endowment for 

the Arts (along with the National Endowment for the 

Humanities) on September 29, 1965. 

Photo courtesy of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library
CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

some of the most noted American writers of the last 50

years: Raymond Carver, Gwendolyn Brooks, Eudora Welty,

Anthony Hecht, Andre Dubus, Annie Dillard, Ted Kooser,

Wallace Stegner, and Oscar Hijuelos. The assistance the

fellowships provided allowed these artists the time and

economic relief to produce their work. 

The NEA helped bolster support for the arts on the

state level as well. Before 1965, there were only 17

state arts agencies, most of which were funded poorly,

if at all, by the state governments. Today, every state,

the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealths of

Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Virgin

Islands have arts agencies, in addition to six regional

arts organizations. The arts agencies and organizations

have helped further distribute NEA monies at the local

level and bring art to communities where it was not

easily found. 

Through direct grants, partnerships, research, and

national initiatives, the NEA has provided leadership in

arts education by guiding efforts to make the arts a

part of the core education for all pre-K through grade

12 students and to increase opportunities outside of

school settings for additional arts learning. In the past

10 years (1996-2005), the NEA has awarded more than

$221 million to 7,193 projects involving arts education. 

In fall 2006, the Arts Endowment will produce a brief

history of the NEA that will look at the genesis and

genius of a government agency created solely to foster

creativity and bring the best of the arts to all

Americans. 

FY 2005 BUDGET

In FY 2005, the NEA awarded more than $100 million in

grants, supporting approximately 40,000 concerts,

2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

A broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, with Fred Newman, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Garrison Keillor. 

Photo by Dana Nye
CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 3

readings, and performances; 4,000 exhibitions,

including visual and media arts; and 8,000 artist

residencies in schools and other locations. From the

nearly 2,200 grants the NEA distributed in Grants for

Arts Projects, National Initiatives, State and Regional

Partnerships, and Fellowships—reaching every

Congressional district in the country—an estimated 82

million Americans benefited from Arts Endowment

programs, not including the additional millions reached

through television and radio broadcasts. And through

the agency’s strong support for learning in the arts,

approximately seven million children and youth

benefited from NEA-supported programs. 

While the NEA’s budget represents less than 1 percent

of total arts philanthropy in the United States, NEA

grants have a powerful multiplying factor: the Arts

Endowment requires a one-to-one match, and grantees

have exceeded the required match many times over. The

agency also supports cultural activities that strengthen

the economy. Nationally, the nonprofit arts contribute

an estimated $37 billion to the economy every year.

This report will demonstrate some of the exciting

projects the NEA has supported with grants in FY 2005,

and the importance to communities of having art and

culture available. 

NURTURING ART AT THE

COMMUNITY LEVEL

One of the arts forms that affects every community on

every level is design. From the architecture of the

buildings we work in to the infrastructure of the cities

we live in, design helps us shape our environs both

practically and aesthetically. To help communities better

control their environment, the NEA created the Mayors’

Institute on City Design in 1986. For two decades, the

program has helped transform communities through

design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban

designers of their cities. More than 625 mayors and

hundreds of design professionals have attend design

institutes dealing with such urban planning issues as

downtown and waterfront developments, transportation,

housing, schools, and public facilities such as libraries

and arts centers. At the end of FY 2005, the Mayor’s

Institute held special sessions to help Mississippi Gulf

cities affected by Hurricane Katrina.

The success of the Mayors’ Institute led to another local

design initiative—Your Town: The Citizen’s Institute on

Rural Design. Since 1991, more than 45 workshops have

been held to help empower community leaders in small

towns and rural areas to revitalize their downtowns,

build greenways, and conserve important land

resources. 

These two successful design initiatives led to the

creation in 2005 of the Governor’s Institute on

Community Design. Created in partnership with the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency, the Governor’s

Institute will offer workshops pairing governors and

U.S. Representative Kay Granger (Texas), former Governors

Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Parris N.

Glendening of Maryland, and Chairman Gioia at the launch of the

Governor’s Institute on Community Design. 

Photo by Garrick Davis
CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

their cabinet secretaries with top planning experts and

practitioners to identify strategies to help each state’s

executive team make informed choices as they shape

the future of their communities. Decisions made at the

state level can have profound effects on how

communities are designed and how people go about

their daily lives. The Governors’ Institute recognizes

this and is intended to provide governors with ideas

that will help them influence community design in a

way that will result in enduring, successful

communities. Former Governors Christine Todd Whitman

of New Jersey and Parris N. Glendening of Maryland are

spearheading the new initiative. 

To bring the arts to more Americans, the NEA has been

conducting grant workshops across the country over the

past few years to provide valuable guidance on how

local arts organizations can improve their chances of

winning a competitive grant. The workshops are

targeted primarily to those communities in which

organizations might not normally apply for NEA grants.

The workshops are conducted in cooperation with

Members of Congress, who act as host, and with

organizational help from state arts agencies. In 2005,

the NEA conducted nine workshops in six states.

SPREADING THE ARTS NATIONALLY

One of the achievements we are most proud of is the

success of the National Initiatives, which the Arts

Endowment started three years ago. These nationwide

projects were designed to bring the arts to communities

and constituencies that otherwise would not have

access to them. The first National Initiative,

Shakespeare in American Communities, has continued

to grow, with more than 60 professional theater

companies bringing new Shakespeare productions and 

special in-school sessions

to more than 1,500 communities as

well as military bases across all 50 states. 

We have expanded the NEA Jazz Masters program to not

only include the prestigious award to significant jazz

artists but also to bring jazz into the schools through

our NEA Jazz in the Schools initiative. Partnering with

Jazz at Lincoln Center, with support from the Verizon

Foundation, the Arts Endowment has created a

multimedia toolkit for high school teachers that

explores jazz as an indigenous American art form and as

a means to understand American history. The NEA

partnered with regional arts organization Arts Midwest

on the NEA Jazz Masters on Tour program, which from

June 2005 through December 2006 will bring NEA Jazz

Masters to all 50 states in performance, educational

activities, and speaking engagements. 

To address the lack of quality arts criticism in the media

throughout the country, the Arts Endowment began the

NEA Arts Journalism Institutes, which offer sessions on

the arts and journalism in classical music, opera,

theater, and dance. The response has been

overwhelming—not only have all the participants been

enthused by the sessions, but according to the

participants and their editors and their papers’ readers,

the writing and coverage of the arts has improved. To

take one example, Bob Keyes of the Press Herald in

Portland, Maine, who attended the theater institute at

the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in

2005, said, “I know for a fact my coverage of theater

NEA Jazz Master 

Buddy DeFranco and

Chairman Gioia at

the IAJE conference

in New York City. 

Photo by Tom Pich
has improved 10-fold because of the [institute]

experience, which benefits the theater community here

in Portland as well as the credibility of our paper within

the arts community in general.”

Operation Homecoming, an initiative to provide writing

workshops by nationally known writers—including

Tobias Wolff, Bobbie Ann Mason, Marilyn Nelson, Jeff

Shaara, and Joe Haldeman—to military personnel and

their families on bases throughout the country, in 2005

provided writing workshops in conjunction with

performances of the one-man show Beyond Glory to 26

military bases throughout the world. Stephen Lang’s

riveting theatrical adaptation of Larry Smith’s book,

Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words,

featured first-person accounts of those who received

one of our nation’s highest military distinctions. The

Arts Endowment also partnered with Random House

Publishing Group to produce an anthology of writing

from troops who have served since 9/11, along with

their spouses and families. The nearly 100 entries were

culled from more than 10,000 pages of submissions,

and the anthology will be released in fall 2006. 

Following the unprecedented partnership with the

Department of Defense for Operation Homecoming, the

NEA partnered again on a new National Initiative for

military personnel and their families, Great American

Voices. This initiative, supported by The Boeing

Company and presented in cooperation with OPERA

America, is bringing professional performances of wellknown opera and Broadway classics to military bases

across the country. 

Another new National Initiative in 2005, American

Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius, is

bringing great art across the country as well. Programs

presenting acknowledged masterpieces selected from a

wide variety of art forms will tour to large and small

communities in all 50 states. There are three

components to the initiative: touring, local

presentations, and arts education. The first year of the

program focused on the visual arts, with dance and

choral music grants being awarded in 2006. 

More on all these programs can be found in the

National Initiatives section of this report. 

SHARING THE ARTS

INTERNATIONALLY

While making sure that Americans have access to the

great art that is available in this country, it is also

important that we share the high quality cultural life of

the United States with audiences for whom “America”

signifies only burger franchises and TV shows. There are

several international exchange programs in which the

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 5

The Black Iris (1926) by Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the works in the

NEA American Masterpieces tour of Georgia O’Keeffe and the

Women of the Stieglitz Circle by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in

Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Image courtesy of Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

NEA plays a role. ArtsLink residencies provide U.S. arts

organizations the opportunity to host an artist or arts

manager from Central Europe, Russia, or Eurasia for a

five-week residency. Visiting arts professionals work

with counterparts in the United States to create work

and build individual and institutional relationships that

benefit artists and audiences. The United States/Japan

Creative Artists’ Program provides six-month residencies

in Japan for individual creative artists in any discipline.

USArtists International is committed to ensuring that

the impressive range of expression and creativity of the

U.S. performing arts is represented at international

festivals abroad.

An ever-expanding NEA program is Open World Cultural

Leaders, an initiative supported by a partnership

between the NEA and the Open World Leadership

Center, an independent legislative branch agency

located at the Library of Congress. This initiative

provides in-depth residencies for Russian cultural

leaders with American arts organizations, introducing

them to an environment that nurtures creativity,

encourages diversity, and advances freedom of

expression. Residencies—taking place everywhere from

the Brubeck Institute in Stockton, California, to the

International Writing Program at the University of Iowa

in Iowa City to the University of Mississippi in Oxford—

have included jazz musicians, documentary filmmakers,

visual artists, poets, and folk and traditional artists. 

Another important international program is the Arts and

Artifacts Indemnity Program, which makes it possible

for U.S. audiences to view and appreciate works of arts

from foreign museums. The Indemnity Program was

created by Congress in 1975 for the purpose of

minimizing the costs of insuring international

exhibitions. The program, administered by the National

Endowment for the Arts on behalf of the Federal Council

on the Arts and the Humanities, has indemnified more

than 800 exhibitions, saving the organizers more than

$185 million in insurance premiums. Many of the works

indemnified would not normally be seen by U.S.

audiences. One would have had to go to London to see

some of the work in the 2005 exhibition Great

Expectations: John Singer Sargent Painting Children or to

Amsterdam to see Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits.

The program makes these masterpieces accessible to the

American people.

PROVIDING ASSISTANCE

At the beginning of the hurricane season of 2005, the

NEA assisted Florida organizations devastated during

the 2004 season, and by September we were looking at

ways of assisting those damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

In June 2005, the Arts Endowment provided $100,000

to eight Florida organizations that were still recovering

from the onslaught of Hurricanes Charley, Frances,

CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

Open World exchange participants from Russia take a lesson from

jazz educator Jamey Aebersold. 

Photo by Mike Tracy
CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

Jeanne, and Ivan that tore through the state in 2004.

Working with the Florida Cultural Alliance and the

Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Arts Endowment

identified organizations that either had the greatest

need or could most effectively reach grassroots

constituents struggling to recover. 

The Arts Endowment began working toward disaster

relief immediately in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. At

the national convention for the National Assembly of

State Arts Agencies in Boise, Idaho, in early September,

NEA senior staff convened an emergency meeting of

representatives of state arts agencies from the affected

states as well as members of the Southern Arts

Federation to formulate strategies for federal relief. The

agency does not have appropriated dollars dedicated to

support disaster recovery, and therefore must look at

various options, including discretionary funds as well as

ways in which current programs can be applied to

disaster relief. The agency began working with state,

regional, and local arts agencies to coordinate

Extraordinary Action Grants and immediately organized

design sessions for Gulf Coast mayors faced with

rebuilding and redesigning through the NEA’s Mayors’

Institute and Your Town initiatives.

In addition, the NEA worked with Heritage

Preservation and the Federal Emergency

Management Agency (FEMA) to produce a new

booklet Before and After Disasters, a guide

containing summary descriptions and

contact information for 15 federal grant

and loan programs and federal assistance

for preparedness, mitigation, and

response and recovery. The booklet is

available online at

www.arts.gov/pub/index.php.

THE FUTURE

The Arts Endowment will continue to bring the arts to

every community in the country. The importance of art

to individuals should not be underestimated. A crucial

moment in a classroom, or an auditorium, or a

performance hall could affect someone so deeply as to

change that person’s life. David Gelernter, current

National Council on the Arts member, has often stated

how, after he was severely injured by the Unabomber’s

mail bomb, he found great solace and inspiration in

Beethoven’s late string quartets and in poetry he had

memorized as a youth. Whether healing, inspiration, or

joyous, art’s significance to the well being of our

country’s cultural life is without question.

May the NEA have another 40 years of successes as

great as those of the past 40, because a great nation

deserves great art. 

Dana Gioia

Chairman

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 7
NEA Jazz Master Barry Harris

performs during the annual NEA Jazz

Master concert and awards ceremony

at the International Association for Jazz

Education conference. 

Photo by Tom Pich 
T

he NEA began the National Initiatives program

in 2003 to present performances to

communities and constituencies that otherwise

would not have access to them. Partnering with local

communities, arts organizations, and presenters, the

NEA has expanded the program to include seven

National Initiatives in FY 2005: Shakespeare in

American Communities, NEA Jazz Masters, Operation

Homecoming, NEA Arts Journalism Institutes, Great

American Voices, American Masterpieces, and Poetry

Out Loud. Below are a few examples of the type of

activities that are being undertaken by these special

initiatives. 

SHAKESPEARE IN AMERICAN

COMMUNITIES

The National Endowment for the Arts created

Shakespeare in American Communities to

introduce a new generation of audiences to

the greatest playwright in the English language. In

partnership with regional arts organization Arts

Midwest, which administers the initiative, the NEA

helped create new audiences and a new appreciation

for live theater and Shakespeare.

In 2005, Shakespeare in American Communities

embarked on its first year of Shakespeare for a New 

National Initiatives

NATIONAL INITIATIVES

Shelly Gaza as Katherina and

Michael Reed as Petruchio in the

Utah Shakespearean Festival’s 2005

Shakespeare for a New Generation

production of The Taming of the

Shrew. 

Photo by Karl Hugh
NATIONAL INITIATIVES

1 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

Generation, a program that provides professional

Shakespeare performances and educational programs to

high school and middle school students. Twenty-one

theater companies were selected to participate during

the 2004-05 school year, and provided performances

and activities for at least 10 schools each. By the end

of the school year, students from 1,054 schools had

seen a Shakespearean production, and more than 12

million students had benefited from the educational

materials.

A standout of the program was Utah Shakespearean

Festival (USF), which has a long and distinguished

history of touring to schools in the Intermountain West

(Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Idaho) before becoming

associated with Shakespeare for a New Generation.

USF’s association with the initiative has allowed the

company to expand activities to schools in underserved

areas that could not have been reached otherwise.

Utah Shakespearean Festival’s ambitious 38-day tour in

early 2005 resulted in 56 performances and 114

educational activities, reaching more than 9,000

students.

Despite being on the road, performances of The Taming

of the Shrew maintained a high artistic integrity,

carried out with a small cast and portable stage,

adaptable to various school spaces. Schools also were

offered three hour-long workshops, taught by

professional actors, on topics such as Shakespeare’s

text, stage combat, and building characters through

improvisation. The workshops were designed with the

students as active participants, allowing each student

the opportunity to interact with Shakespeare’s text in a

lively manner. According to USF, students who

participated in workshops were much more invested

and receptive to the performance. And according to a

teacher at a Utah high school, “To see the play and to

actually enjoy it changed their attitudes.”

NEA JAZZ MASTERS

Established in 1982, the NEA Jazz Masters awards

annually elevates a select number of living jazz artists

to its ranks, conferring on them the nation’s highest

honor for this uniquely American art form. The

expansion of the program includes NEA Jazz Masters

on Tour, a touring component to bring NEA Jazz

Masters to all 50 states throughout 2005-06 in

partnership with Arts Midwest and with support from

Verizon; a radio show, Jazz Profiles, in partnership

with National Public Radio, hosted by NEA Jazz Master

Nancy Wilson; and a new arts education component,

NEA Jazz in the Schools. This educational resource for

high school teachers of social studies, U.S. history, and

music is a five-unit, Web-based curriculum and DVD

toolkit that explores jazz as an indigenous American art

form and as a means to understand American history.

The curriculum is produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center

and supported by a grant from the Verizon Foundation.

The complete kit and curriculum became available in

fall 2005 at www.neajazzintheschools.com. 

The main event of the initiative, however, is the

presentation of awards to the legendary jazz musicians.

In January of each year, the International Association

for Jazz Education (IAJE) holds its annual conference

and the highlight of the conference is the special

concert and award ceremony of the NEA Jazz Master

Awards. 

IAJE was founded in 1968 to ensure the continued

growth and development of jazz through education and

outreach activities. Its membership includes more than
2005 ANNUAL REPORT 1 1

8,000 teachers, musicians, students, music industry

representatives, and enthusiasts in 40 countries. 

In addition to hosting the ceremony, IAJE holds special

workshops involving NEA Jazz Masters throughout the

conference, including a special panel on the newly

honored NEA Jazz Masters, which was held the day

following the concert. The musicians shared anecdotes

and advice during the hour-long session, receiving a

standing ovation at the end by the enthusiastic

audience. 

OPERATION HOMECOMING

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime

Experience, through a partnership with the Department

of Defense and with support from The Boeing Company,

provided writing workshops by nationally known

writers—novelists, poets, historians, and journalists—

at domestic and overseas military bases representing all

four branches of the U.S. armed services. In addition to

the workshops, the best writing emerging from this

initiative will be published in a nationally promoted

anthology that will be sold in bookstores and

distributed free by the Arts Endowment to military

installations, schools, and libraries in fall 2006. 

In 2005, the NEA is extended its Operation

Homecoming initiative with Operation Homecoming:

Beyond Glory, a tour of the one-man play Beyond Glory,

adapted and performed by Stephen Lang, to more than

25 overseas and domestic military installations

beginning in May 2005. Beyond Glory was performed at

a range of traditional and nontraditional venues,

including theaters, tents, and even the deck of an

aircraft carrier.

Adapted by Lang from Larry Smith’s book, Beyond Glory:

Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words, this

NEA Jazz Masters Jimmy Heath, Chick Corea, Paquito D’Rivera, and James Moody take the stage during the annual NEA

Jazz Master concert and awards ceremony at the International Association for Jazz Education conference. 

Photo by Tom Pich
NATIONAL INITIATIVES

1 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

acclaimed production features the stories of seven

different Medal of Honor winners from World War II,

Korea, and Vietnam, including U.S. Senator Daniel

Inouye and Admiral James Stockdale. Lang says that he

wanted to perform the show for the troops in order to

“do something to support our troops beyond saying it.

I have a respect for the whole military ethic. So many

of the concepts—courage, leadership, loyalty—are

themes really worth exploring.”

In addition to performances of the play, Lang also

conducted writing workshops and held postperformance discussions for the troops. He felt he had a

unique perspective to share with the troops as he does

not consider himself a writer by trade. “But if there’s

something I want to write, I write it,” he adds. “These

folks were in the workshop because something was on

their mind.”

Plans for a documentary on Operation Homecoming to

Stephen Lang performs his one-man show, Beyond Glory, aboard

the USS Mustin in the Persian Gulf as part of the NEA Operation

Homecoming initiative. 

Photo by Roy Gross

be aired on public television in 2007 also proceeded in

FY 2005. Additionally on the drawing board is a second

documentary to be used as a teaching tool for future

writing workshops on military bases. 

NEA ARTS JOURNALISM INSTITUTES

In June 2004, the NEA established three NEA Arts

Journalism Institutes to address a chronic problem

throughout the country: the lack of quality arts

criticism in the press. The institutes are designed for

journalists who cover the arts for print and broadcast

outlets located mostly outside the country’s largest

media markets, where professional development

opportunities are limited. Institutes for dance critics

are hosted by the American Dance Festival (ADF) at

Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; for classical

music and opera critics at Columbia University in New

York City; and for theater and musical theater critics at

the University of Southern California (USC) in Los

Angeles. 

The success of the program is clearly shown by the

response of the participants. In 2005, the USC

Annenberg School for Communications and its School

of Journalism held its first institute for theater and

musical theater critics. Twenty-five participants from

across the country attended the sessions, which

provided firsthand exposure to the essential elements

of theater in addition to teaching how journalism skills

can be applied to theater criticism and behind-thescenes experience with theater productions. Participant

Donna Hartman, features reporter for the Bradenton

Herald in Florida, said of the sessions, “[They] gave me

so much insight into theater. I conduct better

interviews, ask better questions, and have developed

some ideas for stories. I recently did a piece about a
NATIONAL INITIATIVES

local black theater company, the Westcoast Black

Theatre Troupe, and the idea came directly from the

[sessions].” 

The participants are not the only ones noticing a

difference in their approach to criticism. Becky Holt,

features editor for The Burlington Free Press in Vermont,

commented while recommending one their reporters for

the institute, “Earlier this year [2005], one of our other

staffers, Brent Hallenback, was fortunate to have

participated in your program. As a direct result of this,

our theater reviews and coverage have increased

exponentially. This has received praise from the theater

community and our readers.”

GREAT AMERICAN VOICES

Building on the existing partnership between the

National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of

Defense, the Arts Endowment launched Great American

Voices, a National Initiative that will continue our

efforts to serve military personnel and their families by

providing professional performances of well-known

opera and Broadway classics. 

From October 2005 through November 2006, Great

American Voices features 24 professional opera

companies performing at 39 military bases across the

country. Performances include selections from popular

operas such as Bizet’s Carmen and Mozart’s Don

Giovanni, as well as highlights from classic American

musicals such as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South

Pacific. Performances are offered at no cost to the base

or to audience members. In addition to the

performances, participating artists conduct school visits

Scott Ramsay, Tracie Luck, Staff Sgt. Alvy Powell, and

Robin Follman perform with Opera Carolina and the

Winston-Salem Symphony, conducted by James

Meena, at Camp Lejeune on July 4, 2005 as part of

NEA’s Great American Voices initiative. 

Photo by Leslie Liberato
NATIONAL INITIATIVES

1 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

and pre-concert briefings to familiarize youth and

adults with these musical genres. 

An early highlight was a preview performance on July

4, 2005, at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North

Carolina, in front of an audience of 15,000. Opera

Carolina and Winston-Salem Symphony teamed with the

Arts Endowment for this event, in which four talented

opera singers performed with a 55-piece orchestra and

30-member chorus. The Arts Endowment offered this

performance to Camp Lejeune as a replacement for the

award-winning Second Marine Division Band, which

traditionally performs at this annual event but is

currently deployed to Iraq. 

Great American Voices is presented in cooperation with

OPERA America, and made possible by generous support

from The Boeing Company.

AMERICAN MASTERPIECES

American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic

Genius consists of three components—touring, local

presentations, and arts education. Programs presenting

acknowledged masterpieces selected from a wide variety

of art forms will tour to large and small communities in

all 50 states. 

Local presentations are supported so that institutions

throughout the country can create programs consistent

with the overall theme. Arts education makes up a

substantial portion of the initiative, both by bringing

an unprecedented number of students to the

exhibitions, presentations and performances, and by

creating substantial and engaging in-school programs.

The first grants given out under the initiative in FY

2005 were in the visual arts. Eleven grants were

awarded, totaling $1,183,000. One of the exhibitions

receiving a grant was American Chronicles: The Art of

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) by the Norman Rockwell

Museum at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The exhibition

is drawn from the museum’s collection of more than

600 paintings, drawings, and studies by one of the

20th century’s premier illustrators. Rockwell’s artistic

contributions and the impact of his images on

American popular culture are explored within the

context of his life and times through exhibition

commentary, a decade-by-decade installation of 30

original paintings, and a complete set of the 323

archival Saturday Evening Post covers. 

From May 2005 to November 2006, the museum will

The Art Critic by Norman Rockwell is one of the works to be

featured in the touring exhibition American Chronicles: The Art of

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) by the Norman Rockwell Museum

at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as part of NEA’s American

Masterpieces. 

Image courtesy of Norman Rockwell Museum
NATIONAL INITIATIVES

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 1 5

develop the exhibition and its related materials,

creating the text and commentary for the pieces.

Simultaneously, an 80-page catalogue, family guide, and

educator’s curriculum guide will be produced. The tour

of the exhibition will take place in winter 2006/07. 

POETRY OUT LOUD

In FY 2005, the NEA partnered with the Poetry

Foundation in Chicago, Illinois, on an exciting new

educational initiative: a national poetry recitation

contest. A pilot program in Washington, DC and

Chicago, was established to work out the logistics of

holding the contest. During the 2004/05 academic year,

the NEA coordinated the program in DC-area high

schools while the Poetry Foundation did the same

among Chicago-area high schools. Final recitation

competitions were held April 11 at Chicago Shakespeare

Theater and on April 19 at the Folger Shakespeare

Library in Washington. Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation

administered the pilot program. 

“By performing great works of literature, students can

master public speaking, build self-confidence, and learn

more about their literary heritage,” Chairman Gioia said

at the Washington event. Banneker High student

Stephanie Oparaugo won the Washington contest, and

Walter Payton College Prep student Devin Kenny won

the Chicago contest. Each student received a $1,000

cash award, and each of their schools received a $2,000

stipend for poetry books. 

The success of the pilot program led to the development

of the National Initiative Poetry Out Loud, which

during the 2005/06 academic year held poetry contests

in the state capitals of all 50 states and Washington, DC

leading to a national finals in DC in May 2006 and the

awarding of $50,000 in scholarship funds and school

stipends to the top finalists. High schools in each state

capital region participated in classroom and schoolwide

contests, advancing to state competitions in April

2006. Poetry Out Loud involves partnership with all the

state arts agencies, who helped to coordinate the state

competitions. 

Educational materials created for the initiative include

print and online poetry anthologies containing more

than 400 classic and contemporary poems, a teacher’s

guide to help instructors teach recitation and

performance, and a CD featuring well-known actors and

writers such as Anthony Hopkins, James Earl Jones,

Alyssa Milano, and N. Scott Momaday.

Washington Regional Champion Stephanie Oparaugo of

Benjamin Banneker High School recites “The Second Coming”

by William Butler Yeats in the pilot program for NEA National

Initiative Poetry Out Loud.

Photo by James Kegley
Anthony Braxton was one of

the artists who participated in

the USArtists International

program, which supports U.S.

artists performing at

international festivals, in 2005. 

Photo by Michael Wilderman
STATE AND REGIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

State and Regional Partnerships

200 5 ANN U AL REPORT 1 7

P

rior to the signing of the National Foundation

on the Arts and the Humanities Bill in 1965,

only 17 states and Puerto Rico had created

official state arts agencies (SAAs), most of them

without funds. After the bill was signed, the rest of the

states and the District of Columbia, Guam, American

Samoa, and the Virgin Islands created agencies and

with assistance from the NEA became viable supporters

of their communities’ cultural life. 

Forty percent of the Arts Endowment’s funding is

distributed among those agencies and organizations.

Through this federal funding mechanism, the NEA

supports projects that are meaningful to local

communities, while at the same time leveraging

financial support from other sources.

An example of these partnerships is Hecho En Encinal,

supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts. Hecho

En Encinal brings the arts and arts education to the

rural populations of South Texas, low-income areas

whose residents are isolated from the arts activities of

urban centers. In partnership with the South Texas

Writing Project and Cotulla ISD, Hecho En Encinal

developed the Encinal Community Quilts program, an

after-school and in-school writing and visual arts

program. Through 96 workshops, students aged pre-K

Students identity and discuss the significance of their

contributions to the People of Encinal Quilt, part of Hecho En

Encinal’s Community Quilts program. 

Photo courtesy of Hecho en Encinal
STATE AND REGIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

1 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

though 5th grade learned to write creatively. Extracts

of their writings about their communities were

transferred onto material and used for the quilts.

During the visual arts lessons, the participants learned

to incorporate drawing, painting, and textiles into the

design of the quilts. Adults participated in this

program as well, after school and on weekends, making

the finished quilts a community-wide effort and

reflective of Hecho En Encinal’s commitment to teach

not only artistic appreciation, but also an appreciation

for the heritage and cultural background of South Texas.

Another example is the Alaska State Council on the

Arts’ Art in Public Places initiative, which began in

1975 and consists of two distinct programs. Percent for

Art mandates that at least one percent of public

construction funds be set aside for public art. This

includes construction of everything from airports to

state ferries. The second program is the Contemporary

Art Bank, which is used to purchase work from Alaska

contemporary artists. These pieces can then be loaned

to Alaska state offices for public display. 

In addition to SAAs, regional arts organizations (RAOs)

were created by state arts leaders, in partnership with

the Arts Endowment and the private sector, to

transcend state boundaries and give the public access

to a greater and richer variety of arts experiences. 

RAOs work with the NEA on initiatives such as the NEA

Regional Touring program, which helps bring highquality performing artists and companies to

communities across the country with the help of

federal, state, and private funds. The arts organizations

also partner on NEA National Initiatives, such as

Shakespeare in American Communities (Arts Midwest)

and Operation Homecoming (Southern Arts Federation). 

Collaborations between the Arts Endowment and RAOs

also transcend our nation’s boundaries. USArtists

International is a program of the NEA that, with

support from the JP Morgan Chase Foundation, provides

support for U.S. artists to perform at international

festivals. The program is managed by the RAO 

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. 

Among artists supported by the program in 2005 was

the Anthony Braxton Ensemble, a jazz group working

under legendary jazz saxophonist and composer

Anthony Braxton. Braxton performed at the 32nd

annual Free Music Festival in Brussels, Belgium, in

August 2005 in celebration of his 60th birthday. The

Free Music Festival was started by WIM (Werkgroep

Improviserende Muzikanten/The Belgian Association for

Improvising Musicians) and has become one of Europe’s

preeminent international festivals for avant-garde and

creative music. 

Braxton presented a new composition of his “Ghost

Trance Music”—individual and group improvisational

music where every one of the players could introduce

composed material anytime, anywhere, in any

combination with improvised sections—which he has

been creating for the last 10 years. The new piece is for

twelve instruments, including brass, reeds, strings,

percussion, and harp. 

In addition to Braxton’s performance, Genevieve

Foccroulle performed Braxton’s solo piano music as part

of the 60th birthday celebration, and Taylor Ho Bynum,

a member of Braxton’s ensemble, presented a series of

afternoon events called “On the Move,” which brought

together dancers and musicians from both the U.S. and

Europe for improvisational performances. 
2005 ANNUAL REPORT 1 9

Lifetime Honors

LIFETIME HONORS

T

here is no such thing as a Hall of Fame for

artists—their achievements often are decided

by the number of exhibitions, how many works

they sell, or the frequency and quantity of

performances. In the 1980s, the NEA looked to

recognize artists for their lifetime achievements, not

just their current projects. And so three awards were

created to honor lifetime achievements in the arts:

National Medals of Arts, NEA Jazz Masters, and NEA

National Heritage Fellows.

NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS

Created by Congress in 1984, the National Medal of Arts

is conferred annually by the President to honor persons

and organizations that 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 the public

Chairman Gioia (back center) with 2005 Medal of Arts recipients:

(clockwise from left back) Wynton Marsalis, Paquito D’Rivera,

Robert Duvall, Louis Auchincloss, Derek Gillman for the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, James DePreist, Len

Garment, Tina Ramirez, and Ollie Johnston. 

Photo by Christie Bow
LIFETIME HONORS

2 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

for 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. 

Information on submitting a nomination can be found

on the NEA Web site at www.arts.gov. 

National Medal of Arts Recipients 

NEA JAZZ MASTERS FELLOWSHIP

Jazz, born and bred in the United States, is one of our

country’s great art forms. The NEA has supported jazz

for nearly its entire 40-year history, awarding its first

grant in the field in 1969 to future NEA Jazz Master

George Russell. In 1982, the NEA created the NEA Jazz

Masters Award, the highest honor that our nation

bestows upon jazz musicians, to recognize those artists

who have made significant contributions to the

development and performance of jazz. Each year, a

one-time award $25,000 is presented from among the

following categories: rhythm instrumentalist, solo

instrumentalist, keyboardist, vocalist, and

arranger/composer. 

Additionally, an award is given in a non-musician

category — the A. B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters

Award for Jazz Advocacy, which is awarded to

individuals who have made major contributions to the

appreciation, knowledge, and advancement of the

American jazz art form as a writer, patron, or presenter. 

Many jazz greats have received the award in the past,

such as Dizzy Gillespie, Marian McPartland, and Artie

Shaw, and this year’s list is equally impressive, virtually

spanning the history of jazz. More information about

submitting a nomination and the NEA Jazz Masters

award is available on the NEA Web site: www.arts.gov.

A description of new NEA Jazz Masters activities

related to National Initiatives can be found under the

National Initiatives section of this report.

NEA Jazz Masters

Ray Barretto, Rhythm Instrumentalist

The most widely recorded conguero in jazz, Ray

Barretto grew up listening to the music of Puerto Rico

Louis Auchincloss

Author

New York, New York

James DePreist

Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

New York, New York

Paquito D’Rivera

Jazz Musician

North Bergen, New Jersey

Robert Duvall

Actor

Plains, Virginia

Leonard Garment

Arts Patron, Advocate

New York, New York

Ollie Johnston

Film Animator, Artist

Burbank, California

Wynton Marsalis

Trumpeter, Composer, Jazz

at Lincoln Center Artistic

Director

New York, New York

Dolly Parton

Singer, Songwriter

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee 

Pennsylvania Academy of

the Fine Arts

Museum, School of Fine

Arts 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tina Ramirez

Choreographer, Ballet

Hispanico Artistic Director

New York, New York
LIFETIME HONORS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 2 1

and the swing bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie,

and Benny Goodman. After four years with Tito Puente’s

band, he was one of the most sought-after

percussionists in New York. He was inducted into the

International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1999. 

Tony Bennett, Vocalist

Called “the best singer in the business” by Frank

Sinatra, Tony Bennett’s great recording career began in

1950 when he signed with the Columbia label. While

putting out singles and albums that were consistently

among the most popular in the country, he continued

to infuse his singing with the spontaneity of jazz and

to record and tour with bands composed almost

exclusively of jazz musicians.

Bob Brookmeyer, Arranger/Composer

An innovative composer and gifted arranger for both

small and large ensembles, as well as an outstanding

performer on valve trombone and piano, Bob

Brookmeyer started out with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet

in the mid-1950s before working with the Jimmy

Giuffre Three and most notably the Thad Jones-Mel

Lewis Orchestra as an arranger/composer. His

compositions are widely published, studied, and

performed.

Chick Corea, Keyboardist

A groundbreaking artist both as a keyboardist (piano,

electric piano, synthesizer) and as a composer-arranger,

Chick Corea has moved fluidly among jazz, fusion, and

classical music throughout a four-decade career,

winning national and international honors including 12

Grammy Awards. He ranks with Herbie Hancock and

Keith Jarrett as one of the leading piano stylists to

emerge after Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner.

Buddy DeFranco, Solo Instrumentalist

A brilliant improviser and prodigious technician who

has bridged the swing and bebop eras, Buddy DeFranco

has recorded more than 160 albums, has won the Down

Beat All Stars award 20 times, and the Metronome poll

From top to bottom and left to

right: Chairman Gioia with NEA

Jazz Masters Buddy DeFranco,

Chick Corea, Bob Brookmeyer,

John Levy, Tony Bennett, 

Ray Barretto (who passed away on

February 17, 2006), and 

Freddie Hubbard. 

Photo by Tom Pich
12 times. DeFranco was the first jazz clarinetist to

make his mark in the new idiom of bebop.

Freddie Hubbard, Solo Instrumentalist

One of the greatest trumpet virtuosos ever to play in

the jazz idiom, and arguably one of the most

influential, Freddie Hubbard quickly astonished fans

and critics alike with his depth and maturity. Having

played with most of the jazz legends of the 1960s,

Hubbard achieved his greatest popular success with a

series of crossover albums on Atlantic and CTI Records

in the 1970s.

John Levy, A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Master Award for

Jazz Advocacy

Renowned as a leading representative of jazz musicians,

and as the first African American to work in the music

industry as a personal manager, John Levy began as a

jazz bassist, eventually joining George Shearing’s band.

He gradually took on the role of road manager and then

put aside performing to become the group’s full-time

manager, making music-industry history and

establishing the career he would follow for the next

half-century. 

NEA NATIONAL HERITAGE

FELLOWSHIP

To fully appreciate a community, one should look at the

culture that thrives there, the distinctive styles and

subject matters that drive its art. This is folk art,

artistic expression that is rooted in our collective

American experience but tied to traditions of the many

ethnicities of the community. 

Since 1982, the NEA has recognized the artists who

dedicate their lives to cultural traditions and arts with

NEA National Heritage Fellowships. Twelve NEA National

LIFETIME HONORS

2 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

Chairman Gioia, 2005 NEA National Heritage Fellow Albertina

Walker, and U.S. Representative Bobby L. Rush (Illinois) at the

Capitol Hill ceremony. 

Photo by Robert Burgess

2005 NEA National Heritage Fellow Jerry Grcevich and U.S.

Representative Tim Murphy (Pennsylvania) at the Capitol Hill

ceremony. 

Photo by Michael Stewart
LIFETIME HONORS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 2 3

Heritage Fellowships, the country’s most prestigious

honor in the folk and traditional arts, were awarded in

2005. The fellowships include a one-time award of

$20,000. 

Additionally, an award is given out to recognize

individuals 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, the Bess Lomax

Hawes Award.

Interviews with the 2005 awardees, as well as

presentations of their work, can be found on the NEA

Web site (www.arts.gov). The NEA National Heritage

Fellowships were supported in 2005 by Cracker Barrel

Old Country Store of Lebanon, Tennessee. 

NEA National Heritage Fellows

Eldrid Skjold Arntzen

Norwegian American

Rosemaler 

Watertown, Connecticut

Earl Barthé

Creole Building Artisan 

New Orleans, Louisiana

Chuck Brown

African American Musical

Innovator 

Brandywine, Maryland

Janette Carter (Bess

Hawes Award)

Appalachian Musician,

Advocate 

Hiltons, Virginia

Michael Doucet

Cajun Fiddler, Composer,

and Bandleader 

Lafayette, Louisiana

Jerry Grcevich

Tamburitza Musician, Prim

Player

North Huntingdon,

Pennsylvania

Grace Henderson Nez

Navajo Weaver 

Ganado, Arizona

Wanda Jackson

Rockabilly, and Gospel

Singer 

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Herminia Albarrán

Romero

Paper-cutting Artist 

San Francisco, California

Beyle SchaechterGottesman

Yiddish Singer, Poet,

Songwriter 

Bronx, New York

Albertina Walker

Gospel Singer 

Chicago, Illinois

James Ka’upena Wong

Hawaiian Chanter 

Waianae, Hawaii

2005 NEA National Heritage Fellow

Chuck Brown performing at the

annual awards ceremony and concert.

Photo by Michael Stewart 
Sioux Warrior by Robert Meyer,

whose work was featured as a

pictorial background in North

Dakota’s Northern Plains Ballet’s

production of The Encounter, a

dance piece based on the Lewis

& Clark expedition’s encounters

with Native Americans. 

Image courtesy of Robert Meyer
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 2 5

FY 2005 APPLICATIONS: GRANTS:

Grant Category Number Received Number Awarded

Access to Artistic Excellence1 2,741 1,501

Learning in the Arts 2 717 199

Challenge America––Reaching Every Community 457 249

Grant Highlights

The following pages highlight successful projects that the NEA has supported in every state. While these

examples are by no means comprehensive, they are highly illustrative of the diverse, quality art that the NEA

funds. 

1 Includes 45 grants for Arts on Radio and Television, 31 grants for Folk and Traditional Arts Infrastructure, and 11 grants for Save America’s Treasures. 

2 Includes 24 grants for Summer School in the Arts.

Access to Artistic Excellence: This category funds projects that encourage and support artistic creativity,

preserve our diverse cultural heritage, and make the arts more widely available in communities throughout the

country. 

Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth: This category funds projects that help children and youth

acquire appreciation, knowledge, and understanding of and skills in the arts. The focus is on children and

youth in the general age range of five through 18 years old. 

Challenge America––Reaching Every Community: In this category, the focus is on simple, straightforward

local projects that involve experienced professional artists and arts professionals in small or mid-sized

communities where opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or

disability. 
Children’s Dance

Foundation 

Birmingham

S

ince 1975, the Children’s

Dance Foundation (CDF) has

provided outreach programs

and classes to the Birmingham

community, growing into a dance

education organization that

currently reaches more than 3,000

students each week. CDF strives to

reach a broad range of students,

regardless of age, gender, disability,

race, or economic status, believing

that by developing dance skills they

can increase a student’s creativity

and confidence.

In FY 2005, CDF received an NEA

Learning in the Arts grant of

$10,000 for Movement-to-Music, the

cornerstone program in its

curriculum. Each week, at 30

different sites, nearly 1,500

students ages 2-7 years participated

in Movement-to-Music. More than

half of the students were at-risk or

disadvantaged children, many with

physical, emotional, or mental

disabilities. CDF’s teachers and

musicians are specially trained to

work with these children and use

inclusive techniques that teach

them how to go beyond their

disabilities to express themselves

through movement.

During the sessions, trained dance

instructors and live pianists utilized

songs, stories, games, and tactile

objects to build body awareness and

creative thinking. Instructors, in

addition to being seasoned dancers,

are trained extensively in education

and child development and taught

ways to impart dance skills in a

manner that is fun, inviting, and

experimental. By introducing dance

and live music to children at such a

young age, CDF is profoundly

influencing each child’s ability to

think creatively and to express him

or herself.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Alabama

Young children participate in Movement-to-Music,

part of Children’s Dance Foundation’s Community

Partnership Program. 

Photos courtesy of Children’s Dance Foundation
Gadsden Cultural Arts

Foundation 

Gadsden

I

n 1984, as a result of the

community’s need for a

cultural arts institution that

would support and provide

opportunities for the arts to thrive,

the Gadsden Cultural Arts

Foundation (GCAF) was created.

With national and local exhibits,

theater performances and concerts,

music and dance classes, and

educational outreach programs,

GCAF reaches more than 100,000

residents of Gadsden and Etowah

County each year. GCAF’s

programming is designed to reach

out to all segments of the

community; for instance, Alabama’s

largest Hispanic population lives

within 60 miles of Gadsden.

Recognizing this, GCAF developed a

Latino Festival, which was attended

by more than 3,000 residents. In

addition to concerts and classes

held at the Mary G. Hardin Center

for Cultural Arts, GCAF also provides

arts programming weekly for

students at 17 schools and for

adults at four community centers.

In FY 2005, GCAF received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to help GCAF continue to build and

diversify its audience through a live

music series. This series provided

more than 100 free concerts for the

entire community, but was designed

specifically to attract audiences

among senior, Latino, and AfricanAmerican communities. Four days a

week, from June through October,

local musicians put on performances

for Gadsden residents in the Cultural

Arts Center’s courtyard. Performers

ranged from jazz group The

Supplements to jazz, blues, and

classical pianist Steven McCullough

to Rick and Tad, local musicians

who play classic rock and country

music. In addition, the Etowah

Youth Orchestra’s chamber group

Honor Strings presented 15

performances at local venues,

including airports, coffee shops, and

bookstores. Lastly, GCAF sponsored

entertainment and reinstated a

fiddler’s competition at the

community’s annual downtown

G.R.I.T.S. festival.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 2 7

Rick Weaver and Terry “Tad” Williams, two of Gasden’s most popular local

musicians, perform at a Gadsden Cultural Arts Foundation Courtyard Concert. 

Photo by Tom Banks
Juneau Jazz & Classics 

Juneau

I

n 1986, a group of Juneau

musicians and music lovers

conceived the idea of creating

a music festival in their remote part

of the country, offering both formal

and informal concerts, workshops

for musicians, and outreach

activities within the community.

Since then, Juneau Jazz & Classics

(JJC) has been bringing the nineday festival to the Southeast Alaska

community of Juneau, featuring

world-class jazz and classical artists

in concert and in residency. 

In FY 2005, Juneau Jazz & Classics

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000 to

support the 2005 festival. The

festival, May 20-28, presented 19

concerts, including a family concert,

six free concerts, a full day of

performance opportunities for local

bands, and residency activities for

local schools and bands. More than

5,000 people attended the festival,

and an additional 1,100 individuals

were involved in residency

activities. A radio broadcast of one

2 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Alaska

of the jazz concerts reached

thousands more.

The artists who performed at the

2005 festival included blues/gospel

act the Holmes Brothers, baritone

singer Jubilant Sykes, folk duo Trout

Fishing in America, and jazz artists

the Larry Coryell Trio. Roger

Neumann and the Headliners, with

vocalist Madeline Vergari, were the

jazz artists-in-residence, and New

Orleans musicians Cyril Neville and

the Uptown Allstars with Big Chief

Monk Boudreaux and Joseph Hill of

Blues/gospel artists the Holmes Brothers

performing at the 2005 Juneau Jazz &

Classics festival. 

Photo by Michael Penn
the Golden Eagles provided the

finale concert. 

The festival reached an estimated

3,000 young people through

concerts, workshops, clinics, and

school activities. After one string

workshop, a parent said it was the

“very best violin lesson” his fiveyear-old son had ever had. 

Alaska Arts Southeast 

Sitka

F

or more than 30 years,

Alaska Arts Southeast has

been managing the Sitka

Fine Arts Camp, the only residential

fine arts camp in Alaska. Held on

the Sheldon Jackson College campus

in Sitka, the two-week,

multidisciplinary session attracts

students from all over the state to

experience high-quality, professional

instruction in visual arts, music,

dance, theater, writing, art

technology, and Alaskan Native

traditional arts. 

In FY 2005, Alaska Arts Southeast

received an NEA Summer Schools in

the Arts grant of $35,000 to

support the 2005 session of Fine

Arts Camp. The goals of the camp

are to create an appreciation of art

and to assist Alaskan youth in

developing personal artistic talents.

The camp served 228 students from

30 Alaska communities, both urban

and rural, as well as from nine other

states and Canada. 

More than 60 classes in various

disciplines were offered to the

students, who were able to work

closely with the faculty artists.

Students attended five classes daily,

with the schedule of classes tailored

to each student’s needs and talents.

Classes were also programmed by

age group: middle school children

focused on group activities while

high school students focused on

individualized expression. A

separate elementary class was

offered as well.

The Sitka Fine Arts Camp has had a

significant effect on the artistic

climate of Alaska. Many of the arts

teachers throughout the state have

at one time attended the camp, and

many have taught at the camp. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 2 9

Students participate in the mask theater class taught by Beverly Mann at the

Sitka Fine Arts Camp. 

Photo by Reber Stein
Tucson Symphony

Society 

Tucson

When the Tucson

Symphony Orchestra

(TSO) played its first

concert in 1929, the Arizona city’s

population totaled only 45,000.

Today, greater Tucson’s population is

approaching one million, and the

TSO gives more than 300

performances a year, reaching more

than 100,000 adults and children

annually. In addition, the TSO’s

nationally recognized music

education programs serve

approximately 17,000 preschool

through high school students each

year, and the orchestra travels to

underserved, rural communities to

present concerts and outreach

activities.

In FY 2005, the Tucson Symphony

Society, in collaboration with the

Gila Valley Arts Council, received an

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $20,000 to support a rural

touring initiative, the Southern

Arizona Residency Project. The

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

3 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Arizona

project provided four rural Arizona

communities with access to classical

music through concerts, schoolbased education programs,

curriculum materials, and

professional development workshops

for classroom teachers. In addition,

TSO reached more diverse audiences

through a 13-concert radio

broadcast series and Web-based

music education activities.

Students and teachers from the

communities of Ajo, Bisbee, Fort

Thomas, Nogales, Rio Rico, Safford,

and Tubac participated in the

project, which included a series of

four ensemble classroom visits and

community concerts. Those

programs also drew participants

from the nearby communities of

Elfrida, Douglas, Portal, Sierra Vista,

Elgin, and Patagonia. In all, 3,606

students and 1,422 adults were

reached by the project. 

The radio broadcasts and Web site

development expanded access to

resources and music for families in

rural areas with limited access to

arts activities. The radio broadcasts

reached an estimated 85,000

listeners extending from Tempe to

the Mexican border.

A trombone workshop for middle and high school instrumentalists in Nogales,

Arizona, taught by Tucson Symphony Orchestra musicians as part of the orchestra’s

Southern Arizona Residency Project. 

Photo courtesy of Tucson Symphony Orchestra
Young Arts Arizona 

Phoenix

Y

oung Arts Arizona (YA) is a

nonprofit organization

dedicated to the

presentation of children’s artwork,

with an emphasis on at-risk youth.

Since 1998, YA has worked with

schools and agencies throughout

the Phoenix metropolitan area to

provide art as an antidote to a life

full of challenges.

In FY 2005, YA received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to support a mural project led by

artist Robert Miley with juvenile

detainees at two local detention

centers: Durango Facility in

Phoenix, June 13-21, 2005, and

Southeast Facility in Mesa, June 27

– July 6. Miley has been working

with at-risk youth for a decade,

helping them redirect the negative

energy of violent behavior into

constructive, creative energy. 

Miley directed workshops on mural

painting and using art as a

balanced response to anger, fear,

and stress. Participants then

painted four-panel murals at the

two detention facilities. One mural

hangs in the cafeteria at Durango,

and the other was placed in the

visiting room at Southeast. 

Fifty-one juvenile detainees from

the two facilities participated in the

project, which may serve as a model

for future programs. Besides the

positive behavior changes in the

participants, the program also

demonstrated the possibilities that

art can play in the participants’

lives and appropriate uses of their

creativity. Prior to the project, most

of the participants had limited

access to and experience in the arts

due to economic and environmental

restrictions. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 3 1

A mural entitled Scattered Dreams was

created as part of Young Arts Arizona’s

Mural Project in the Detention Centers,

led by artist Robert Miley. 

Photo courtesy of Young Arts Arizona 
Fort Smith Symphony

Association 

Fort Smith

F

ounded in 1923, the Fort

Smith Symphony (FSS) is

the oldest orchestra in

Arkansas and serves a metropolitan

area of a quarter million people in

western Arkansas and eastern

Oklahoma. The orchestra’s season

includes nine concerts and an

educational component designed to

introduce students to classical

music. Education programs include

Symphony in the Schools, which

brings guest musicians and

orchestra members to area

elementary schools; Earquake

concerts for sixth-grade students;

and a Composer-in-Residence

program, which brings a composer

to the community each season for a

week of classroom presentations.

In FY 2005, the Fort Smith

Symphony Association received an

NEA Challenge America grant of

$10,000 to support the 2005

Earquake concerts. FSS held its

Earquake concerts on February 28,

2005. The two hour-long

performances featured projections

on two large screens showing the

musicians and their instruments.

The concert included works by

Richard Strauss, Charles Gounod,

Dmitri Shostakovich, and Johann

Strauss. The final number on the

program, Samarai, was written by

Dr. Michael Schelle, the composerin-residence. More than 2,600

students and teachers from 18 area

schools viewed the concert.

Prior to the performances, the

orchestra produced and delivered

study guides on the program and

CDs containing some of the concert

pieces to each of the Fort Smith

Public Schools to prepare the

students for the concert. A strong

emphasis is placed on sixth-graders

because they will be entering junior

high school, which offers band,

orchestra, and choral programs. The

concerts and study guides help the

students to be better informed

about and develop an interest in

classical music. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

3 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Arkansas

Fort Smith Symphony musicians Chris Pinkston, violin, and Suzanne McGowen, oboe,

entertain 6th-grade students before the performance at the 2005 Earquake concert. 

Photo courtesy of Fort Smith Symphony
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 3 3

Police Athletic League

of North Little Rock 

North Little Rock

T

he North Little Rock Police

Athletic League (NLRPAL)

was created to build trust

between inner-city youth and the

police force by providing

recreational and educational

opportunities for the Rose City

community of North Little Rock,

Arkansas. NLRPAL offers nine core

programs in various athletic

activities, such as boxing and

tennis, as well as educational

programs such as Summer Day

Camp, Youth Leadership Council,

and Community Clean-Up activities. 

In FY 2005, NLRPAL received an

NEA Learning in the Arts grant of

$6,400 to support photography

classes as part of its Summer Day

Camp in a program called Photo

Friends. NLRPAL had not previously

conducted an art-related activity as

part of its program and was

enthusiastic about adding the arts

to their activities. 

Photo Friends was designed along

the Arkansas Department of

Education’s Fine Arts Curriculum

Framework, offering these at-risk

youth the opportunity to learn the

basics of photography and how to

use it creatively. During the class

sessions, which ran twice a week for

six weeks during summer 2005, the

participants learned the basics of

operating a manual control camera

and the printing process. There was

also a history component to

heighten appreciation for the art

form. 

Field trips also were part of the

program, including trips to a local

photo lab to discover modern

photographic printing technologies

and an artist’s studio to learn about

studio photography. Guest speakers

included area artists, Arkansas

Democrat-Gazette photographers,

and the North Little Rock Police

Department’s Crime Scene photo

crew. At the end of the program,

the students chose their best work

and had it printed and matted, and

offered at a silent auction. 

Lee Parham, percussionist with

the Fort Smith Symphony, warms

up for his performance at the

2005 Earquake concert.

Photo courtesy of Fort Smith Symphony
Artistic Excellence grant of $20,000

to support 2005/06 artist-inresidence for the Steinbeck Chair,

Japanese-American poet Lawson

Fusao Inada. Inada, an American

Book Award winner and two-time

recipient of NEA Literature

Fellowships, is noted for having

written extensively about his

internment camp experience in

California in the 1940s. 

Many activities are planned for

Inada’s residency. He launched his

residency at the “Mirrors of

Diversity” conference at Hartnell

College in October 2005,

participated in a week of activities

celebrating Steinbeck’s birthday in

February 2006, and was the featured

speaker at the Steinbeck Festival in

August. Inada also is presenting

readings, lectures, and writing

workshops to area middle and high

schools. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

California

3 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

National Steinbeck

Center 

Salinas

T

he National Steinbeck Center

(NSC), founded in 1977 in

author John Steinbeck’s

hometown of Salinas, California, is

a memorial to the writer, but also a

focal point for activities in

education, history, and the arts

within the city. Besides holding the

country’s largest collection of

Steinbeck archives, the center also

provides many public programs on

the arts and educational programs

for students. In addition, NSC

developed—in partnership with

Hartnell College; Salinas Public

Library; the Western Stage; and

Partners for Peace, a program

focusing on prevention of violence

by youth—the Steinbeck Chair, a

community artist-in-residency

program. 

In FY 2005, the National Steinbeck

Center received an NEA Access to

Lawson Fusao Inada, the 2005-06 Steinbeck Chair, at the press conference

launching the 10,000 Poems Project. 

Photo by Richard Green
As part of his residency, Inada will

oversee the 10,000 Poems Project, a

community participation project to

collect 10,000 poems during the

2005/06 academic year from

community members of all

backgrounds, reflecting the cultural

heritage of the Salinas Valley and

lives of its residents. The goal is to

encourage writing and the poetic

voice within each member of the

community. 

Pacific Symphony

Association 

Santa Ana

T

he Pacific Symphony,

founded in 1978, is the

resident orchestra of Orange

County, California, and is the third

largest orchestra in the state.

Pacific Symphony performs more

than 70 individual concerts

annually, as well as an outdoor

summer series and performances for

a regional chorale and international

ballet series. The orchestra also

conducts educational and outreach

activities, providing more than 20

programs to county residents. 

In FY 2005, the Pacific Symphony

Association received an NEA

Learning in the Arts grant of

$50,000 to support the educational

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

program Class Act, a musician

residency program in area schools.

Class Act pairs 40 Orange County 

K-8 schools with orchestra

musicians in a year-long,

sequentially structured classroom

program. The program is offered free

of charge and reaches more than

26,000 students and 3,000 parents

and educators from 25 cities. 

The musicians are trained and

placed in a participating school,

teaching all the students at the

school about the life and music of

one composer and the fundamentals

of music appropriate to the age

group. Keeping with the Pacific

Symphony’s commitment to

American music, American

composers are typically featured

every other year. For the 2005/06

academic year, the composer was

George Gershwin, known not only

for his classical pieces, such as

Rhapsody in Blue, but also for his

work as a popular songwriter with

his brother Ira and his work in

musical theater and jazz. 

The residency program included five

musical events during the academic

year dedicated to Gershwin’s music

and available to the students and

their families free of charge. The

finale performance was created and

performed by the students

themselves. The orchestra also

provided teachers and parents with

training workshops, videos, CDs,

lesson plans, and books to enhance

the program. 

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 3 5

A Family Night ensemble performance

by members of the Pacific Symphony at

Canyon View School in Anaheim,

California, part of the education

program Class Act. 

Photo by Stan Sholik
Colorado Ballet

Company 

Denver

S

ince obtaining full

professional status in 1978,

Colorado Ballet has

established itself as one of its

region’s top performing arts

organizations. Today, with 31

dancers of national and

international fame, Colorado Ballet

reaches more than 80,000 people

each year through its performances

and 30,000 children and adults

through its education and outreach

programs.

In FY 2005, the Colorado Ballet

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000 to

commission a new work by

acclaimed artist and choreographer

Lorenzo “Rennie” Harris as part of a

triple-bill of world premieres.

Rennie Harris has been using hiphop to create innovative dance

pieces for more than ten years; his

new work, Earth Tribe, a

multicultural creation designed to

appeal to non-traditional ballet

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

3 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Colorado

audiences, blends ballet and hiphop. In February 2005, with eight

performances and one student

matinee, Earth Tribe—along with

Rachmaninov Second,

choreographed by Konstantin

Uralsky, and Vital Sensations,

choreographed by Darrell Grand

Moultrie—reached 10,245 children

and adults, including 1,200

students. Education and outreach

programs were designed around the

production to introduce audience

members—both children and

adults—to the historical traditions

Colorado Ballet

Company’s production

of Earth Tribe by

Rennie Harris.

Photo by Terry Shapiro
behind each new work and to

promote dance initiatives within the

public school system. In addition,

5,000 free or reduced price tickets

were available to residents in

underserved areas of Denver and its

surrounding cities.

Along with exposing Colorado

audiences to new contemporary

dances, this project provided the

dancers an opportunity to grow—in

fact, Harris used ten of Colorado

Ballet’s apprentice dancers—and

allowed contemporary

choreographers to work with a

world-class dance company while

expanding their own artistic

expression.

Colorado Springs Fine

Arts Center 

Colorado Springs

T

he Colorado Springs Fine Arts

Center (FAC), established in

1936 and annually reaching

a community audience of 500,000,

provides the community with

facilities for both visual and

performing arts. FAC comprises

three departments: the Taylor

Museum, which displays an arts

diversity otherwise unavailable to

the community; the Bemis School of

Art, which reaches more than

6,000 adults and children

each year; and the Performing

Arts Department, which

presents a range of drama

classes and workshops in

addition to film festivals,

theater and dance

productions, recitals, and

concerts.

In FY 2005, the FAC received

an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $15,000 in

support of an exhibition by

Floyd D. Tunson, a

contemporary AfricanAmerican artist whose work is

known for both its high

quality and as a reflection of

the political and social

concerns of being an African

American. This first major survey of

Tunson’s work took place from

January 21 to March 13, 2005, and

included pieces created over the

past 25 years that reflected the

artist’s diverse interests in photos,

printmakings, drawings, paintings,

mixed media, and sculpture.

An integral aspect of this project

included community and education

outreach designed to narrow the

community’s cultural gap. The FAC

focused on a specific underserved

school district, reaching 743 fifthgrade students in 12 elementary

schools. Prior to a tour of the

exhibit, docents from the FAC met

with the children in their classrooms

to introduce them to contemporary

art and Tunson’s work. The FAC also

created a catalogue to accompany

the exhibit, a DVD interview with

Tunson in his studio, and interactive

education tools.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 3 7

Synchro-Mesh #2 by Floyd D. Tunson, 

part of the exhibition of his work at the

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in

2005. 

Photo courtesy of Floyd D. Tunson
dance theater works of the highest

quality. One of its priorities is to

create new works for the stage. In

addition to its seven-person

touring dance company, Pilobolus

also provides educational and

outreach activities through the

Pilobolus Institute. 

In FY 2005, Pilobolus received an

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $10,000 to support the

commission of a new work by

choreographer and Pilobolus Artistic

Director Michael Tracy. The

Carpenter Performing Arts Center

and Aquarium of the Pacific in Long

Beach, California, commissioned

Pilobolus to create a new dance

piece inspired by marine

environments and the movement

of the oceans. Tracy used

Pilobolus’s unconventional

acrobatic approach to

choreography and

performance to explore the

relationship between humanity

and its aquatic origins in Aquatica,

set against an original score by

Brazilian composer Marcelo Zarvos. 

The premiere of Aquatica took place

Pilobolus 

Washington Depot

F

ounded in 1971,

Connecticut-based Pilobolus

has developed from an ad

hoc collective of Dartmouth College

dance students into an arts

organization dedicated to the

choreography and performance of

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

3 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Connecticut

The dance company

Pilobolus uses an acrobatic

approach to choreography

in their performances. 

Photo by John Kane, courtesy of the

Joyce Theater
down to future generations through

concert performances and

educational programs.

In FY 2005, ACO received an NEA

Learning in the Arts grant of

$45,000 to support its Classical

Music for Kids program. The program

is composed of two interrelated

parts: live public performances

intended for a family audience, and

a related education program held in

school classrooms. Classical Music

for Kids has reached more than

85,000 students in Connecticut and

New York since the program began

in 1999. 

Interdisciplinary curriculum

materials are developed by ACO’s

education department to coincide

with the live performances. The

ACO’s Artistic Director, Thomas

at the Aquarium on May 3, 2005,

using a specially constructed stage

with an enormous fish-filled tank

for background. Nearly 500 people

attended the performance. The piece

was then performed at the

Carpenter Center on May 7-8,

reaching approximately 1,500

people. Audiences reacted

enthusiastically to the

performances, and the piece is now

part of Pilobolus’s touring

repertoire. Pilobolus hopes to be

able to perform the piece at more

aquariums throughout the country,

as the piece was created to

accommodate both traditional and

nontraditional spaces. The

performances at aquarium spaces

will provided the possibility of

attracting new audiences to dance.

American Classical

Orchestra 

Norwalk

T

he American Classical

Orchestra (ACO) of Norwalk

is devoted to preserving and

performing the repertoire of 17thto 19th-century composers, playing

the works on original or reproduced

period instruments. The musicians

use historic performance practice

techniques and pass these skills

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 3 9

Crawford, and guest artists visit

classrooms, and open rehearsals are

scheduled at the Norwalk concert

hall or in school auditoriums.

The theme of the program in

2005/06 was “Thomas Jefferson’s

Music of Monticello—Life, Liberty

and the Pursuit of Music,” which is

based on Jefferson’s Monticello

music library. Concerts included

Antonio Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery

with the internationally acclaimed

Pement Players joining the ACO in

November 2005, and “Thomas

Jefferson at Monticello” in April

2006, a salon concert that recreates

a musical evening as Jefferson

himself would have presented it in

the Monticello parlor, including

pieces by Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli,

Thomas Arne, and George F. Handel.

American Classical Orchestra Artistic Director Thomas Crawford as Thomas Jefferson

and Karina Calabro as Maria Cosway in front of a harpsichord at the “Thomas Jefferson

at Monticello” event by the orchestra. 

Photo courtesy of American Classical Orchestra
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

4 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Henry Francis du Pont

Winterthur Museum 

Winterthur

Winterthur is the nation’s

greatest surviving

example of an American

country estate. Established on the

estate in 1951 by Henry Francis du

Pont, Winterthur Museum houses

the foremost collection of objects

made or used in America between

1640 and 1860. Visited annually

by 203,000 people, the museum’s

85,000 objects are displayed over

175 period rooms and 35,000

square feet of galleries. Along with

the collections of furniture,

architecture, textiles, paintings,

metals, ceramics, glass, and works

of arts on paper, the museum

includes a comprehensive research

library, an invaluable resource for

information on early American

material culture.

Winterthur is in the process of recataloguing its entire collection of

85,000 objects, many of which have

never before been catalogued. In

FY 2005, the Winterthur Museum

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $40,000 to

support the cataloguing of the

7,800 objects in two of the

museum’s most-used collections:

prints and paintings. 

Winterthur often is thought of as a

decorative arts museum, yet its

collection of prints and paintings is

comprehensive, and regarded as one

of the U.S.’s ten most significant

collections of 18th- and 19thcentury English and American

prints. Included in the collections

are such varying works as watercolor

sketches by John Lewis Krimmel,

frakturs (illuminated folk art

drawings) by the Pennsylvania

Germans, and portrait paintings of

historical American figures. The

records, along with links to other

objects in the collection and at

other museums, were added to the

Winterthur’s Web site, making the

public’s access to this resource

much more easy and efficient.

Delaware Theatre

Company 

Wilmington

T

he only resident professional

theater company in

Brandywine County, the

Delaware Theatre Company (DTC)

has presented both classic and

contemporary works since 1978.

One of the region’s leading cultural

institutions, DTC annually draws an

audience of 40,000 and has become

Birth and Baptismal certificate, made in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, 1798-1830,

one of the items being catalogued by the Winterthur Museum. 

Courtesy of Winterthur Museum
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 4 1

a leader in efforts to develop a

master cultural tourism plan for

Brandywine County and revitalize

Wilmington’s waterfront, where DTC

currently is located. In addition to

its productions, DTC provides awardwinning educational programming

such as theater classes and summer

camps; programs which combat

teen addiction and the spread of

HIV/AIDS; and programs designed

specially for at-risk children who

are mentally challenged, hearing

impaired, chronically ill, autistic,

incarcerated, or who live in group

homes.

In FY 2005, DTC received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $15,000 to support its Arts

Across the Curriculum program. In

partnership with the Ferris School, a

maximum security facility for boys

ages 12-18, DTC created a program

that integrates drama, dance, visual

arts, music, spoken word/poetry,

and filmmaking into the school’s

highly structured academic

curriculum. After working with DTC

artists, teachers are able to

Delaware

necessary in creating theater has

had a direct impact on the students’

social skills. The program has also

introduced participants to the arts

as an outlet for expression, whether

by acting in a play or as a way to

convey their own emotions and

experiences.

integrate theater techniques into

math lessons or use art when

teaching social studies. For the

2005/06 academic year, teaching

artists spent 19 weeks in residence

at the Ferris School, reaching

approximately 160 students. 

The collaboration among students

Teaching artist Al Staszesky uses drawing and sculpture to enrich the students’

study of geometry as part of Delaware Theatre Company’s Arts Across the

Curriculum program. 

Photo by Jesse Roy
children of every age, ability, and

background in musical courses,

including instrument performance,

voice, music technology, and

theory and composition. In

addition, Levine offers an Early

Childhood Music program and a

master class series by such worldclass musicians as Dave Brubeck,

the Turtle Island String Quartet,

and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. 

The Levine School of Music received

an FY 2005 NEA Learning in the

Arts grant of $20,000 to support

the presentation of its Early

Childhood Music (ECM) program to

disadvantaged youth. The ECM

program provides sequential music

classes to lay a foundation for

lifetime involvement with music. 

During the 2005/06 school year,

Levine provided 30 weeks of

musical instruction free of charge

Levine School of

Music 

Washington

T

he Levine School of Music in

Washington, DC was

founded in 1976 by Diana

Engel, Ruth Cogen, and Jackie

Marlin in the basement of a small

church. Since then, it has grown

into one of the country’s leading

community music schools and is

one of 16 nonprofit community

music schools accredited by the

National Association of Schools of

Music. Currently, about 180 facultyartists teach more than 3,500

to 280 disadvantaged children,

aged 4-7, at seven partner

organizations in Washington. At

each site, faculty work with classes

of 8-10 children, organized into

specific age groups so that the

children’s understanding and

developmental growth can be

effectively targeted. The small size

of the class allows for high levels of

interaction between teacher and

student. To aid the development of

classroom teachers at the parent

organizations, Levine provided

teacher training sessions for

approximately 70 teachers in

November 2005 and January 2006. 

Studio Theatre 

Washington

F

ounded in 1975, the Studio

Theatre produces theatrical

performances of the best

contemporary writing, serving

nearly 100,000 people annually in

the Washington, DC region.

Through its Secondstage and

Acting Conservatory, the Studio

provides opportunities for emerging

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

4 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

District of 

A young child

participates in the

Levine School’s

Early Childhood

Music Program. 

Photo courtesy of Levine

School of Music
million four-theater performance

and training facility and introducing

an exciting new body of work not

normally available to U.S.

audiences. Founding Artistic

Director Joy Zinoman traveled to

Russia with support from the

Embassy of the Russian Federation

and a travel grant from the Theatre

Communications Group on research

for the project. 

Russia’s Sigarev is considered to be

that country’s most promising

contemporary playwright. Black

Milk, which depicts the

disillusionment of youth in

artists and offers rigorous

professional theater training.

In FY 2005, the Studio received an

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $30,000 to support the

Russian Winter Project: 16

contemporary plays about Russia.

NEA funding specifically helped to

underwrite the productions of

Vassily Sigarev’s Black Milk, Mark

Jackson’s The Death of Meyerhold,

and Brian Friel’s Afterplay. 

The Russian Winter Project was the

highlight of the Studio Theatre’s

grand opening season, inaugurating

the Studio’s newly completed $13

Columbia

contemporary Russia, ran nine

weeks with 66 performances. The

U.S. premiere of Irish playwright

Brian Friel’s Afterplay, which

imagines a meeting in a 1920s

Moscow café between characters

from Russian playwright Anton

Chekhov’s plays, was performed 52

times over seven weeks. Jackson’s

The Death of Meyerhold, about

Russian theater director Vsevolod

Meyerhold, was the premiere

production of the Studio’s newly

renovated Secondstage, running

four weeks with 20 performances.

The shows included post-show

discussions with directors and cast,

and the productions of Black Milk

and Afterplay were videotaped by

the Washington Area Performing

Arts Video Archive and are available

at the DC Public Library. 

Matthew Montelongo portrays Lyovchik, a Moscow drifter, with June Hansen as Petrovna in the Studio Theatre

production of Vassily Sigarev’s Black Milk.

Photo by Scott Suchman

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 4 3
DeEtte Holden

Cummer Museum

Foundation 

Jacksonville

T

he Cummer Museum of Art &

Gardens in Jacksonville is

the largest museum in

northeast Florida, with a permanent

collection of more than 6,000

objects featured in 10 different

galleries. Traveling exhibits also are

presented to complement the

collection. In addition to the

exhibits, the museum features more

than two acres of English and

Italian gardens. The Cummer also

presents educational programs

through Arts Connections, serving

more than 50,000 students

annually.

In FY 2005, The DeEtte Holden

Cummer Museum Foundation

received an NEA Challenge America

grant of $10,000 to support a

touring retrospective exhibition of

photographer Jerry Uelsmann by the

Cummer Museum. Although he has

been exhibited in more than 100

solo shows in the U.S. and abroad,

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

4 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

this is the first career retrospective

in 26 years for Uelsmann, now in

his 70s and a longtime Florida

resident. He is regarded as having

profoundly influenced the medium

through his innovative mastery of

photomontage in a pre-digitized

era. Uelsmann received a

Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 

and an NEA Photography Fellowship

in 1972. 

The exhibition will be organized in

five to eight sections or themes

based on the selection of work by

Uelsmann and conversations with

the artist by art historian Phillip

Prodger, who is organizing the

retrospective. More than 130 

prints will be included in the

exhibition, including previously

unpublished work. The exhibition 

is slated to open in 2008 and to

tour nationally. 

Untitled, 1977 by Jerry Uelsmann, one of the works to be featured in the Cummer

Museum of Art’s retrospective exhibition of the photographer. 

Image courtesy of Jerry Uelsmann
classroom. Teacher and student

study materials are provided, and

can be downloaded from Van Wezel’s

Web site. Van Wezel also has a 

Bus Reimbursement Program for

schools that need assistance with

transportation costs. 

Performances throughout the year

are targeted at specific ages, and

some shows include Arts Odyssey

Professional Development Workshops

specially tailored by educators to tie

into the performance. Some of the

presentations in 2005/06 included

Amber Brown Is Not A Crayon, a

Van Wezel Performing

Arts Hall 

Sarasota

T

he Van Wezel Performing

Arts Hall is one of the

nation’s most active

presenting organizations, staging

approximately 150 performances

from October through May of each

season, and accommodating an

additional 120 performances by

Sarasota’s leading cultural

organizations. Van Wezel provides

culturally diverse programming to

the southwest Florida region,

bringing performers from Africa,

Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Van

Wezel also offers educational

outreach programs to the

community.

In FY 2005, Van Wezel received an

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $10,000 to support its

Schooltime Performances program

during the 2005/06 academic year.

The program brings students to the

hall to see specially priced

performances, bringing the

theatrical experience beyond the

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 4 5

musical performed for grades 2-6 by

New Jersey’s ArtsPower based on

Paula Danziger’s best-selling series;

The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Other

Eric Carle Favorites, a puppet version

of Carle’s popular children’s books

for preK-2 by Mermaid Theatre of

Nova Scotia; The Things They

Carried, a stage adaptation for

grades 6-12 of Tim O’Brien’s searing

book about his experience in the

Vietnam War by New York’s American

Place Theatre; and DanceBrazil’s

performance of traditional and

contemporary Afro-Brazilian dance. 

Florida

Students called on stage to create an original composition during the ScrapArts

Music performance at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. 

Photo by Judith R. Hall
Peabody Awards

Collection, University

of Georgia Libraries 

Athens

T

he Peabody Awards

Collection, housed at the

University of Georgia

Libraries in Athens, represents the

best of American broadcast history,

with more than 40,000 titles dating

back to 1940 for radio programs

and 1948 for television. This

invaluable collection includes

original archival copies of radio

transcription discs, audiotape,

audiocassettes, 16mm kinescopes

and prints, 2-inch videoreels, 3/4-

inch U-Matic videotapes, and

videocassettes with titles from

news, documentary, entertainment,

educational, children’s, and public

service programming.

The collection of 3/4-inch U-Matic

videotapes, used from the early

1970s through the mid-80s, contain

many examples of irreplaceable,

one-of-a-kind footage of local and

regional programs that, when

viewed collectively, provide

invaluable insight and

understanding into changes in

American culture and society. For

instance, the collection contains

footage made by and about

Hispanic Americans during the time

of Cesar Chavez’s United Farm

Workers union struggles, and African

Americans at the height of the

Black Panther movement. The

danger to this resource lies in the

videotapes themselves, which have

become obsolete and are being

threatened by age-related

deterioration and damage. 

In order to preserve this audiovisual

resource, the NEA awarded a Save

America’s Treasures grant of

$300,000 to the Peabody Awards

Collection in FY 2005 to support the

transfer of the footage to a stable

digital format. In addition to

preserving these fragile resources,

the digital transfer also makes the

materials more accessible, allowing

the footage to be used by teachers

in their classrooms and by students

conducting research. 

Save America’s Treasures grants are

given to organizations undertaking

preservation and conservation work

on nationally significant intellectual

and cultural artifacts and nationally

significant historic structures and

sites. This project will be

completed by January 2007.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

4 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Georgia

An excerpt from The Mid-East War:

The Continuing Struggles of People, in

which WCAU reporter Jim Walker

focused on the Israel-Arab War of

1973, one of the films being preserved

as part of Save America’s Treasures. 

Courtesy of the University of Georgia Peabody

Award Collection
Atlanta Ballet 

Atlanta

F

ounded in 1929, Atlanta

Ballet began as the Dorothy

Alexander Concert Group,

rehearsing in Alexander’s garage,

and grew into one of the nation’s

premier professional ballet

companies and the oldest

continually operating ballet

company in the U.S. In addition to

the exceptional dance artistry of its

performances, which annually reach

more than 100,000 people, Atlanta

Ballet also offers innovative

community and educational

programming, benefiting 75,000

children each year in Atlanta’s lowincome neighborhoods.

In FY 2005, Atlanta Ballet received

an NEA Summer Schools in the Arts

grant of $30,000 for their Dance

and Cultural Initiative Summer

Program held at Latin American

Association’s headquarters.

Reaching 120 students ages 6-18,

this tuition-free program is

designed for at-risk Latino youths in

the Atlanta area. For eight weeks

during the summer, students work

six hours a day, four days a week, in

classes designed to teach them

dance skills and about the Hispanic

culture. Dance classes are designed

for beginners and offered in a

variety of styles, including ballet,

jazz, modern, hip-hop, flamenco,

and Capoeira. Students’ dance skills

are showcased at the end of the

program in a final performance

attended by families and members

of the Latino community. In

addition to dance classes, students

also can take classes in studio art,

English language, the history of

dance, and the influence of Latino

artists on dance and music. 

Atlanta Ballet also developed a

special course on Conflict

Resolution/Leadership to address

the growing pressure by gangs

among middle and high school

students. The program is designed

to strengthen the students’s

confidence and their sense of

belonging within the community,

improving their abilities to think

creatively and respond positively to

peer pressure.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 4 7

The final performance for the Atlanta

Ballet and Latin American Association’s

Dance and Cultural Initiative. 

Photo by Kim Kenney
Kalihi-Palama Culture

& Arts Society

Honolulu

S

ince 1975, the Kalihi-Palama

Culture & Arts Society has

designed arts and cultural

programs that benefit its low- to

moderate-income, inner-city

an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $10,000 to provide classes

on folk and traditional dance and

crafts, including hula and

Polynesian dance, classical

Okinawan dance, Filipino dance,

Samoan traditional dance and crafts,

and ceramics. Classes were held

weekly for 35-50 weeks at

community centers and parks, as

well as after school during the

school year at area public

elementary and middle schools. 

For 2005, Kalihi-Palama held classes

in ten public schools with class

sizes ranging from ten to more than

25 students. Taught by native

master artisans, these classes not

only provide necessary instruction

on each art form, but also cultural

background on the art form’s place

within the Pacific region’s culture.

Although the programs welcome

students of all ages, the focus is

primarily on youth, and classes are

provided free of charge since many

families in the area do not have the

resources to pay for after-school

programs. 

The interest in the arts and

appreciation for their heritage that

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Hawaii

community. One of the oldest

community-based nonprofits in

Hawaii, the organization annually

reaches 365 children through

classes, workshops, seminars,

festivals, and demonstrations, all 

of which focus on the Pacific’s

distinct arts and culture. 

In FY 2005, Kalihi-Palama received

Students of W.R. Farrington High School

working on their kihei, a traditional

Hawaiian drape, as part of a Kalihi-Palama

Culture & Arts Society class. 

Photo courtesy of the Kalihi-Palama Culture & Arts

Society
these programs generate among

young people is invaluable, but

even more important, the activities

provide a positive, structured

environment that otherwise would

be missing in the community.

University of Hawaii

at Manoa 

Manoa

L

aunched in 1989 and

published twice a year by

the University of Hawaii at

Manoa, Manoa: A Pacific Journal of

International Writing is a literary

magazine dedicated to fostering

understanding, tolerance, and

respect among peoples and cultures

of Asia, the Pacific, and the

Americas. By publishing American

writers alongside those from Asia

and the Pacific, Manoa is breaking

cultural boundaries and providing

an outlet for these important

artists. With subscribers in all 50

states, Guam, and more than 20

foreign countries, Manoa has

published more than 1,000 writers,

translators, and visual artists, and

more than 6,000 pages of literary

work. Writers featured in Manoa

have been reprinted in such

prestigious literary anthologies as

Best American Short Stories, Best

American Poetry, Best American

Essays, and Prize Stories: The O.

Henry Awards.

In FY 2005, the University of Hawaii

at Manoa received an NEA Access to

Artistic Excellence grant of $30,000

to produce two issues of Manoa.

The Winter 2005 issue, “Varua Tupu:

New Writing from French Polynesia,”

was published in trilingual format:

English, Reo Ma’ohi (the native

Polynesian language), and French.

By removing the language barrier,

Manoa is strengthening connections

among the Pacific Islands—U.S. and

foreign—and bringing further

attention to the literature, art,

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

culture, and history of the native

Polynesians. The issue included

writings by Flora Devatine,

Celestine Hitiura Vaite, and Henri

Hiro. 

The Summer 2006 issue, “Beyond

Words: Asian Writers On Their

Writing,” was the first American

anthology to present a crosssection of contemporary Asian

authors discussing their aesthetics,

ethics, working conditions, and

influences. The issue included

samples of fiction and poetry from

writers such as Ko Un, Wang Ping,

and N. V. M. Gonzalez, as well as

photographs by Linda Connor.

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 4 9

Cover of Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing winter 2005 issue on

“Varua Tupu: New Writing from French Polynesia.”

Cover image courtesy of Manoa
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

5 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Idaho

Idaho Dance Theatre 

Boise

S

ince 1989, Idaho Dance

Theatre (IDT) has been an

important part of the

cultural community of Boise and

throughout Idaho. The dance

company’s repertoire ranges from

classical and contemporary ballet to

jazz, tap, and modern dance. IDT

was named company-in-residence at

Boise State University and runs an

Educational Outreach Program that

annually brings professional dance

performances into more than 30

schools throughout Idaho and

eastern Oregon. 

In FY 2005, Idaho Dance Theatre

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000, its first

grant ever from the Arts

Endowment, to support a 10-day

tour of rural areas in the

southeastern part of the state. The

company traveled to Burley,

Blackfoot, Mackay, Driggs, Fort Hall,

American Falls, and Pocatello before

ending with a October 15, 2005

performance in Boise. IDT

performed its main stage repertory

and its free educational outreach

shows at local schools. The NEA

grant helped keep the ticket prices

for the performances low.

The company performed in rural

towns that do not get the chance

to see professional dance

performances because of their

remoteness from the capital city.

IDT performed in spaces large and

small for enthusiastic audiences,

and also performed for several

schools, including a Head Start

program and on the Fort Hall Indian

Reservation. At Fort Hall Elementary

School, all 150 students were able

to interact with the dancers as part

of the performance. 

Log Cabin Literacy

Center 

Boise

Boise’s Log Cabin Literacy

Center (LCLC) has become

the most visible and

important place for writers to reach

Idaho’s reading and writing public.

Founded in 1995, LCLC serves the

community with educational and

cultural programs in literature and

literacy. Educational programs for

young people are the largest part

of LCLC’s work, including the

Writers in the Schools program that

places professional writers in

schools and the Summer Writing

Camp at eight sites in the state to

provide guidance to students in the

art of writing. 

In FY 2005, LCLC received an NEA

Summer Schools in the Arts grant of

$30,000 to support the Summer

Writing Camp on the Fort Hall

Reservation in southeastern Idaho.

The writing camp ran for three
weeks in summer 2005 at the

Reservation, home to the Shoshone

and Bannock Tribes. 

The workshop sessions, which were

held in two locations on the

Reservation for students in the Fort

Hall Recreation Program and the

Shoshone-Bannock School District,

were followed by a wilderness

camp, public readings, and

preparation of an anthology of the

students’ writing. A tribal member

assisted the writer/teacher with

each workshop group. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 5 1

The target population for the

program was students in grades 4

through 12, and 57 participated in

the program. Students explored the

national sites on the Reservation

and in surrounding canyons and

river bottoms. Other activities were

structured to bring students into

deeper contact with the oral

traditions of the tribe, providing

opportunities for the students to

write about their culture and

history. 

Crystal Martinez examines a display of

Native American traditional crafts at the

Natural History Museum at Idaho State

University as part of the Log Cabin

Literacy Center’s 2005 Summer Writing

Camp. 

Photo courtesy of Log Cabin Literacy Center
Steppenwolf Theatre

Company 

Chicago

F

ounded in 1974 by Terry

Kinney, Jeff Perry, and Gary

Sinise, the Steppenwolf

Theatre Company of Chicago,

Illinois, is one of the premiere

performing arts organizations in

the country, with a commitment to

advancing the vitality and diversity

of American theater. Steppenwolf

has made it a priority to

commission and adapt new works

for the stage and, to this end,

developed the New Plays Initiative.

The company reaches

approximately 200,000 people each

season. 

In FY 2005, Steppenwolf received

an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $45,000 to

support the world premiere

production The Pain and the Itch, a

new work by Bruce Norris. The play

ran from June 20 to August 28,

2005, reaching a combined

audience of 30,981 people over the

70 performances.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

5 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Illinois

Kate Arrington and Tracy Letts in Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of The

Pain and the Itch by Bruce Norris, directed by Anna D. Shapiro. 

Photo by Michael Brosilow
Masterworks Chorale 

Belleville

T

The Masterworks Chorale of

Belleville, Illinois, founded

in 1974, celebrates the

transcendent and transforming

power of choral music, presenting

six ticketed performances and

several free concerts each year. The

Chorale also sponsors a Children’s

Chorus to enrich the artistic lives of

young singers. 

In FY 2005, the Masterworks Chorale

received an NEA Challenge America

grant of $10,000 to support two

concerts during the 2005/06

season. For the first concert,

“Cathedral Voices” at St. Peter’s

Cathedral in Belleville on October 2,

2005, Dr. A. Dennis Sparger led the

Chorale in a performance of Antonin

Dvorák’s Mass in D Major,

accompanied by guest organist

Nancy Peterson and soloists

Laura Medendorp, Alison

Neace, and Joseph Michels.

In addition to the Dvorák

piece, the evening’s program

included a cappella spirituals

composed by Dvorák’s student

Harry T. Burleigh and other a

cappella works that complement the

stunning acoustics of the cathedral.

Audience for the concert totaled

250 people. 

The second concert, also at St.

Peter's Cathedral, was “Christmas at

the Catherdral” on December 4,

2005. It included the Children’s

Chorus and full orchestra with the

Chorale. A highlight of the concert

was a candlelight processional down

the 30-yard aisle of the largest

cathedral in Illinois. The set

included both favorite and new

Christmas carols, along with the

well-known Fantasia on Christmas

Carols by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The popular Christmas concert drew

approximately 700 adults and

children. The Christmas concert was

broadcast on a St. Louis radio

station to an estimated additional

5,000 people.

Steppenwolf initially began working

with Norris through the New Plays

Initiative, and has produced three

of his plays over the last four years.

The Pain and the Itch, also

developed through the New Plays

Initiative, was directed by

Steppenwolf ensemble member Anna

D. Shapiro, who also had directed

the previous three Norris plays. 

The play is a comedy about privilege

and corruption in a seemingly

stereotypical American upper

middle-class family, whose domestic

bliss is shattered by an unknown

creature gnawing at the avocados in

the kitchen. Steppenwolf conducted

open discussions with its audiences

following most performances,

allowing artists and staff to interact

with the community. Steppenwolf is

also working with Northwestern

University Press to publish the play

in the coming year. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 5 3

Lisa Adams of Belleville, Illinois,

performing in the Masterworks Chorale. 

Photograph by Bill Magrath

v

v

v
performances a year—including

dance, music, and theater. BAAC

also provides 350 multi-week

classes for all age levels and offers

grant making and technical

assistance for artists and arts

organizations.

In FY 2005, BAAC received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $10,000 to present the 9th

Annual Indiana Limestone Sculpture

Symposium, an exhibition of stone

sculptures and an accompanying

educational program. The

exhibition, which ran from June 

4–25, 2005, featured a group of 20

national and international sculptors,

made up of established artists,

symposium participants, and

apprentice carvers. Most of the

exhibition pieces were created using

limestone, indigenous to southern

Indiana and, as shown in the

exhibition, a versatile medium for

sculptors. 

The three-week symposium, held

concurrent to the exhibition,

featured week-long intensive

workshops available to both

beginning artists and professional

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

5 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Bloomington Area

Arts Council 

Bloomington

S

erving the Indiana counties

of Brown, Greene, Lawrence,

Monroe, and Owen, the

Bloomington Area Arts Council

(BAAC) provides the support and

opportunities needed to develop,

strengthen, and promote the

region’s artists and arts

organizations. At its John Waldron

Arts Center, BAAC exhibits work by

regional artists and presents 75

Indiana Kathleen Houston-Stokes, a limestone

symposium participant from 

Columbus, Ohio, takes a close look at

Oakleaf Ball by Amy Brier during 

the opening reception for “Carved In

Stone” at the Waldron Gallery in

downtown Bloomington. 

Photo by David Snodgress, Herald-Times
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 5 5

sculptors who wished to learn

unique sculpting techniques from

artists-in-residence. In addition to

the classes, the symposium also

included visual presentations by

artists-in-residence, and lectures on

the limestone industry, its

important place in Indiana’s history,

and limestone carving as a

contemporary American tradition—

all free and open to the public.

Many who attended the Carving in

Stone exhibition had never before

attended a gallery, and the number

of visitors reached more than 2,400,

including many who were drawn to

the exhibition because of the focus

it placed on limestone, an element

so integral to the region.

Ball State University 

Muncie

Acooperative effort

between Ball State

University and a group of

writers from East Central Indiana,

the Midwest Writers Workshop

(MWW) has provided support and

opportunities for published and

aspiring writers since 1974.

Throughout the year, MWW provides

writing-related sessions and

programs, and print and electronic

newsletters, in addition to an

annual summer workshop.

In FY 2005, Ball State University

received an NEA Challenge America

grant of $10,000 for MWW’s 2005

summer workshop. Approximately

130 writers, ranging from college

age through retirement and from all

over the country (although a large

number are from Indiana), attended

this series of 35 lectures, panels,

presentations, informal discussion

groups, and writing evaluations. 

The three-day workshop, held July

28-30, 2005, included both one-day

intensive sessions and workshop

sessions, focusing on various

genres. Session titles included

Suspense and the Artful Mystery;

Beginnings, Middles & Ends; and

Getting a Book Contract in 30 Days

or Less. The sessions on marketing

have increased over the past few

years as MWW has recognized an

interest among the younger

participants for this type of

information and advice.

With its NEA grant, MWW also was

able to establish a writers’ retreat, a

new component in its programming.

For nine fellowship positions, MWW

received more than 70 applications,

surpassing expectations and

revealing a desire among writers for

such an intensive program. The nine

selected fellows spent a weekend at

Pokagon State Park, writing and

revising their manuscripts under 

the direction of three veteran

writing coaches.

International bestselling author Jeffery

Deaver autographing books for a Midwest

Writers Workshop participant. 

Photo by Elaine Orr
Iowa Architectural

Foundation 

Des Moines

F

ounded in 1988, the Iowa

Architectural Foundation

(IAF) has worked to

promote and preserve Iowa’s

outstanding architecture and

highlight the positive impact such

an environment has on quality of

life. Architecture in the Schools,

IAF’s oldest and largest program,

works with educators and students

to impart not only an awareness

and understanding of Des Moines’

architecture, but also a general

appreciation for architectural

design.

Recently, due to budget constraints,

the Des Moines School District had

to cancel all field trips, thereby

preventing students from

participating in IAF’s architectural

walking tours, a key component of

its education program. To remedy

this situation, the Iowa

Architectural Foundation received

an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $14,700 in FY 2005 to

support architectural field trips for

public school third-graders. Each

student received an activity booklet,

The History and Architectural

Heritage of Des Moines, that was

integrated into their social studies

curriculum, giving the students an

understanding of architecture in

anticipation of the field trip.

The tours were led by architects and

interns specially trained by IAF to

be able to communicate to the

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

5 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Iowa

third-graders the important role

architecture plays in the Des Moines

community. While on the tour, the

students participated in a scavenger

hunt, an activity that helped them

to apply what they were seeing and

hearing. This scavenger hunt

originally was created nine years

ago, but the NEA grant allowed IAF

to update the activity and take into

account the changes in the Des

Moines skyline that had occurred

over the decade.

Architect Tom Wollan gives third-grade students a tour of Des Moines’ architecture. 

Photo by Jessica Reinert
Cedar Rapids Opera

Theatre 

Cedar Rapids

F

ounded in 1998, Cedar

Rapids Opera Theatre (CROT)

is one of only two

professional opera theaters in Iowa,

reaching more than 6,000 audience

members each year through two

mainstage operas, one youthoutreach opera, and one Young

Artist production. Through the

theater’s Young Artists program,

each season 20-25 music students

have the opportunity to work

alongside professionals, singing in

the chorus and in other small roles.

In addition, the students receive

coaching and master classes and

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

perform at local elementary

schools.

In FY 2005, CROT received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $10,000 for its new production

of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff. With

the success of the previous season’s

production of Verdi’s penultimate

opera, Otello, CROT successfully

built on the community’s

enthusiasm for Verdi’s later works

while at the same time challenging

the company with a difficult

ensemble piece. On January 12,

14, and 16, 2005, CROT presented

three performances at Theatre Cedar

Rapids, which were attended by

more than 1,150 people.

Educating and building future

audiences is key to CROT’s mission

and future. In that vein, CROT

invited humanities students at

Cedar Rapids High School to one of

the three performances, in addition

to offering discounted tickets to all

students. To bring the performance

to even more people, CROT digitally

recorded a performance, which was

broadcast twice on NPR-affiliate

KSUL. To prepare its audiences for

the production and increase their

understanding and connection to

the work, CROT provided a free preperformance lecture and a ticketed

luncheon lecture, as well as a

newsletter containing articles on

the production. 

Jan Opalach as Falstaff in Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre’s production of Falstaff. 

Photo by Alan Stoker
Lawrence Arts Center 

Lawrence

F

or more than 30 years, the

Lawrence Arts Center (LAC)

has provided its community

with quality arts programming and

its artists with support and

opportunities for exhibition.

Reaching more than 95,000 people

through its performing and visual

arts programs, LAC provides arts

education programs for children,

youth, and adults; hosts concerts,

local arts groups, fundraisers, and

conferences; and is home to the

Seem-To-Be-Players and the Prairie

Wind Dancers.

In FY 2005, LAC received an NEA

Summer Schools in the Arts grant of

$34,970 for its Summer Youth

Theatre, a challenging, fullimmersion arts education experience

serving 300 children, ages 4-18.

Theater artists and arts

professionals provided two fourweek sessions for the students. In

line with the Kansas Curricular

Standards for Theater, students

received instruction in the

standard’s four major areas of

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

5 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Kansas

The Lawrence Arts

Center’s Summer Youth

Theatre production of

Les Miserables. 

Photo by Matt Foerschler
2005 ANNUAL REPORT 5 9

theater skills: script structure and

development; skill in acting,

dancing, and singing; design and

production; and familiarity with

dramatic elements and principles. 

Each class culminated with a public

performance, allowing students to

demonstrate their new skills and

knowledge and understanding of

theater. For 2005, a total of 20

performances took place in June

and July, all exploring the theme, “A

Summer of Social Change and

Challenge.” The 4- to 8-year-old

students performed Lessons from

Fairy Tales, the 9- to 13-year-old

students performed Cinderella and

Free to Be You and Me, and the 14-

to 18-year-old students performed

Les Miserables and To Kill a

Mockingbird.

Lucas Arts and

Humanities Council 

Lucas

L

ucas, a small rural town in

Kansas, grew into a center

of grassroots/nontraditional

art during the 20th century. Using

materials found in the area, local

self-taught artists create unusual

constructions in their yards and

homes. The Lucas Arts and

Humanities Council (LAHC)

promotes this art form and these

artists by exhibiting, preserving,

documenting, and educating others

about grassroots art and traditional

folk art.

In FY 2005, LAHC received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to support a sculpture and mural

design competition and the

installation of the winning entries.

The citywide theme was “Expect the

Unexpected,” and design entries

made up of recycled materials had

priority in the judging. More than

80 entries were submitted for the

competition from art professionals,

students, and local citizens. At the

end of April, a panel of judges

selected three public art projects

out of a total of 82 entries

submitted by applicants ranging

from art professionals and college

art students to local citizens. The

exhibition will be completed in

October 2006.

The community will be integrally

involved in the exhibition—as

members of the selection committee

and as donors of the property on

which the sculptures are to be

displayed. The community also

participated in group art projects,

such as the creation of “the world’s

largest souvenir plate,” for the

exhibition. Such a project not only

highlights this unique contemporary

art form and provides an

opportunity for artists to exhibit,

but also builds up the perception of

the town as a welcoming home for

artists and residents.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Erika Nelson leads the workshop to begin

construction the “world’s largest travel

souvenir plate,” part of the Lucas Arts and

Humanities Council’s sculpture and mural

exhibition. 

Photo by Rosslyn Schultz
Kentucky Arts Council 

Frankfort

T

he Kentucky Arts Council

supports—through grants,

programs, and technical

assistance—arts-related activities

throughout the state. One of the

programs it provides, through a

state interagency partnership with

the Kentucky Historical Society, is

the Kentucky Folklife Program

(KFP), which documents, conserves,

and presents the diverse cultural

traditions of the state. 

In FY 2005, the Kentucky Arts

Council received an NEA Folk and

Traditional Arts Infrastructure grant

of $25,000 to support a staff

person to oversee the KFP’s

Community Scholars program.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

6 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Kentucky

Community Scholars is an

innovative training program for

individuals interested in

documentation and promotion of

their community’s culture, folklife,

and traditional arts. With the new

staff member, KFP will attempt to

expand the program and create a

statewide network of Community

Scholars.

Sarah Milligan was hired to manage

the Community Scholars program in

January 2005. She has an M.A. in

Folk Studies from Western Kentucky

University and is skilled in oral

history, education, fieldwork, and

archiving—all important abilities

for overseeing the program. 

Community Scholars trains

participants to use the tools of the

folklorist in their own

communities—identifying and

documenting traditions, collecting

oral histories, and showcasing local

tradition bearers in a variety of

venues, such as local festivals. Each

group of Community Scholars

participates in six training sessions

in their region. Their education

continues through access to

resources and research on the

interactive Web site Kentucky Folk

Web and interaction with the

Kentucky Folklife Association.

Milligan has been successful in

bringing diverse community groups

together and helping them

recognize and appreciate their

distinct heritage and folk cultures. 

Kim Mason, Marvinia Neblett, Mike

Morrow, Charles Neblett, and

Mike Elliot participated in the Kentucky

Folklife Program’s Community Scholars

program at a 2005 session in Bowling

Green, Kentucky. 

Photo courtesy of Kentucky Historical Society
Kentucky Opera

Association 

Louisville

F

ounded in 1952, the

Kentucky Opera (KYO) in

Louisville is one of the

nation’s oldest opera companies.

The company is the only major

producer of professional opera

programming in the state, offering

several outreach programs that tour

throughout Kentucky in addition to

its mainstage season in Louisville.

KYO’s programs reach more than

40,000 people annually. 

In FY 2005, the Kentucky Opera

Association received an NEA Access

to Artistic Excellence grant of

$15,000 to support a professional

puppet opera production of The

Happy Prince, the classic children’s

story by Oscar Wilde with libretto by

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 6 1

common thread between opera and

the visual aspects of puppetry. Short

Opera Preview lectures also were

offered prior to each performance. 

After the premiere, the production

toured to six Kentucky communities,

which included a morning

performance for school audiences

and an evening public performance

in each community. Study guides

and free Preview CDs and videos

were available to teachers and

classes attending the school

performances. 

Malcolm Williamson. The KYO

production incorporated the

puppetry and design by nationally

known artist Amy Trompetter. After

holding preliminary stagings in New

York City in fall 2004, the premiere

was held in Louisville on November

5, 2005. 

The Happy Prince, first composed

and performed in 1965, is a one-act

opera sung in English. The

production is particularly suited for

school and family audiences, with

larger-than-life puppets combined

with the stage presence of the

singers. Kentucky Educational

Television documented the creation

and performance of the production

to air on its school and public

broadcast channels statewide. 

In addition to performances, KYO

offered a free lecture in conjunction

with the Speed Art Museum on the

Right: In Kentucky Opera’s

November 2005 production of 

The Happy Prince, Amy Trompetter

created puppets of various sizes to

portray characters in the Malcolm

Williamson opera based on the 

short story of Oscar Wilde. 

Dancer/puppeteer Quin Yi as 

the swallow watches a sick child

(sung by soprano Susan RuggieroMezzadri) asks his mother (sung 

by soprano Rebecca Davis) for 

sweet oranges in Kentucky Opera’s

production of The Happy Prince. 

Photos by John Fitzgerald, courtesy of Kentucky

Opera
NORD/NOBA Center

for Dance 

New Orleans

NORD/NOBA Center for

Dance (CFD) was founded

in 1992 in partnership

with the New Orleans Recreational

Department (NORD) and the New

Orleans Ballet Association (NOBA)

with the purpose of making dance

more accessible to New Orleans

Parish inner-city students and

families. NORD has six citywide

centers that are used year-round to

provide 2,500 free classes and

workshops. In addition, NORD

holds a series of free dance

concerts at community sites,

reaching 1,500-3,000 people. 

In FY 2005, CFD received an NEA

Learning in the Arts grant of

$38,500 in support of the project

Open Track and Step Up PreProfessional Training. In

partnership with Tulane University’s

Department of Theatre and Dance,

this program provides free yearround sequential dance training to

low-income, inner-city students of

the New Orleans Parish. 

The Open Track portion of the

program offers core dance classes

for any child, ages 6-14, with an

interest in dance. Students ages

11-18 who have a demonstrated

talent and may wish to pursue a

career in dance can audition for the

Step Up program, which includes

advanced level classes, performance

opportunities, training with artists

and companies in residence, and

scholarships for summer programs.

This phase of the program is

designed for students who would

not otherwise be able to afford the

expense of training. 

Because of Hurricane Katrina, CFD

was forced to cancel classes for a

couple of months until its

performance spaces could be made

useable and students could return

to the area. As of November 1,

2005, classes were back in session

and NOBA was working to replace

the equipment and supplies lost in

the hurricane.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

6 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Louisiana
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 6 3

Cultural Crossroads 

Baton Rouge

S

ince 1996, Cultural

Crossroads has provided folk

art-based projects that

communicate and celebrate AfricanAmerican cultural and artistic

expressions. Cultural Crossroads is

based in Baton Rouge, but reaches

out to other parts of Louisiana

through projects that focus on

Louisiana traditions, artists, and

venues.

In FY 2005, Cultural Crossroads

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000 for the

post-production of its 50-minute

documentary, Rockin’ for a Risen

Savior: The Louisiana Easter Rock.

The ritual of Easter Rock ceremonies

has antecedents in African and

Caribbean culture and predates

America’s Civil War. The spiritual

singing and rocking choreography

seen in the Easter Rock ritual

strongly resembles the ring-shout

ceremonies practiced by plantation

and slave congregations. Recently,

it was believed that the tradition

had vanished from Louisiana. The

documentary, however, proves that

not only is the ritual still alive in

Winnsboro, Louisiana, but also that

the tradition’s songs, singing styles,

and religious dances are an

important part of the AfricanAmerican community. 

The documentary includes recordings

made in the field, archival

recordings, and testimonies by

participants in the ritual. A variety

of the traditional activities that

make up the Easter Rock tradition

are shown, including baptisms,

funerals, jubilees, and revival camp

meetings. The video was broadcast

by Louisiana Public Broadcasting,

and reached an audience of 3,300

viewers. In addition, copies were

widely distributed in archives and

libraries throughout Louisiana.

In displaying the evolution and

endurance of this sacred ritual,

Cultural Crossroads offers an

example of the formation and

fortitude of African-American

community traditions while at the

same time taking an important step

in preserving this ritual for future

generations.

NORD/NOBA Center For Dance

students participate in a workshop

led by Patrik Widrig. 

Photo courtesy of the New Orleans Ballet

Association

An excerpt from the documentary Rockin’ for a Risen

Savior: The Louisiana Easter Rock.

Photo courtesy of Cultural Crossroads
Bala Music and Dance

Association 

Portland

Bala Music and Dance

Association in Portland,

Maine, is dedicated to

promoting the appreciation and

preservation of the performing arts,

in particular the South Indian

dance form of bharata natyam

introduced to the U.S. more than

40 years ago by the renowned artist

T. Balasaraswati. The association

was founded by Douglas Knight and

his wife Lakshmi, the only daughter

of T. Balasaraswati. Bharata natyam

is passed on generationally;

Lakshmi learned the art form from

her mother and then taught her

son, Aniruddha. Since Lakshmi’s

death in 2001, Aniruddha Knight

has assumed his mother’s role as

artistic director of Bala Music and

Dance.

In FY 2005, Bala Music and Dance

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $20,000 to

support a seven-city nationwide

tour to introduce the art of bharata

natyam to new audiences. The tour

hit cities on both coasts, including

Norman, Oklahoma; Brunswick and

Portland, Maine; Middletown,

Connecticut; Los Angeles, California;

Boston, Massachusetts; and New

York, New York, reaching 1,915

people. 

The program included concerts,

workshops, and lectures, often over

two days. Two-hour solo dance

concerts featuring Ani Knight

followed the traditional format and

repertoire performed by the

Balasaraswati family for more than

ten generations. Workshops included

demonstrations by the members of

the ensemble with Ani and Douglas

Knight providing interpretative

commentary on the choreography

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

6 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Maine

Aniruddha Knight, Artistic

Director of Bala Music and Dance,

demonstrates the South Indian

dance form of bharata natyam. 

Photo by S. Anwar
The festival took place on the

Bangor Waterfront from August 26-

29, 2005, presenting music, dance,

and other performing arts of

cultures from across America and

the world. Approximately 150,000

people attended the festival, with

nearly a quarter of the audience

coming from out of state. 

Twenty-one performing acts and 47

craft and food vendors were part of

the festival, offering a variety of

regional and ethnic arts, crafts, and

foods. The performers ranged from

the blues of Cephas & Wiggins and

the rockabilly of Wanda Jackson

(both Cephas and Jackson are NEA

National Heritage Fellows) to the

and the relationship between dance

and music that are characteristic of

the Balasaraswati family style. 

Eastern Maine

Development District 

Bangor

E

astern Maine Development

Corporation (EMDC) is a

private, nonprofit

organization established in 1967 to

help businesses and communities

in Eastern Maine develop and grow.

One of the programs in which EMDC

has been involved is the

development and support of the

American Folk Festival in Bangor,

Maine. Building on Bangor’s past

success in hosting the National

Folk Festival, in 2005 the American

Folk Festival was created to

continue bringing a wide array of

traditional arts to the rural region,

with support from EMDC, the City

of Bangor, the National Council for

the Traditional Arts, and the Maine

Folklife Center at the University of

Maine.

In FY 2005, EMDC received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $40,000 to support the inaugural

year of the American Folk Festival.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

traditional Quebecois music of Le

Vent du Nord and the flamenco

music and dance of Espiritu del

Flamenco. 

In addition to the national acts

brought in for the festival, many

Maine acts were featured, including

Acadian-style master fiddlers Don

Roy, Lucien Mathieu, and Erica

Brown, and Les Pieds Rigolants, an

ensemble of young dancers from

Lewiston-Auburn whose specialty is

step dancing. The success of the

festival will help ensure that it

becomes an annual event. 

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 6 5

Cyril Pahinui, Hawaiian slack-key

guitarist, performs at the 2005

American Folk Festival in Bangor,

Maine.

Photo by Kevin Bennett, courtesy of the Bangor

Daily News
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

6 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Columbia Center for

Theatrical Arts 

Columbia

T

he Columbia Center for

Theatrical Arts (CCTA),

founded in 1969, provides

educational and entertaining

theatrical experiences for students

in the Maryland, Delaware, and

Washington, DC region. With more

than 100 teachers, directors,

writers, actors, musicians,

technicians, and consultants, CCTA

provides two main facets of

programming: classes and

productions. CCTA’s Conservatory

consists of performance arts-based

programming: The Young

Columbians, a professional student

performing troupe; Kids on

Broadway musical theater classes;

the CCTA Summer Arts Camps; and

the Teen Professional Theatre.

CCTA’s Theatrical Arts Productions

produce and present five

professional productions each school

year, which relate to the school

curriculum, reflect current social

issues, and reinforce good values. 

Maryland

Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts’s

Teen Professional Theatre production of

Aida.

Photo by Kirstine M. Christiansen
Ward Museum of

Wildfowl Art 

Salisbury

I

n 1976, the Ward Foundation

founded the Ward Museum of

Wildfowl Art on Salisbury

University’s campus. Named for

brothers Lem (1983 NEA National

Heritage Fellow) and Steve Ward of

Crisfield, Maryland, whose skill and

vision elevated decoy carving to

fine art, the museum works to

promote, preserve, and perpetuate

wildfowl art. The waterfowl decoy is

one of North America’s oldest

indigenous art forms and can be

traced back at least 2,000 years. 

As the premier institution of its

kind in the United States, the Ward

Museum illuminates this significant

cultural tradition and, through its

education programs, conveys the

significance of this art form within

the folk art genre. The only

museum in its rural community,

Ward Museum has approximately

60,000 visitors annually, and 10,000

students participate in its

educational programming.

In FY 2005, the Ward Museum

received an NEA Challenge

America grant of $10,000

to support the development

of a permanent exhibit focused on

In FY 2005, CCTA received an NEA

Summer Schools in the Arts grant of

$35,000 for its Teen Professional

Theatre, a partnership with

Reservoir High School. CCTA began

auditioning students in the spring

in anticipation of the summer’s

three-week intensive program. In

order to ensure diversity in

ethnicity and talent, numerous

auditions took place within a 50-

mile radius of CCTA, and full and

partial scholarships were provided to

students in need. 

For 2005, 56 students (53 cast

members and 3 stage crew

members) participated in intensive

workshops, one-on-one coaching

sessions, ensemble rehearsals, and

specialized instruction, culminating

in five public performances of a

student version of Aida. Surrounded

by their talented peers, with

professional artists teaching and

mentoring them, participants were

challenged and inspired to work as

a team, to improve their theatrical

knowledge and skills, and to

develop self-confidence, discipline,

determination, and poise—skills

which serve them well both on and

off the stage.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

the history of American decoycarving contests. These contests

can be traced back to the 1876

Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia

when, for the first time, American

decoy carvings were judged and

evaluated in a contest format; the

same format is still used today. In

addition to collecting examples by

all contest winners, the Ward

Museum currently hosts the World

Champion Carving Competition each

year. 

Utilizing the museum’s extensive

collection, the exhibit opened in

summer 2006 and used objects,

graphics, and a descriptive storyline

to chart the development of the

decoy from hunter’s tool to art form.

The exhibit also highlighted how

the art form has grown and become

refined under the influence of the

annual competitions. 

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 6 7

This mallard drake by 1983

NEA National Heritage

Fellow Lem Ward and his

brother Steve illustrate the

evolution of carving from

simple decoys to pieces of art. 

Photo courtesy of the Ward Museum
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

6 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Sterling and Francine

Clark Art Institute 

Williamstown

Williamstown’s Sterling

and Francine Clark Art

Institute, founded in

1950, is known for its collection of

19th-century European paintings

and major collections of silver,

porcelain, drawings, and

photographs. The Art Institute

provides public programs such as

teacher workshops and family days,

and includes a 200,000-volume

reference library that is open to all,

making the museum a vital cultural

organization for the rural western

Massachusetts community. 

In FY 2005, the Art Institute

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $65,000 to

support the first-ever catalogue of

its collection of 19th-century

European paintings. The catalogue

is planned for publication by Yale

University Press in May 2008. The

paintings represent one of the last

major collections held by an

American art museum that has yet

to be catalogued. While many of

the collection’s Impressionist

paintings are well known, the full

range and depth of the collection

will be a revelation to many. 

The focus of the catalogue will be

325 works by 19th-century artists

of eight different nationalities.

Major works range from paintings by

Théodore Géricault, J. M. W. Turner,

Massachusetts

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, At the Concert (1880), is one of the features in the Sterling and

Francine Clark Art Institute’s catalogue of their 19th-century European paintings

collection. 

Image courtesy of the Clark Art Institute 
and Jean-Francois Millet to work by

Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, and

Camille Pissarro. In addition, the

collection includes 34 works by

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, one of the

largest holdings of his work by an

American institution. 

The catalogue will comprise two

volumes arranged alphabetically by

artist’s name. An introductory essay

on the formation of the collection

will include unpublished material

from Sterling Clark’s diaries and

purchase records. The catalogue

entries are being written by eight

art historians and include extensive

technical and conservation notes as

well as the historian’s own

interpretations and opinions on the

pieces. The catalogue also will

include a comprehensive index and

bibliography. 

New England

Conservatory of Music 

Boston

T

he New England

Conservatory of Music (NEC)

in Boston, Massachusetts,

founded in 1867, is one of the

world’s leading professional schools

of music. NEC alumni fill concert

halls, recording studios, and music

facilities around the world. NEC was

the first conservatory to offer a

degree program in jazz studies, and

includes five MacArthur Foundation

“Genius” Grant recipients among its

past and present faculty: Ran

Blake, Steve Lacy, Gunther Schuller,

and NEA Jazz Masters George

Russell and Cecil Taylor. 

In FY 2005, NEC received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $10,000 to preserve and make

accessible the compositions of jazz

artist Ran Blake. Blake has recorded

more than 30 albums since his

1962 ground-breaking recording

with vocalist Jeanne Lee, The

Newest Sound Around. Blake has

often been considered a proponent

of the Third Stream style—a fusion

of classical and jazz idioms—along

with NEA Jazz Master John Lewis

and Gunther Schuller, who coined

the term. 

NEC plans to establish a Jazz

Archive at the conservatory,

eventually making available

published scores, arrangements,

rehearsal notes, performance

instructions, and catalogues of

some of the most legendary names

in jazz. NEC will begin with Blake,

transferring approximately 50

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 6 9

performances currently recorded on

reel-to-reel and LPs to CD to

preserve the music, based on

Blake’s review of the recordings. In

addition, the scores for

approximately 60 of Blake’s works

will be organized, with the accuracy

of the scores being verified by

Blake. Blake’s NEC materials, from

his more than 30 years at the

conservatory, also will be

catalogued and transferred to the

library archives. 

Ran Blake performs in a 1993 concert in

the New England Conservatory of Music’s

Jordan Hall. 

Photo by Jeff Thiebauth
Arab Community

Center for Economic &

Social Services 

Dearborn

S

ince 1971, the Arab

Community Center for

Economic & Social Services

(ACCESS) has provided the Arab

community in Dearborn, Michigan,

with support in its economic,

social, and cultural development.

Over the years, arts education has

become an integral part of ACCESS’s

programming and proved to be a

successful way of connecting ethnic

and racial communities. In January

2005, the first ever Arab American

National Museum opened and

became home to the ACCESS

Cultural Arts Program, providing the

organization with the opportunity

to expand its cultural and

educational programming.

In FY 2005, ACCESS received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $45,000 to develop a visual arts

exhibition of contemporary work to

coincide with the opening of the

new museum. In/Visible:

Contemporary Art by Arab American

Artists ran from January 15 through

June 10, 2005, and featured pieces

by 14 American artists of Arab

descent. The exhibit explored

recent issues of freedom, exile, and

personal identity that resulted from

the increased security following

September 11, 2001. Providing an

example of the connection between

art and society as well as displaying

the diversity of American art,

In/Visible was visited by more than

3,000 people and included

paintings, etchings, video

installations, media technology, and

sculpture. 

In addition to the exhibition itself,

ACCESS developed tours and

workshops for students in grades 

K-12 and lesson plans for teachers

that discussed the exhibition’s

themes. ACCESS also held a threeday symposium during the

exhibition, featuring artists,

scholars, and students from across

the country, who participated in

lectures and panel discussions on

Arab and Arab-American artistic

forms and representation.

Michigan Opera

Theatre 

Detroit

I

n 1963, the Michigan Opera

Theatre (MOT) was established

as an education and outreach

component of the Detroit Grand

Opera Association. It became a

7 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

In Memory of Edward Said by Sumayyah Samaha, presented as part of the exhibition

In/Visible: Contemporary Art by Arab American Artists by the Arab Community Center for

Economic & Social Services (ACCESS). 

Photo courtesy of ACCESS

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS
professional opera company in 1971

and today annually reaches more

than 250,000 people in the Detroit

area through five opera

productions, four dance

presentations, and year-round arts

education and outreach programs

for all ages. MOT operates in a very

diverse area of the country, which

is reflected in its performances,

which often feature young,

multicultural artists.

MOT received an NEA Access to

Artistic Excellence grant of $40,000

in FY 2005 to support the world

premiere of Margaret Garner.

Composed by Grammy-winning

composer Richard Danielpour, with a

libretto by Nobel Laureate Toni

Morrison, Margaret Garner is set in

1856 and tells the true story of a

fugitive slave’s fight for freedom.

This work, while adding to the

American opera repertoire, also

provided new opportunities for

African-American opera singers to

perform in lead roles. MOT hopes

that its production will serve as a

catalyst for the commission of more

operas with African-American

themes.

In addition to five performances,

which ran between May 7-22, 2005,

MOT arranged a four-week lecture

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Michigan

Gregg Baker as Robert Garner, Denyce

Graves as Margaret Garner, and Angela

Brown as Cilla with members of the chorus

in Michigan Opera Theatre’s production of

Margaret Garner. 

Photo by John Grigaitis

series focused on the social issues

inherent in the production, as well

as its historical significance and

artistic impact. For students ages

12-18, MOT developed an

educational curriculum around the

play. These educational programs

reached a total of 40,000 people;

this is in addition to the 15,250

people who attended MOT’s

performances of Margaret Garner.
VocalEssence 

Minneapolis

S

ince it was founded in 1965

as the Plymouth Music

Series, VocalEssence has

grown into one of the world’s

premier choral arts organizations,

presenting innovative music

performances in addition to q

uality arts education programs.

With its 120-voice Chorus and 

the 32-voice Ensemble Singers,

VocalEssence presents both 

lesser-known classical pieces as

well as works by contemporary

composers.

In FY 2005, VocalEssence received

an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $35,000 for its WITNESS

program, which annually highlights

the contributions of AfricanAmerican artists. For 2005, its

fifteenth anniversary, WITNESS

focused on photographer, author,

filmmaker, and composer Gordon

Parks, who received the National

Medal of Arts in 1988. 

A key part of WITNESS is its School

Program, which in 2005 expanded

to include 45 K-12 schools in

Minneapolis, St. Paul, and suburban

and out-of-state districts. For the

2005 curriculum, the focus was on

the relationship between art and

politics in the African-American

community, beginning with W.E.B.

du Bois and working to

contemporary times. A special

focus was placed in the curriculum

on Gordon Parks and his use of art

in the fight against racism. With 13

teaching artists from varying arts

disciplines—including composers,

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

7 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Minnesota

VocalEssence performing a Young

People’s Concert as part of the

WITNESS program on Gordon

Parks.

Photo by Walter Griffin
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

dancers, authors, and

photographers—making two visits

per classroom, more than 5,000

students and teachers were reached.

Workshops were designed for each

age group, with activities that

included preparing a performance

piece to present to other classes

and the WITNESS Young People’s

Concerts. 

In addition to the school program,

WITNESS included a subscription

concert and a newly released fourdisc recording set. A multimedia

presentation exploring Gordon

Parks’s life and arts was developed

for the subscription concert and

later adapted for the Young People’s

concert. 

Guthrie Theatre

Foundation 

Minneapolis

One of the most renowned

theaters in the country, the

Guthrie Theatre has grown

from a summer festival theater into

a year-round performing arts

organization with two stages,

presenting up to 12 plays a season.

The Guthrie stages both classical

and contemporary works,

acknowledging the excellence and

importance of the classics while

supporting contemporary work from

diverse cultures and traditions.

With a subscription base of more

than 30,000, the Guthrie reaches

400,000 people each year with

ticket buyers from all 50 states. 

In FY 2005, the Guthrie Theatre

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $40,000 in

support of a new adaptation of

Sophocles’ Oedipus the King by

playwright and actor Ellen

McLaughlin, directed by Lisa

Peterson. To strengthen the

audience’s connection to the play, 

it was staged on a thrust stage,

placing the actors in close proximity

to the audience. The adaptation

highlighted questions about

leadership and power raised by the

3,000-year-old Greek tragedy. The

production ran from January 15

through February 13, 2005, reaching

38,066 people.

In addition to the performance, the

Guthrie provided opportunities to

discuss the issues the play raises

through pre- and post-show

discussions, workshops with school

groups and the general public, and

an open house where more than

3,000 attendees were able to see

the set up close. The Guthrie also

developed an online study guide on

Oedipus, which included essays by

the director and playwright, a

glossary of the gods, goddesses, and

monsters in Oedipus, and suggested

activities and discussion topics. 

Isabelle Monk O’Connor as Jocasta and

Peter Macon as Oedipus in the Guthrie

Theatre’s production of Oedipus the King. 

Photo by T. Charles Erickson
Gulf Coast Symphony

Orchestra 

Biloxi

T

he Gulf Coast Symphony

Orchestra (GCSO) of Biloxi,

Mississippi, was founded in

1962 to encourage and cultivate

the appreciation of classical music

on the Mississippi coast. The GCSO

presents four subscription concerts,

four school concerts, two free

outdoor concerts and educational

programs annually. In addition,

GCSO hosts the Gulf Coast

Symphony Youth Orchestra, which

has 65 members. 

In FY 2005, GCSO received an

NEA Challenge America grant

of $10,000 to support its

final subscription concert

of 2005, a special event

with guest artist

saxophonist Harry White,

a native Mississippian. In

addition to performing

in the concert, White

participated in auxiliary

One of the pre-concert lectures/

demonstrations by White was held

at the Walter Anderson Museum of

Art in nearby Ocean Springs,

Mississippi. In addition, White

presented a master class in

saxophone to 125 music students

from three schools in the Gulfport

School system. White helped the

young musicians to see the

instrument as a more versatile

instrument, not only used in bands.

One student came away from a oneon-one talk with White smiling, and

said, “I never even thought about

breathing that way before!”

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Mississippi

7 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Saxophonist Harry White was

the guest artist at the final 2005

concert of the Gulf Coast

Symphony Orchestra. 

Photo by Telemach Wiesinger

educational activities. 

White, one of the nation’s foremost

classical saxophonists, joined the

75-member GCSO to present the

“Fantastic Finale” concert on April

9, 2005, featuring Hector Berlioz’s

Symphonie Fantastique. The

performance drew a sold-out crowd

of approximately 1,200 people. 
Delta State University 

Cleveland

Delta State University, one

of eight state universities

in Mississippi, is home to

the Delta Center for Culture and

Learning (DCCL). The mission of the

interdisciplinary center is to

promote the history and culture of

the Mississippi Delta region and its

significance to the world. 

In FY 2005, Delta State University

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000 to

support the Mississippi Blues Trail,

which will include the creation and

installation of heritage markers,

directional signs, and interpretive

maps. DCCL will champion the

project for the university,

collaborating with the Mississippi

Blues Commission. 

The Blues Trail’s markers will be

installed adjacent to historical sites,

each featuring photographs and text

illustrating the lives and times of

seminal blues performers. Each

installation will be unveiled with a

public ceremony accompanied by

live performances of blues music

and academic and oral history

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

presentations. The trail is modeled

on the highly successful Civil War

Trails of Maryland, North Carolina,

Virginia, and West Virginia.

The primary goal of the Blues Trail

is to celebrate Mississippi’s

contribution to blues music, one of

America’s first indigenous

art forms. Ten initial sites

have been identified,

including Muddy Waters’s home site

in Stovall; Charley Patton’s grave

site in Sunflower County; Nelson

Street in Greenville, a famous

historic black entertainment district;

Robert Johnson’s grave site at Little

Zion Church in Leflore; and WJPR

radio station, where B.B. King

first performed on the air

as a member of the St.

John’s Singers. 

A Mississippi Blues Trail heritage

marker at the grave site of blues artist

Charley Patton in Sunflower County,

Mississippi. 

Photo courtesy of the Delta Center for Culture and

Learning at Delta State University 

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 7 5
Missouri Repertory

Theatre 

Kansas City

Missouri Repertory Theatre

(MRT) serves the greater

Kansas City area (both

the Kansas and Missouri regions),

producing classical and

contemporary works annually. In

addition, MRT offers outreach and

education programs, including study

guides for teachers, school

performances, and workshops.

In FY 2005, Missouri Repertory

Theatre received an NEA Access to

Artistic Excellence grant of $25,000

to support the production of August

Wilson’s Two Trains Running. The

play was performed at two venues

in January and February 2005: the

Spencer Theatre on the campus of

the University of Missouri and the

Gem Theatre in the 18th and Vine

district, the historic center of

African-American life in Kansas City.

Performing Two Trains Running at

the Gem, reaching nearly 1,700

people, allowed MRT to directly

serve the African-American

community with a goal of building

new audiences for the theater.

August Wilson was able to attend

the performances at the Gem. MRT

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

7 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Adolphus Ward and James A. Williams in Missouri Repertory Theatre’s production of August Wilson’s

Two Trains Running, directed by Lou Bellamy. 

Photo by Don Ipock Photography
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 7 7

gave a total of 33 performances at

the two venues, including two

student matinee performances.

MRT’s Producing Artistic Director

Peter Altman has a long history

with Wilson’s work, having

produced the world premieres of six

of his plays. Set in a restaurant in

Pittsburgh in 1969, Two Trains

Running examines the lives and

struggles of a neighborhood’s black

residents. Performances at the

Spencer Theatre drew audiences of

more than 12,000 people.

In addition to the performances,

MRT held four free pre- and postproduction public lectures, a free

public reading of the play at a

church daycare center in the 18th

and Vine district, and six in-school

artist residencies for high school

students. Matinee performances and

related outreach activities served

14 area schools and 1,457 students. 

Better Family Life 

St. Louis

Better Family Life (BFL) was

founded in 1983 to

promote community

development programs to foster

positive change within the

metropolitan St. Louis, Missouri,

and East St. Louis, Illinois,

communities. Part of BFL’s

programming involves cultural

endeavors, such as the construction

of a cultural center and museum

and Black Dance-USA: A Celebration

of Movement, a seven-day national

dance festival. 

In FY 2005, Better Family Life

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000 to

support the 20th anniversary of the

Black Dance-USA festival. The

festival took place May 23-29, 2005

at the historic West End Community

Center, featuring the Muntu Dance

Theater of Chicago, Illinois. The

dance company performs

interpretations of contemporary and

traditional African and AfricanMissouri

American dance, music, and

folklore. In addition to the

performances, the dance company

also participated in a lecture

demonstration and master class for

the community.

The lecture demonstration was for

an audience of more than 300

elementary, middle, and high school

students. A master class in dance

for festival participants also was

held. The concert performance, held

at the Edison Theatre at

Washington University, drew more

than 1,000 audience members. 

In addition to the Muntu Dance

Theater’s participation, classes were

offered in various forms of dance,

including Capoeira Angola, tap,

traditional African dance, hip-hop,

and belly dancing. Classes in

traditional African songs and

percussion also were available. 
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

7 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Permanent Collection of the

Yellowstone Art Museum. The

exhibition, on display from July

2005 to January 2006, was a major

installation of the museum’s

permanent collection, highlighting

the evolution of abstraction,

modernism, and contemporary art

in the American West. The

exhibition was accompanied by an

in-depth catalogue, which offered a

scholarly perspective on the

evolution of contemporary art in

the West.

The artists featured include those

who began work after World War

II—such as early Montana

modernists Isabelle Johnson,

Robert and Gennie DeWeese, and

Bill Stockton—alongside a later

generation of artists such as Walter

Piehl, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith,

and Dennis Voss. Also on display

was the only extant collaborative

piece by Montana artists John Buck

and Deborah Butterfield. The legacy

of these early modernists is

preserved today not only in the

distinctive, innovative works

displayed in the exhibition, but

also in the work of the

contemporary artists who have

been powerfully affected by their

style. 

Yellowstone Art

Museum 

Billings

T

he Yellowstone Art Museum,

founded in 1964 in the

former Yellowstone County

Jail, includes contemporary and

historic art from both celebrated

and emerging artists in its

collection, with an emphasis on

Montana and surrounding regions.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Montana

The museum offers six to ten

exhibitions each year from its

permanent collection as well as

from collections held by other

museums and collectors. 

In FY 2005, Yellowstone Art Museum

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $25,000 to

support the exhibition Making

Connections: Modernism and

Contemporary Art on the High Plains,

1945 to the Present, Works from the

Pilot and Index Peaks, Wyoming (1952) by Isabelle Johnson, one of the works featured in

Yellowstone Art Museum’s exhibition on modernism in the American West, Making

Connections. 

Image courtesy of Yellowstone Art Museum
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

200 5 ANN U AL REPORT 7 9

Tundra Club 

Bozeman

T

undra Club, incorporated in

Montana in 1995 (with

offices in Utah), supports

independent productions for public

broadcasting, film, and the Web. It

has helped to produce a series of

public radio shows on the

environment, experimental videos, a

film festival, and the Hearing Voices

project, which combines classic

works from public radio’s past with

new stories by established and

emerging producers. 

In FY 2005, Tundra Club received an

NEA Arts on Radio and Television

grant of $35,000 to support the

production of new stories for the

radio series Hearing Voices. The

series presents special episodes that

mix creative nonfiction

documentaries, sound-portraits, and

personal essays with other genres,

such as radio theater, poetry, music,

and comedy. Each special is built

around a theme and designed for

broadcast around a specific event or

day. A different guest host anchors

each episode. Many of the stories

have aired on popular series, such

as National Public Radio’s All Things

Considered and Pacifica Radio

International’s This American Life. 

Specials created in 2005/06

included “John Ono Lennon,”

hosted by Lynn Neary and broadcast

in December 2005 to coincide with

the 25th anniversary of Lennon’s

murder in December 1980, with

interview clips of Lennon and

material on people’s reaction to his

murder; “Love’s Labors,” hosted by

Amy Dickinson of the Chicago

Tribune and broadcast in February

2006 to coincide with Valentine’s

Day and including various

recordings dealing with love; and

“Wordshakers,” hosted by NPR’s

Andrei Codrescu and broadcast in

April 2006 to coincide with National

Poetry Month, including clips of

Walt Whitman, Denise Levertov, Ed

Sanders, and Carl Sandburg, among

others. The specials and other

stories also are available online at

www.hearingvoices.com. 

Tunda Club’s Hearing

Voices radio series

featured a special on

Valentine’s Day called

“Love’s Labors” in

February 2006. 

Valentine’s Day postcard

painted by Victoria Golding,

courtesy of Hearing Voices
Omaha Symphony

Association

Omaha

F

ounded in 1921, the Omaha

Symphony annually presents

approximately 60

performances, altogether reaching

more than 300,000 patrons,

including 40,000 students, pre-K

through 12th grade who participate

in the symphony’s multiple

education and outreach programs.

Omaha Symphony’s annual tours

provide a way to reach new

audiences in areas where residents

are unlikely to travel to large cities

for concerts. In addition, Omaha

Symphony collaborates with Opera

Omaha, providing music for four

productions each year.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

8 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

In FY 2005, the Omaha Symphony

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000 in

support of a tour by the symphony’s

string quartet to three communities

in rural western Nebraska: Minden,

Cozad, and Grand Island. In each

community the symphony presented

two evening community concerts in

addition to providing in-school

educational programs that reached

approximately 350 students. For

Mission: Imagination, designed for

students pre-K through 3rd grade,

the musicians used rhythm and

rhyme to showcase classic children’s

stories and poems. At the end of

the session, the students were

invited to sing along with the

music and conduct the musicians.

Another education program, InSchool Ensembles, a hands-on

workshops for students in preschool through high school, allowed

students to interact with the

musicians and learn how the

instruments work and how the

musicians communicate with one

another while performing. 

By creating an enthusiasm for music

among the children, not only do

more families attend the evening

concerts, but more important,

Omaha Symphony is cultivating an

appreciation for and interest in

classical music among students.

Omaha Symphony

Association’s string quartet

performs in Minden,

Nebraska, as part of their

tour to rural communities. 

Photo by Jim Edgecombe
Willa Cather 

Pioneer Memorial &

Educational

Foundation 

Red Cloud

F

ounded in 1955, the Willa

Cather Pioneer Memorial &

Educational Foundation

(WCPM) in the rural town of Red

Cloud, Nebraska, preserves and

promotes the life, times, setting,

and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning

novelist Willa Cather. Through

symposia, conferences, and

international seminars, WCPM

perpetuates an interest in Cather’s

life, both among scholars and the

general public. WCPM recently

restored the 1885 Red Cloud Opera

House—where Cather attended

performances in her youth—and

now presents programming there. 

In FY 2005, WCPM received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

for a musical theater production of

A Singer’s Romance, based on

Cather’s short story of the same

name. Professor Jim Ford of the

University of Nebraska was

commissioned to write, direct, and

stage a dramatic adaptation of A

Singer’s Romance, featuring Ariel

Bybee, a mezzo soprano who sang

for 18 years with the Metropolitan

Opera, in the lead actress role. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 8 1

Nebraska

Prior to the performances, Cather

scholars studied the script to insure

its adherence to the original work

and measure its artistic merit.

Nationally known scholars attended

the performance to evaluate the

scholarly significance of

experiencing the short story in a

different media. A total of six

performances took place in four

venues: the Red Cloud Opera House

hosted three performances in April

and June of 2005, and the Carson

Theatre in Lincoln, Nebraska, the

Minden Opera House in Minden,

Nebraska, and the York Theatre in

York, Nebraska each hosted one

performance in September of 2005.

Selma Schumann (Ariel Bybee) is greeted by the Young Man (Anthony Radford) in the

Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial & Educational Foundation production of A Singer’s

Romance. 

Photo by Jim Ford
Community College of

Southern Nevada 

North Las Vegas

T

he Community College of

Southern Nevada (CCSN)

serves a four-county,

42,000-square-mile area—including

two of the most rapidly growing

cities in the nation, Las Vegas and

Henderson—with three main

campuses and 15 learning centers.

CCSN’s Performing Arts Department

offers diverse music, dance, and

theater programming, working

closely with the college’s

Performing Arts Center to provide

events that reflect community

interests. 

In FY 2005, CCSN received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to support the International New

Music Festival from September 23-

25, 2005. The festival has been an

annual event since 2002, bringing

composers, performers, and listeners

together for three days to engage in

new music chamber compositions. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

8 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

In 2005, eight free concerts were

offered at the Performing Arts

Center, beginning with a grand

opening gala featuring all the

musicians who were appearing at

the festival. Following the gala was

a tribute to Edwin London, awardwinning composer and founder of

the Cleveland Chamber Symphony,

by violinist Laura Martin-Prokopyk

and pianist Mark George. 

Saturday’s concert featured the

Irrevelants, a duo of violist Tim

Deighton and saxophonist Carrie

Koffman, as well as performances

by Clarion Synthesis, a clarinet and

keyboards duo, and a duet by

soprano Anne Christopherson and

pianist Voltaire Verzosa. 

Sunday’s lineup included master

percussionist Gustavo Aguilar, CCSN

faculty ensemble Synchronix, and

Clarion Synthesis (D. Gause-Snelson and Gerald Errante) were one of the featured

musical performers at the Community College of Southern Nevada’s 2005

International New Musical Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Photo by Tony Scodwell
Netherlands duo reCYCLEd, featuring

Henri Bok on bass clarinet and Rob

van Bavel on piano. In addition,

Clarion Synthesis, led by festival

director and founder D. GauseSnelson, performed a new work,

desert dawning, inspired by the Red

Rock Canyon National Conservation

Area. 

Nevada Arts Council 

Carson City

T

he Nevada Arts Council

(NAC) is the agency charged

with ensuring that state and

national funds support cultural

activity and encourage participation

in the arts throughout Nevada. In

addition to awarding grants, NAC

supports various programs, such as

the Nevada Touring Initiative,

which brings exhibitions and

writers to underserved communities

in the state; a Folklife Archives

documenting Nevada’s rich cultural

heritage; and the Artist-inResidence program to bring artists

to schools and communities. 

In FY 2005, the Nevada Arts Council

received an NEA Folk & Traditional

Arts Infrastructure Initiative grant

of $20,000 to support expansion of

its Folklife Education Initiative. The

program, initiated in 1998, was

developed by NAC’s Folklife Program

to bring traditional artists into Reno

and Carson City schools to broaden

students’ knowledge of Nevada’s

diverse cultures. The program was

expanded to include workshops and

presentations with local arts

organizations and senior centers in

northwestern Nevada, as well as at

cultural institutions such as the

State Museum in Carson City.

Folklife Education Initiative

workshops served nearly 1,500

students in northern Nevada during

the past two years. 

With the NEA grant, the program

will be expanded further. NAC is

creating a roster of visual and

performing artists to present

demonstrations at educational and

community institutions, increasing

the number of artists participating

in the Folklife Education Initiative.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Nevada

NAC folklorists will conduct

fieldwork with each participating

artist to generate content for

educational materials that will be

distributed to schools to enhance

the artist’s visit. The roster of

artists reflects the cultural diversity

of the state, including artists

working in Japanese koto music and

taiko drumming, Mexican paper

flowers, Ukrainian egg decorating,

and Thai and Filipino dance. 

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 8 3

Washoe Native American Sue Coleman

from Carson City is one of the

participating folk artists in Nevada Arts

Council’s Folklife Education Initiative. 

Photo courtesy of Nevada Arts Council
Forest. The guidebook is intended to

bring more recognition to the

artists working in this remote, rural

area of the Northeast and expand

opportunities for them in the

creative economy.

NFC is distributing 4,000 copies

of the 280-page, full-color

guidebook free to arts

organizations, state agencies

for tourism, chambers of

commerce, libraries, tourism

outlets such as bed and

breakfasts, the media, and

elected officials. An

additional 3,000 copies will be on

sale through participating

businesses, bookstores, and the

Internet.

Pontine Theatre 

Portsmouth

T

he Pontine Theatre in

Portsmouth, New Hampshire,

founded in 1977, uses

movement and other theatrical

traditions, such as masks and

puppetry, to perform startling and

original contemporary works. Both

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

8 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

New Hampshire

Northern Forest

Center 

Concord

T

he Northern Forest Center

(NFC) works to build healthy

communities, cultures,

economies, and ecosystems in the

four-state Northern Forest region.

The Northern Forest region includes

New Hampshire’s North Country, an

area that includes 23 of the state’s

32 poorest communities. Acting as

a regional leader, NFC seeks to

strengthen the cultural identity of

the area, building a network of

more than 100 partner

organizations and providing direct

assistance to more than 20

community projects. In 2002, NFC

collaborated with regional partners

to launch HandMade in Northern

Forest, a nonprofit venture to

provide support for thousands of

area artisans and craftspeople and

to build regional identity and pride

around its cultural assets.

In FY 2005, NFC received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to support publication of HandMade

in the Northern Forest: A Guide to

Fine Art and Craft Traditions in

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and

New York in spring 2006. The

guidebook, co-published with

Businesses for the Northern Forest,

lists 365 traditional and

contemporary artists and

craftspeople, and associated

businesses and galleries. It is

organized into 13 mapped driving

tours throughout the Northern

HandMade in the Northern Forest,

produced by the Northern Forest

Center in 2005.

Image courtesy of Northern Forest Center
a resident theater and a touring

company, Pontine presents a

diverse range of works—including

unique stagings, adaptations, and

original works—to more than 5,000

children and adults annually. The

theater company also offers

education programs, such as theater

arts workshops and special

performances at schools. 

In FY 2005, the Pontine Theatre

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $8,000 to

support its 2005/06 Touring

Program, which provided artistic

and educational programs for the

general public, schools, and

universities throughout New

England. Many of the touring works

explored and celebrated the history

and literature of New England. The

theater company traveled to 17

cities in New Hampshire, Vermont,

and Maine from August 2005

through June 2006, providing

performances, master classes, and

workshops. Approximately 2,500

people were reached on the tour. 

Pontine’s Touring Program offered

an eclectic selection of works,

including a unique adaptation of

Thornton Wilder’s classic portrait of

small-town New Hampshire life, Our

Town, featuring a cast of Bunrakustyle puppets; Cornish Castles, an

original play based on the life and

works of New England illustrator

Maxfield Parrish; The Country of the

Pointed Firs, based on Sarah Orne

Jewett’s portrait of 19th-century

maritime Maine; Dearly Earned, an

original play based on the lives and

experiences of 19th-century New

England textile workers; Home Is

Heaven, based on 32 poems by

Ogden Nash; and Silver Lake

Summers, based on the life and

work of poet e.e. cummings,

specifically his connection to New

Hampshire. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Marguerite Mathews in

the Pontine Theatre’s

production of Dearly

Earned, an original play

based on the lives of 19thcentury New England

textile workers. 

Photo by Andrew Edgar
Rutgers, the State

University of New

Jersey 

New Brunswick

T

he Rutgers Center for

Innovative Print and Paper

(RCIPP), part of the Mason

Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers

University, was established in 1986

as an international, national, and

regional center for printmaking

ideas and education. Integral to

the center’s mission are

collaboration and interaction,

whether it be among undergraduate

and graduate students and artists,

or artists and master printers.

RCIPP contains a full computer lab

and five studios, allowing for work

in all print media, including

intaglio, lithography, silk screen,

relief, papermaking, photo

processes, and books. RCIPP also

invites artists from diverse cultural,

ethnic, and regional backgrounds to

be in residence and collaborate

with the center’s master printers

and papermakers.

In FY 2005, RCIPP received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $20,000 to help plan activities

for its 25th anniversary, which will

take place in 2011 and include an

exhibition, book/catalogue, CDRom, and Web site. The exhibition

will take place in multiple museums,

with each venue able to select

pieces from the overall group of 300

diverse artists. As a companion to

the exhibition, RCIPP will develop a

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

8 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

New Jersey

book/catalogue that will be

distributed at each museum and

include artists’s biographical

information, details on each print’s

technical aspects, and, if

significant, commentary from the

printer. Furthermore, the

book/catalogue will contain essays

on RCIPP’s history and

contributions, as well as

printmaking and hand

papermaking’s place in the art field

of the last 25 years. Lastly, RCIPP

will develop a CD-Rom and Web site

that will work as an outreach tool

to those who may not be familiar

with printmaking and hand

papermaking as a major cultural

medium in American art.

Concordance by Kiki

Smith, with poetry by

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge,

will be part of the 25th

anniversary exhibition of

the Rutgers Center for

Innovative Print and

Paper. 

Image courtesy of the Rutgers

Center for Innovative Print and

Paper
Nai-Ni Chen Dance

Company 

Fort Lee

E

stablished in 1988, the NaiNi Chen Dance Company

provides world-class modern

dance performances infused with

Asian traditions. With more than

400 performances and workshops

presented each year, the company

reaches more than 90,000 people

throughout the United States. Its

Arts in Education residency

programs introduce children ages K12 to Chinese dance traditions,

both through performances and

dance classes.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

In FY 2005, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance

Company received an NEA Challenge

America grant of $10,000 to support

its Year of the Rooster Chinese New

Year Festival. Presented in its

hometown of Fort Lee, New

Jersey—as well as on Long Island,

New York and in Collegeville,

Minnesota—the festival had more

than 9,000 participants, including

6,000 children and youth. The

company, in collaboration with

musicians from Melody of the

Dragon, presented performances

both during the school day and in

the evening for families. The fulllength presentation of dance and

music included a new piece related

to the Chinese Dai minority:

Peacock Dance, accompanied by

music based on the folk tune

Phoenix Bamboo under the

Moonlight and played on the bawu,

a reed flute, by the composer Tao

Chen. 

For many Chinese-American

families, the festival was a central

component of their New Year

celebration. This festival is an

active way to preserve this

important part of China’s cultural

heritage while at the same time

promoting the diversity of talent in

the Chinese-American community.

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 8 7

Min Zhou in Peacock Dance, part of

Nai-Ni Dance Company’s Year of

the Rooster Chinese New Year

Festival. 

Photo by Carol Rosegg

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS
Institute for Spanish

Arts 

Santa Fe

F

ounded in 1970 by Maria

Benitez, the Institute for

Spanish Arts (ISA) has

grown from one dancer—Benitez—

and a guitarist into an

organization whose extensive

programming reaches 25,000

people each year. Each of its

programs is designed to preserve

and strengthen the region’s

Spanish and Hispanic culture and

arts. Its primary company, Teatro

Flamenco, tours nationally and

internationally, while its second

company, Estampa Española—made

up of young, emerging, native New

Mexican dancers—brings the New

Mexico region professional training

and performance experience. Every

summer ISA provides workshops in

dance and music, the success of

which has inspired in-school

programs for children ages 5-14.

In FY 2005, the Institute for

Spanish Arts received an NEA

Learning in the Arts grant of

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

8 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

New Mexico

Students in Flamenco’s Next Generation, part of the Institute for

Spanish Arts’s children and youth programming, perform in a 2005

Christmas recital. 

Photo courtesy of the Institute for Spanish Arts
two ways: the arches in a warm

orange glow and the main walls of

the structure in a full moon-type

glow. The final installation will be

completed in October 2006. CID

undertook the project in

cooperation with the Carlsbad

Rotary Club, the Beautification

Committee of the City of Carlsbad,

the Carlsbad Main Street Project,

and the Carlsbad Area Art

Association. 

Through a previous NEA grant, used

to develop a Carlsbad Streetscape

concept plan, appropriate sites for

public art were identified. The Light

the Flume project grew out of this

study as a way to use art to

preserve cultural traditions and

reach audiences throughout the

nation. Light the Flume draws

attention to the Flume not only as

an example of architectural beauty,

but also as a reflection of the

region’s agricultural traditions. By

highlighting the Flume, Carlsbad can

draw visitors from the Carlsbad

Caverns National Park, only 15 miles

south and attracting over 500,000

people annually. 

$30,000 in support of its children

and youth programming, which

includes year-round after-school

programs, summer workshops, and

professional development. The

program, which focuses on

underserved Hispanic youth, works

to instill in the students an

appreciation and understanding of

their Spanish culture by teaching

flamenco dance and Spanish guitar

classes. Taught by members of

Estampa Española, this program

reaches 150 students each year. At

the end of each nine-week session,

students display their new skills to

their families and community in an

open recital at the Maria Benitez

Theatre. New students and those

who wish to continue their study of

dance and music can also

participate in scholarship summer

classes and the International

Spanish Dance & Music Workshop,

an intensive two-week workshop

that usually includes 60-80

scholarship students. 

Carlsbad Irrigation

District 

Carlsbad

T

hrough a New Mexico State

District Court decree and a

contract with the U.S.

Bureau of Reclamation, the

Carlsbad Irrigation District (CID)

was founded in 1933. CID protects

and maintains the Carlsbad Flume,

an irrigation development feature

on the Pecos River designated as a

historic landmark in 1966. The

Carlsbad Flume was the largest

concrete sculpture in existence

when built in 1903 and is still used

today to carry irrigation water from

upstream at the Avalon Dam to the

farms on the west side of the Pecos

River.

CID received an NEA Challenge

America grant of $10,000 in FY

2005 for Light the Flume, a

community-wide effort to design

and install lights to illuminate the

Carlsbad Flume. The flume is lit in

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 8 9

The Carlsbad Flume in Carlsbad,

New Mexico, to be illuminated as

part of an NEA-funded

community art project. 

Photo by Robert Beeman
Bardavon 1869 Opera

House 

Poughkeepsie

T

he Bardavon 1869 Opera

House in Poughkeepsie

presents multidisciplinary

and multicultural performances by

professional touring artists,

reaching approximately 108,000

people a year in the upstate New

York community. In 1999, the

Hudson Valley Philharmonic became

a Bardavon subsidiary. Bardavon

also provides educational programs,

such as an artist residency program

for schools and a Young Playwrights

Festival for sixth-grade students in

Poughkeepsie schools. 

In FY 2005, Bardavon received an

NEA Learning in the Arts grant of

$22,500 to support the Young

Playwrights Festival in 2005/06. The

20-week program emphasizes the

processes of playwriting and

theatrical production, culminating

in a performance of the students’s

collected work. 

In 2005/06, three sixth-grade

classes from the Poughkeepsie

Middle School, totaling

approximately 75 students,

participated in the program led by

playwright/teaching artist Casey

Kurtti. The 42-minute weekly

sessions covered the basics of

playwriting, including character

development, monologues and

dialogues, and revision. This year’s

program also focused on points of

view. 

The classes covered the basics of

theatrical production, such as

lighting, costumes, and directing. 

A new addition this year was acting

technique lessons, led by actress

Maggie Low. Eventually, the

students wrote their own short

plays. The Young Playwrights

Festival presented two performances

of the students’ plays in a staged

reading by a professional cast on

the Bardavon stage on April 28,

2006. The cast included Leanne

Hutchison, Shawn Randall, David

Anzuelo, Alicia Frank, and Mtume

Gant. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

9 0 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Casey Kurtti working with writers on rewrites as part of Bardavon 1869 Opera

House’s Young Playwrights Festival. 

Photo by Kay Churchill
Bond Street Theatre 

New York

Bond Street Theatre (BST),

founded in 1976, has

trained its company in the

physical and gestural arts of many

traditions (such as Chinese Opera

and Brazilian Capoeira) to develop

a theatrical language that is

captivating and understandable

across lingual and cultural borders.

To that end, the theater company

has presented its work at festivals

around the world, including the

Israel Festival, Mimos in France,

and Cena Contemporanea in Brazil.

BST also collaborates with foreign

organizations on international

projects, such as the collaboration

with Bulgarian puppet theater

company Theatre Tsvete to create a

nonverbal version of Romeo and

Juliet to tour in the Balkans in

2000. 

In FY 2005, Bond Street Theatre

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $18,000 to

support the production of a new

play, Beyond the Mirror, in

collaboration with Exile Theatre of

Kabul, Afghanistan. BST first met

members of Exile Theatre when

performing in the Afghan refugee

camps in Pakistan following the

September 11th tragedy. In 2003,

BST traveled to Afghanistan to

collaborate with Exile Theatre on

two original pieces that they toured

throughout the country, receiving

an award from the Afghan Ministry

of Culture for the tour. 

Beyond the Mirror examines issues 

of war and occupation that have

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 9 1

New York

dominated the last three decades of

Afghanistan’s history, including the

Soviet occupation, the chaos and

brutality of the mujahideen, the

extreme restrictions of the Taliban

era, and the current tenuous state

of government. Traditional dance,

live music, visual effects, filmed

montages, and artistic movement

are used to tell the story. The

production ran in Baltimore from

November 3-13, 2005, then played

in New York November 17 –

December 4 to glowing reviews. 

Bakers on road to their shop (left to right: Jamil Royesh and Mahmood

Salimi), a scene from Bond Street Theatre’s production of Beyond the Mirror,

performed with Afghanistan’s Exile Theatre of Kabul. 

Photo courtesy of Bond Street Theatre
Hickory Museum 

of Art 

Hickory

Although American art was

almost unrecognized 

outside of New York and

Philadelphia in 1943, the North

Carolina city of Hickory became the

first city in the southeast United

States to establish a museum of

American art. With the help of

artists associated with the National

Academy of Design in New York

(established in 1823), the Hickory

Museum of Art (HMA) became what

was called the “Southern outpost of

the National Academy.” 

In FY 2005, HMA received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to support the exhibition

Homegrown & Handmade: Selected

Works from the Huffman Collection of

Southern Contemporary Folk and

Outsider Art. The exhibition,

displayed from April 23 – July 24,

2005, included more than 200

sculptures, paintings, and drawings

by 105 self-taught artists, many

from North Carolina. A video on Vale

native Minnie Reinhart, who died in

1986 and whose art is part of the

collection, ran throughout the day

as part of the exhibition. A 28-page

catalogue accompanied the

exhibition, and teacher packets

were produced and distributed to

local schools. More than 11,500

people attended the exhibition.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

9 2 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

The exhibition was the first of four

planned annual exhibitions

featuring outsider art from the

Huffman Collection. Dr. Allen

Huffman and his wife Barry had

collected this contemporary

Southern folk art over the past 25

years. Homegrown & Handmade

represents the first time the

American public has had an

Sumo by Jeff Williams was

shown in the Hickory Museum

of Art exhibition Homegrown

and Handmade: Selected Works

from the Huffman Collection of

Southern Contemporary Folk and

Outsider Art in 2005. 

Above left: Love & Time by

Hubert Walters.

Images courtesy of Hickory Museum of Art

North Carolina
opportunity to see such a broad

view of the collection, of which

many pieces have been loaned to

museums nationally and

internationally. 

Asheville Art Museum 

Asheville

T

he Asheville Art Museum

serves the rural and urban

communities in 23 counties

in western North Carolina, the

Appalachian region of the state.

Annually, the museum presents 15-

20 exhibitions and more than 250

programs, reaching more than

100,000 people. 

In FY 2005, the Asheville Art

Museum received an NEA Access to

Artistic Excellence grant of $40,000

to support a special exhibition

series on the history of artistic

innovation and experimentation at

Black Mountain College (1933-56)

coinciding with the 50th

anniversary of its closing. Black

Mountain College: An Exhibition

Series will feature three thematic

exhibitions, each exploring an

important aspect of the Black

Mountain College experience. 

The college was founded in 1933,

15 miles east of Asheville, as an

experiment in diverse and

unorthodox education. For the many

artists who taught at and attended

Black Mountain College from cities

across America and from Europe,

Black Mountain College’s setting in

the Blue Ridge Mountains was

profoundly influential. 

The first exhibition Black Mountain

College: Its Time and Place, running

from April 7 – August 6, 2006,

presents work by such notable Black

Mountain College alumni as John

Cage, Elaine de Kooning, Aaron

Siskind, and Robert Rauschenberg,

all of whom became major figures of

200 5 ANN U AL REPORT 9 3

Charles Olson writing The Maximus Poems, 1951, by Jonathan Williams is one of the

exhibits in Asheville Art Museum’s special series on Black Mountain College.

Image courtesy of Asheville Art Museum

international art and culture. The

exhibition demonstrates how Black

Mountain College’s idyllic landscape

provided these artists the necessary

distance from their everyday

distractions and commercial

pressures to experiment and forge

new directions and emerge as a

force in the American cultural

landscape.

The two future exhibitions will

focus on the artists’

experimentation in material and

form and new modes of working as

well as the interdisciplinary

collaborations among artists

working in all media and fields. 
Northern Plains Ballet 

Bismarck

T

he Northern Plains Ballet

(NPB) began as a ballet

training facility for student

dancers in Bismarck and Dickinson,

North Dakota, before becoming a

professional ballet company that

tours across the northern plains in

North Dakota, South Dakota, and

Montana. NPB continues to operate

as a training facility, offering

instruction to approximately 150

students annually, as well as

providing the region with quality

dance performances.

In FY 2005, NPB received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $10,000 to support the

presentation of an original dance

piece, The Encounter, based on the

Lewis & Clark expedition. The piece

is a theatrical account of the

expedition based on the journals of

Meriwether Lewis and the

perspective of the Native American

tribes the expedition encountered.

NPB toured the piece to Bismarck’s

Belle Mehus Theater on March 25,

2006, Dickinson State University on

April 5, and Jamestown College on

April 11. Total attendance at the

three productions was approximately

1,250, and NPB will be seeking

further engagements in the summer

and fall 2006. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

9 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

North Dakota

Swiftbird by Robert Meyer, whose work

was featured as a pictorial background in

Northern Plains Ballet’s production of The

Encounter, a dance piece based on the

Lewis & Clark expedition’s encounters

with Native Americans. 

Image courtesy of Robert Meyer
The Encounter, choreographed by

NPB Artistic Director Anthony Noa,

unfolds as a narrative highlighting

Native American views of their first

encounter with European-American

explorers and its present-day

impact. In the piece, modern ballet

is performed to contemporary Native

American music and Native

American dancers perform to

traditional Native American music. 

Photographer Robert Meyer also

contributed to the dance piece,

providing a pictorial background of

Native Americans in their native

dress performing traditional dances,

which was projected behind the

dancers. He also helped to develop

the storyline along with Thomas

Christian, a world champion

powwow dancer and former board

member of the Assiniboine-Sioux

Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation. 

Plains Art Museum 

Fargo

T

he Plains Art Museum was

founded in 1965 in

Moorhead, Minnesota, and

since 1997 has been located in a

renovated warehouse in historic

downtown Fargo, North Dakota. The

56,000 square-foot visual arts

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 9 5

museum contains three climatecontrolled galleries, a print studio,

a reference library, a classroom,

and lecture and performance

spaces. More than 80,000 people

visit the museum annually. 

In FY 2005, the Plains Art Museum

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $25,000 to

support the commission of a largescale painting by American artist

and native North Dakotan James

Rosenquist. The 13 x 21 foot mural

is to be permanently installed in

the museum’s public atrium in

spring 2007. With inclement

weather characterizing eight or

more months of each year in Fargo,

the museum’s public atrium is a

well-utilized common area in the

community. 

Rosenquist is one of the major

American Pop artists who came to

prominence in the 1960s. Full of

imagery that touches on

contemporary life, his large canvases

are visually vibrant. He was born in

Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1933,

and supported himself in his early

years by painting grain elevators,

storage bins, and signs across the

region. His work has been exhibited

around the world, including a solo

exhibition at the Plains Art Museum

in 1979. 

The mural Rosenquist is creating for

the museum will be highlighted in

all museum tours, and an

educational guide and learning

poster on the artist will be

produced for distribution to local

school teachers. 

Artist James

Rosenquist (left), here

with fellow artist Star

Wallowing Bull, has

been commissioned to

create a mural at the

Plains Museum as part

of The Dream Lives

On campaign.

Photo courtesy of Plains Art

Museum
Cleveland Orchestra 

Cleveland

T

he Cleveland Orchestra,

founded in 1918 by RussianAmerican conductor Nikolai

Sokoloff, is one of the premiere

American symphonic ensembles.

Subsequent renowned music

directors Artur Rodzinski, George

Szell, Pierre Boulez, Christoph von

Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst

have continued the tradition of

providing music at the highest level

of artistic excellence. 

In FY 2005, the Cleveland Orchestra

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $100,000 to

support a festival celebrating the

40th anniversary of conductor and

composer Pierre Boulez’s American

debut with the Cleveland Orchestra.

The two-week celebration, April 28

– May 8, 2005, explored the

conductor and orchestra’s

association with the music of Igor

Stravinsky. 

To establish a context for

Stravinsky’s work, the festival

opened with Anton Webern’s Five

Movements for Strings in its first

performance by the Cleveland

Orchestra. Webern was a

contemporary of Stravinsky and a

leading proponent of twelve-tone

composition, used by Stravinsky in

his later works and by Boulez in his

compositions. On the first program,

Boulez also conducted his own

Notations No. 1, 4, 7, 3, and 2.

Prior to the performance, Boulez

talked about his work and

association with the orchestra, and

pianist Taka Kigawa performed

Boulez’s 12 Notations for solo piano

on which the orchestral pieces were

based. The first week of

performances included the complete

rendition of Stravinsky’s ballet The

Firebird. 

The second week featured premier

Cleveland Orchestra performances of

Stravinsky’s Eight Instrumental

Miniatures and Le Rossignol (The

Nightingale), as well as Four Russian

Peasant Songs, Les Noces (The

Wedding), and the ballet Petrushka.

The choral works included

performances by students of the

Oberlin Conservatory of Music. All

the performances received glowing

reviews, reaching audiences of more

than 10,000 over the two weeks. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

9 6 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Pierre Boulez conducting the Cleveland Orchestra as part of a special 40th

anniversary celebration. 

Photo by Roger Mastroiani
folklife-oriented institutions were

organized. An initial run of 1,000 of

the DVDs will be produced and

distributed to AFS members and

university libraries.

American Folklore

Society 

Columbus

T

he American Folklore Society

(AFS) is an association of

more than 2,200 members

involved in the folk and traditional

arts that encourages interest and

research in folklore in all its

aspects. AFS publishes the quarterly

Journal of American Folklore, one of

the oldest and most respected

folklore journals in the world, and

the bimonthly AFSNews. An annual

conference each October draws

more than 700 folklorists from

around the world to exchange ideas

and create collaborations. Former

NEA Chairman Bill Ivey is the

current president of AFS. 

In FY 2005, AFS received an Access

to Artistic Excellence grant of

$15,000 to support a DVD

documentary on the early years of

public sector folklorists, focusing on

Archie Green, Bess Lomax Hawes,

Alan Jabbour, and the late Ralph

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 9 7

Ohio

Rinzler. Rinzler established the

Smithsonian Festival of American

Folklife, held every summer in

Washington, DC, creating a

prominent venue for the

presentation of a wide range of

American folk arts and traditions.

Green helped establish the Folk Arts

Program at the NEA and the

American Folklife Center in the

Library of Congress. Jabbour was

the first director of the Folk Arts

Program at the NEA and the first

director of the American Folklife

Center. Hawes succeeded him at the

NEA as director of Folk Arts, where

she championed the creation of the

NEA National Heritage Fellowships

in 1982. 

The DVD, scheduled to be

completed in fall 2006, includes

interviews conducted in 2003 with

Green, Hawes, and Jabbour about

their efforts. A 1994 interview with

Rinzler also is included. These firsthand accounts present different

perspectives on the contexts and

climate in which these federal

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Bess Lomax Hawes, one of the featured

subjects of a new documentary by the

American Folklore Society on the early

years of public sector folklorists. 

Photo by Lisa Berg, NEA file
Tulsa Opera 

Tulsa

T

ulsa Opera, founded in

1948, is the producer of

grand opera in Oklahoma,

serving audiences from the state

and nearby regions in Kansas,

Arkansas, and Missouri. Annually,

the opera company’s mainstage

performances, education programs,

and outreach activities reach

approximately 75,000 adults and

children.

In FY 2005, Tulsa Opera received an

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $22,500 to support

performances of Peter Ilyich

Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin.

The opera was performed in Russian

with English supertitles on January

29 and February 4 and 6, 2005.

Nearly 5,000 people attended the

performances, and community

previews and pre-lectures reached

an additional 880 adults and

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

9 8 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Oklahoma

Pamela Armstrong as Tatyana in Tulsa Opera’s production of

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Background: The Peasant Chorus. 

Photos by Cory Weaver
youths. Tulsa Opera also

participated in the international

children’s festival, KIDS WORLD, and

reached more than 20,000 youths

and educators with engaging

materials on Eugene Onegin. 

The performance was Tulsa Opera’s

first Russian opera mounted in 25

years, and the first ever to be

performed in the Russian language.

Based on the poem by Alexander

Pushkin, Eugene Onegin was given

its first professional production by

the Moscow Bolshoi in 1881 and is

considered one of Tchaikovsky’s

greatest works. In this production,

baritone Erik Nelson Werner made

his Tulsa Opera debut in the role of

Onegin, soprano Pamela Armstrong

performed as Tatyana, tenor

Yeghishe Manucharyan performed as

Lensky, and bass Stefan

Szkafarowsky performed as Prince

Gremin. The opera was directed by

Jonathon Pape. The 40-member

Tulsa Opera Orchestra, conducted by

Carol I. Crawford, accompanied the

production. 

Osage Tribe of Indians

of Oklahoma 

Pawhuska

T

he Osage Reservation is

located in northeastern

Oklahoma, encompassing

2,281 square miles with a

population of approximately 43,000

people, mostly Native Americans.

The tribal headquarters is in

Pawhuska. The Osage Tribe of

Indians of Oklahoma, or Osage

Nation, provides community

services to tribal and non-tribal

members living on the reservation,

including parenting classes, child

care assistance, a book mobile

program, and cultural traditions

activities. 

In FY 2005, the Osage Nation

received an NEA Learning in the

Arts grant of $39,000 to support

traditional art classes for youth on

the Osage Reservation. The

Traditional Osage Ways classes are

aimed at youth ages 4-18 and are

held in the Youth Enhancement

Center in Pawhuska. The traditional

arts offered are basketweaving,

ribbonwork, jewelry making, and

beading. These skills are used to

make Native clothes worn at the 

E-lon-shka ceremonial dances, the

principal traditional activity of

modern Osage life held every June

in each of the three districts of the

tribe.

Osage artists—with an average of

30 years experience in their art

form—teach the classes, not only

demonstrating the skill of the art

form but also discussing the reasons

these traditional ways were

important in the past and why it is

important to continue the culture.

By not only developing the skill to

perform the art, but also

understanding the importance of it,

the students will be more inclined

to pass on the skill to future

generations, thus keeping the

culture alive. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 9 9
Miracle Theatre Group 

Portland

Over its 18-year history, the

Miracle Theatre Group has

provided the Northwest

region with quality theater, art, and

cultural experiences that highlight

Hispanic culture and annually reach

more than 7,000 people. The three

components of its organization—

theater season, touring program,

and cultural programs—are all

created with the Hispanic

community and its culture in mind.

In the last decade, Oregon’s Latino

population has grown by 144

percent, creating a need for a

forum to celebrate Hispanic culture

and address issues in the Hispanic

community. In response, the

Miracle Theatre Group provides

bilingual productions and outreach

programs designed for the

monolingual Spanish community. 

In FY 2005, Miracle Theatre Group

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $8,000 to

produce a new translation of Lope

de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna. A

collaboration between playwright

and translator William S. Gregory

and Miracle Theatre Group’s Artistic

Associate and native Spanish

speaker Daniel Jáquez, the new

translation attempts to retain

elements of the original—its

liveliness and urgency as well as its

poetic grace—that have been

missing in previous translations. In

his classic masterpiece, Lope de

Vega, a contemporary of

Shakespeare’s, confronted many

issues which resonate in today’s

society—the nature of leadership,

the role of government in its

citizens’ lives, and a person’s ability

to challenge and address social,

political, and economic inequalities.

In order to give audiences the

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Oregon

The citizens are in outrage when the

usurping Comendador attacks the

town’s mayor in the Miracle Theatre

Group’s production of Fuente

Ovejuna. 

Photo by José González
chance to explore and discuss these

issues in depth, Miracle Theatre

Group designed community outreach

projects around the production,

such as public lectures, study school

guides, and audience talk-backs.

Mountain Writers

Series 

Portland

I

n 1973, the Mountain Writers

Series (MWS) was founded as

a series of campus readings at

Mt. Hood Community College in

Gresham, Oregon. MWS moved their

home base to Portland in the early

1990s, where they serve as the hub

of literary partnerships for a

network of more than 90 sponsors.

Readings continue to form a central

part of their programming, which

has grown to provide the Pacific

Northwest with a variety of

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 101

readings, residencies, and writing

workshops. 

In FY 2005, MWS received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $15,000 in support of the

readings, residencies, workshops,

and special events. Understanding

that there are many areas in Oregon

and the Northwest that are not

normally a part of book tours, MWS

developed their Northwest Regional

Residencies, which provide the

opportunity for both established

and emerging writers to visit these

communities. Working with

anywhere from 50-90 potential

presenters, MWS coordinates writers

arrangements for writers to travel to

communities throughout the region.

Writers typically remain 3-7 days

and participate in activities such as

lectures, readings, craft talks, and

music and literary performances. In

2005, participating writers included

NEA Literature Fellows William

Kittredge, Jimmy Santiago Baca,

Debra Magpie Earling, and Ron

Carlson visiting cities throughout

Oregon and Washington.

Often provided free or at low-cost,

MWS’ programs are designed to

benefit all aspects of the

community—writers attend events

at schools for students ages K-12,

as well as at community centers,

libraries, bookstores, colleges, and

universities. For 2005, MWS

reached an audience of

approximately 20,000 from both

urban and rural communities, from a

wide socio-economic range and

varying in age from students to

senior citizens.

Bassist Glen Moore with poet James

Grabill at the Mountain Writers Series’

Wordstock 2005.

Photo courtesy of Mountain Writers Series
Louis I. Kahn

Collection, University

of Pennsylvania 

Philadelphia

L

ouis I. Kahn is one of the

twentieth century’s most

important and renowned

architects, the subject of more

than 100 books and many

discussions in architectural and

academic circles. In both his

completed buildings––such as the

National Assembly Building in the

capital of Bangledesh––and his 

unbuilt projects, there is a fusion

of modernism with historic forms

that sets him apart from his

predecessors.

The Louis I. Kahn Collection at the

Architectural Archives of the

University of Pennsylvania is the

most comprehensive collection of

Kahn’s work, with 6,363 of Kahn’s

drawings, 29,813 developmental

and working drawings from his

office, 100 models, 12,140

photographs and slides, and 150

linear feet of his correspondence.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

102 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Pennsylvania

It provides an opportunity for

continued analysis of Kahn’s

contributions to architecture, as

well as his development as an

artist. Because of poor storage,

heavy research use, and its unstable

nature, however, the collection of

personal drawings, construction

drawings, and sketchbooks is

quickly deteriorating. 

In FY 2005, the University of

Pennsylvania received a Save

America’s Treasures grant of $70,000

to help preserve this important

resource. Save America’s Treasures

grants are provided for

organizations undertaking

preservation and conservation work

on nationally significant intellectual

and cultural artifacts and nationally

significant historic structures and

sites. Conservators at the

Conservation Center for Art and

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1966-72, by architect Louis I. Kahn, part of

the collection to be preserved by the Save America’s Treasure grant. 

Photo courtesy of the Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and

Museum Commission
instruments. In addition, an

entertainment tent provided a

venue for singers to perform

traditional folk songs, dancers to

demonstrate clogging, and

musicians to play the dulcimer.

There was also a full-time

“jamming” tent for musicians. 

The festival concluded with a

performance at the Sawmill Center’s

Verna Leith Theater. 

Festivals like this one are invaluable

for the excitement and interest in

traditional art forms that they

generate. These cultural traditions

are in danger of being lost forever,

but festivals such as Sawmill

Center’s are an important step in

celebrating and preserving this

piece of the region’s heritage.

Historic Artifacts will treat and rehouse all of the items in the Louis

I. Kahn Collection. This

conservation process, while

protecting this important resource,

will increase the collection’s

accessibility for research by

students, scholars, practitioners,

and laymen, and also make it easier

to exhibit the work, both at the

Architectural Archives’ Kroiz Gallery

and on loan to other institutions

worldwide.

Cook Forest Sawmill

Center for the Arts 

Cooksburg

S

ince 1975, the Cook Forest

Sawmill Center for the Arts

has provided programs

designed to increase knowledge of

northwest Pennsylvania’s natural

and local history. The Sawmill

Center is located two hours away

from any other significant cultural

center, making it the hub of the

region’s arts programming. In

addition to a wide variety of

classes and education programs

designed to reach all segments of

the community, the Sawmill Center

also presents numerous theater

productions, which are annually

attended by 7,000 people, as well

as four to six festivals a year.

In FY 2005, the Sawmill Center

received an NEA Challenge America

grant of $10,000 for its

Dulcimer/Folk Music Workshop and

Festival. After 15 years of holding

this festival, the Sawmill Center

lost a key funder, resulting in the

cancellation of the festival for one

year. This grant allowed the

organization to revive this

important tradition. The festival

took place over two days,

September 16 and 17, 2006, with

nearly 30 one-hour workshops on

the dulcimer and other folk

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 103

“Cup ‘O Joe”, from Pennsylvania Furnace,

Pennsylvania, performed at the Cook

Forest Sawmill Center for the Arts 2006

Dulcimer and Folk Music Festival. 

Photo courtesy of Cook Forest Sawmill Center
Musica Dolce 

Westerly

F

ounded in 1992 as a

volunteer group of 31

classical musicians, Musica

Dolce currently employs more than

100 musicians and presents up to

12 affordable classical music

performances each year in southern

Rhode Island communities. In

addition to its performances,

Musica Dolce is committed to

broadening the musical literacy of

school children and increasing their

interest in and appreciation of

classical music. For more than two

years, its Music in the Schools

project has brought classical

musicians to more than 30 local

schools, reaching approximately

7,000 students.

In FY 2005, Musica Dolce received

an NEA Challenge America grant of

$10,000 for three concerts in

October 2005. The concerts were by

Musica Dolce’s 30-member chamber

orchestra and featured guest violin

soloist Timothy Baker, an

appearance which provided the

organization with additional

publicity. 

Timothy Baker is a renowned

soloist, who has performed with the

Moscow Philharmonic, the National

Symphony, and the Boston Pops,

among many others. Bringing such

a recognized artist to their

community was a vital step in

efforts by Musica Dolce to raise its

visibility. These concerts were not

only a special opportunity for

Musica Dolce musicians, but it also

allowed 850 residents in rural,

underserved areas of Rhode Island

to experience a high-caliber

classical music performance. Tickets

for general public performances

were offered at an affordable cost,

and a special matinee production

was offered free to students and

seniors. 

Providence Black

Repertory Company 

Providence

S

ince 1996, the Providence

Black Repertory Company

(PBRC) has celebrated the

contributions of black artists

throughout American history and

recognized the power of theater to

share universal stories across

communities. PBRC provides a

place for aspiring artists from local

underserved communities to build

their careers; a majority of its

artists are from the Rhode Island

area, although artists from Nigeria

and Trinidad and Tobago have also

been attracted to PBRC. 

In addition to producing a full

season, PBRC also provides students

with after-school and weekend

education programs and student

matinees, including a post-show

discussion with the actors. PBRC’s

public programs, designed to convey

an appreciation and respect for the

performing arts, include humanities

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

104 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Rhode Island
panels, discussions, and events

related to the main stage

productions.

In FY 2005, PBRC received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant of

$10,000 for Project Langston 2005,

which provided professional

theatrical training and experience for

artists of color. Using A Tribute to

Langston Hughes, a company-created

piece that integrates the words and

images of Hughes with music and

movement, and Black Maria, a book

of poetry by renowned poet and

National Book Award finalist Kevin

Young, PBRC provided a series of

actor training workshops and master

classes, culminating in public

presentations. In 2005, 15 artists

participated in the program,

including not only actors, but also a

musician, singer, designer,

dramaturg, and a stage manager. 

PBRC saw the program’s direct 

effect upon participating artists,

who gained the experience and

training needed when auditioning

for theater and film projects. In

addition, the program helped the

organization to communicate to the

Providence community its

dedication to education and artistic

development.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 105

Voice teacher Thom Jones coaches a Providence Black Repertory

Company member during a Project Langston 2005 workshop. 

Photo courtesy of Providence Black Repertory Company
ETV Endowment of

South Carolina 

Spartanburg

S

ince 1977, ETV Endowment

of South Carolina has

provided foundational

support for ETV television and

radio, South Carolina’s public

broadcasting outlets. By creating

strategic public/private alliances,

the ETV Endowment has made

South Carolina one of the major

producers of programming for

public broadcasting. ETV original

productions include Carolina Stories,

a weekly series highlighting South

Carolina’s rich historical and

cultural landscape; Making It Grow,

an Emmy Award-winning call-in

show on gardening; and the weekly

radio series Marian McPartland’s

Piano Jazz. 

In FY 2005, ETV Endowment of South

Carolina received an NEA Arts on

Radio and Television grant of

$65,000 to support the production of

new programs for Marian McPartland’s

Piano Jazz. Distributed on the

National Public Radio network, the

25-year-old series is heard on nearly

250 stations each week by more than

400,000 listeners. The hour-long

program is also broadcast to

international audiences via NPR’s

worldwide service. McPartland, a

world-renowned jazz pianist honored

as an NEA Jazz Master in 2000,

presents a wide variety of guests

ranging from jazz legends to

emerging artists to artists outside of

the genre who have been

significantly influenced by jazz. 

Piano Jazz guests perform solo

selections and also join McPartland

for improvised duets. The freeranging conversations between host

and guest cover topics as diverse as

life on the road, playing styles, and

the origins of particular songs in

the jazz standards repertoire. In

2005, McPartland’s guests included

NEA Jazz Masters Clark Terry and

Randy Weston, Japanese pianist

Hiromi Uehara, 20-year-old singerpianist Peter Cincotti, and R&B star

Alicia Keys.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

106 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Marian McPartland plays a duet with Chicago jazz musician Jodie

Christian during a taping of her weekly National Public Radio

series, Piano Jazz.

Photo by Melissa Goh
which folk and traditional artists

from Guinea gave week-long

residencies at elementary, middle,

and high schools in coastal South

Carolina. Beginning in February

2006, the visiting artists presented

workshops in drumming,

storytelling, dancing, crafts, and

singing. Students at more than 35

elementary, middle, and high

schools benefited from these lowcost residencies. The artists also

gave performances at community

venues throughout the

southeastern U.S., including public

libraries, arts centers, and theaters.

In addition, Borenya West African

Drum and Dance held a two-week

conference in summer 2006

focusing on West African and

Carolina Sea Island traditional arts,

including drumming, dance,

singing, Indigo fabric design, and

basketry. The conference took place

at the University of Florida,

Gainesville and featured programs

for youth as well as adults. An

additional 400 people benefited

from the conference.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 107

South Carolina

Borenya West African

Drum and Dance 

Columbia

Borenya West African Drum

and Dance of Columbia,

South Carolina, is a

performing and teaching ensemble

focusing on traditional West African

drumming and dance. The group’s

mission is to bring the music of

Guinea to the local community and

inspire an appreciation of Guinean

musical arts and culture through

the traditional and authentic

representation of Guinean rhythms,

songs, and dances. Previous

activities have included a weeklong Drum and Dance Institute and

a two-month residency by Sekouba

Camara, “the father of Guinean

dance.” Borenya also serves as the

resident dance company at the

University of South Carolina.

In FY 2005, Borenya West African

Drum and Dance received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $10,000 to support the

Guinea/Sea Island Cultural Tour, in

Fadiima Traore performs Lamban, a dance

praising the Djeli. 

Photo courtesy of Borenya West African Drum and Dance 
Sioux Falls Jazz &

Blues Society 

Sioux Falls

T

he Sioux Falls Jazz & Blues

Society (SFJB) presents the

uniquely American art forms

of jazz and blues to the South

Dakota region through an annual

concert series, the Sioux Falls Jazz

& Blues Festival, and music

education programs for children

and adults. SFJB has brought in

such world-class musicians as

Terence Blanchard, Jane Monheit,

and Arturo Sandoval to participate

in workshops and guest lectures for

youth groups and schools as part of

its educational programming. 

In FY 2005, SFJB received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to support Jazz & Blues for Life, a

free educational program aimed

specifically at underserved and atGRANT HIGHLIGHTS

108 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

South Dakota

Hot Club of San Francisco held a

workshop at Lincoln High School,

November 4, 2005 as part of Sioux Falls

Jazz & Blues Society’s educational

programming. 

Photo courtesy of Sioux Falls Jazz & Blues Society
risk youth. The program coincided

with performances that were part of

the SFJB’s concert series.

Free tickets were given to children

and youth at the Bowden Youth

Center and Children’s Home Society

to see jazz musicians Peter Cincotti

and the Brad Mehldau Trio in

February and April 2005. In addition

to the free concerts, program

activities included pre-concert

lectures on the music and its

history, question-and-answer

sessions, and master workshops for

the underserved youth and children. 

Dr. Rick Crawley from South Dakota

State University led a pre-concert

discussion on jazz “crooners” before

the concert by jazz singer/pianist

Peter Cincotti, and jazz vocalist

Connie Evingson hosted a free jazz

and vocal workshop for middle and

high school youth before her

concert in March 2005. In November

2005, the swing band Hot Club of

San Francisco held a workshop at

Lincoln High School to

approximately 100 students. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 109

Augustana College 

Sioux Falls

T

he Children’s Theatre

Company of Sioux Falls

(CTCS) is located on the

campus of Augustana College and is

the only professional Theatre for

Young Audiences in South Dakota.

In addition to two mainstage shows

a year, CTCS tours original children’s

musicals, reaching more than

42,000 young people and their

families throughout the Midwest. 

In FY 2005, Augustana College

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $10,000 to

support CTCS’s production and tour

of Emperor, Incorporated, a new

musical for family audiences

conceived by CTCS Artistic Director

Nancy Halverson, written by Wesley

Middleton of Seattle, Washington,

and composed by Michael Keck of

New York, New York. The musical

was created through a partnership

of CTCS and the Washington Pavilion

of Arts and Sciences and premiered

on January 20 and 21, 2005,

reaching more than 2,000 audience

members. 

Emperor, Incorporated is a musical

adaptation of Hans Christian

Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s

New Clothes.” Set in a futuristic

world pervaded by technology and

ruled by consumerism, the musical

explores the humorous—and

sometimes dangerous—delusions

that grow from a life overtaken by

greed. CTCS’s production of the play

was the most significant

undertaking of any professional

theater company in the state;

nationally recognized artists from

seven states worked collaboratively

over a two-year period on the

piece. Six public readings and five

workshops were held in New York

City, Seattle, and Sioux Falls in the

development of the musical play. 
Allied Arts of Greater

Chattanooga 

Chattanooga

E

stablished in 1969, Allied

Arts of Greater Chattanooga

provides support for cultural

institutions and activities in

Tennessee’s Hamilton County. Each

year, Allied Arts provides support

for 23 arts and cultural

organizations, reaching more than

44,000 children and creating

community-wide opportunities for

participation in and appreciation of

the arts.

In FY 2005, Allied Arts received an

NEA Learning in the Arts grant of

$10,000 in support of their

Advancing Literacy through Arts

Learning workshops. Led by Claudia

Cornett, a literacy expert and

author of Making Meaning through

Literacy and the Arts, these

workshops meet three times during

the school year, allowing for full

implementation of the program as

well as discussion and reflection. 

In August 2005, the first of three

workshops took place. Local

teaching artists teamed up with

teachers of grades K-3 to develop

and implement a program that used

innovative dance, theater, and

visual arts instruction in promoting

reading and writing skills among

students. Within these teams, the

artists and teachers mentored each

other throughout the school year,

meeting again in January with

Cornett for a day-long workshop to

review, evaluate, and expand

strategies. At the end of the school

year, Cornett led one last workshop

to evaluate and discuss the success

of the program and possible next

steps. With a total of 12 teaching

artists and 48 teachers participating

in this program, these workshops

are providing teachers with exciting

and original ways to engage

students in arts learning and

improve literacy in their schools.

Cultural Development

Foundation of

Memphis 

Memphis

I

n efforts to connect its

culturally diverse community,

the Cultural Development

Foundation of Memphis (CDFM)

provides children and their families

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

110 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Teachers and an artist participate in

a drama/literacy activity during an

Advancing Literacy through Arts

Learning Workshop. 

Photo courtesy of Allied Arts Chattanooga
with arts experiences focused on

non-Western/European themes and

featuring minority artists. In its

five-year history, CDFM has reached

approximately 40,000 people,

including 20,000 students ages 8

to 18.

CDFM received an NEA Challenge

America grant of $10,000 in FY

2005 for a performance, lectures,

and a master class by AfricanAmerican violinist Regina Carter,

who had never before performed in

Memphis. Carter is a critically

acclaimed musician of both jazz

and classical music, known for her

non-traditional, mixed-genre style.

On January 21, 2005, 768 people

attended an evening performance by

Carter and her quintet with the

Memphis Symphony Orchestra.

CDFM found that Carter’s energetic

style and ability to combine

classical music with other genres,

such as jazz and gospel, attracted

many who had never before

attended a symphony performance.

In addition to her evening

performance, Carter presented a

standing-room only lecture to 50

adults and students, a lecture and

demonstration for 400 middle and

high school students, and a master

class for a group of 21 strings

students. The master class provided

Carter with an outlet to pass along

her playing style, and it provided

students with an important role

model. The students also were

exposed to a variety of modes

within the string repertoire. For

example, one of the pieces the

students played was from a hip-hop

score.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 111

Tennessee

Violinist Regina Carter gives a master class for a group of selected string students. 

Photos by Renee K. Robinson
Alley Theatre

Houston

F

ounded in 1947, the Tony

Award-winning Alley

Theatre aims to deliver a

diverse selection of high quality,

innovative theater to the Houston

area. Unlike the majority of

American theaters, Alley Theatre

maintains a resident company and

mounts productions nationwide as

well as in its two-theater complex

in Houston.

In FY 2005, the Alley Theatre

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $28,000 to

support a production of Arthur

Miller’s classic play After the Fall as

part of its 2004-2005 season.

Widely held to be one of Miller’s

most autobiographical works, After

the Fall is set in 1950s America and

addresses issues such as the

disintegration of love, the

communal pain of suicide, and the

guilt of the survivor. Featuring

members of the theater’s resident

company, After the Fall ran January

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

112 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Texas

through February 2005 and was

seen by nearly 20,000 audience

members. 

The Alley Theatre is committed to

making theater accessible to

students and members of Houston’s

culturally diverse and underserved

communities. Educational and

community outreach activities for

After the Fall included the

production and dissemination of a

study guide for teachers as well as a

panel discussion on the production

in collaboration with the University

of Houston School of Theater. The

theater’s Education and Community

Outreach department also

sponsored several post-production

audience discussions with the play’s

cast and artistic staff. Low-cost

tickets were offered to agencies

such as Crisis Intervention Houston,

AIDS Foundation Houston, and the

Houston Area Women’s Center.

James Black as Quentin in the Alley Theatre’s production

of Arthur Miller’ After the Fall. 

Photo by Jim Caldwell
workshops, such as sessions on the

Celtic influence on accordion music;

music for the garmon, or Azerbaijani

accordion; and a tribute to the many

musical traditions of Louisiana.

Festival-goers were also able to

participate in an Irish-themed jam

session and an open mike session.

A special program of the 2005

festival was “Accordions Around the

World: Exploring the Old World

Roots of Texas Ethnic Music,”

featuring the Lower Chodsko Trio

from the Czech Republic. The group

spent more than a week in Texas

performing at the festival and

interacting with Texas Czech

musicians and community members.

Musicians from the group joined

Texan-Moravian band Mark Halata

and Texavia for a workshop

exploring the relationship between

these two musical cousins. 

Benefiting nearly 40,000 audience

members, the festival was produced

in partnership with the San Antonio

Office of Cultural Affairs, the Witte

Museum, and the San Antonio

Accordion Association. An additional

300,000 audience members were

reached by the electronic broadcast

of the festival on local TV and radio

outlets.

International

Accordion Festival 

San Antonio

F

ounded in 2001 by Pat

Jasper, Eduardo Diaz, and

Juan Tejada, the free

International Accordion Festival

celebrates the instrument’s

multicultural and international

character, including its history,

instrument-making traditions, and

accompanying dance forms. The

festival’s goal is to build audiences

for the understanding and

appreciation of accordion-based

traditions.

In FY 2005, the International

Accordion Festival received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $40,000 to support the 5th

Annual International Accordion

Festival held October 15-16, 2005 in

San Antonio. The festival’s five

venues hosted more than 20 musical

groups from the U.S. and abroad

including Rosie Ledet and the

Zydeco Playboys, Los Macondos, and

the Don Lipovac Orchestra. The twoday festival also featured nine

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 113

Rosie Ledet and the

Zydeco Playboys played

the 2005 International

Accordion Festival in San

Antonio. 

Photo by Richard Cavazos

Sourdough Slim at the

2005 International

Accordion Festival in San

Antonio. 

Photo by Gwen Rivera
US&O has worked with community

partners to plan several outreach

activities to coincide with the

opera’s premiere. Several museums

across the state will mount exhibits

of their Great Depression-era

holdings. Additional activities will

include lectures, readings from The

Grapes of Wrath, and feedback

partnership with the Minnesota

Opera. A semi-staged orchestral

reading of the opera debuted in

June 2006 at the Utah Arts

Festival, featuring the full cast and

the Utah Symphony. A full

production of the opera will take

place as part of US&O’s 2007

season.

Utah Symphony &

Opera 

Salt Lake City

Utah Symphony, founded in

1935, merged with the 24-

year-old Utah Opera in

2002 to form the Utah Symphony &

Opera (US&O). US&O performs all

52 weeks of the year, producing

four main stage operas and nearly

100 concerts annually. The group

also sponsors more than 300

education programs reaching

160,000 students and tours to

rural, underserved areas of the

state. 

In FY 2005, US&O received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $30,000 to support the

development of The Grapes of Wrath,

a new opera by composer Ricky Ian

Gordon and librettist Michael Korrie

based on the John Steinbeck novel

set during the Great Depression. The

opera was commissioned in

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

114 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Utah

Maria Alu, Sean Damm, Beau Gibson, and Glorivy Arroyo perform “A Word for This

Old Man” from Utah Symphony and Opera’s production of The Grapes of Wrath. 

Photo by Paula Fowler
discussions with museum attendees.

The organization also has partnered

with KSL television to produce a 30-

minute documentary on the

development of the new opera,

which will be broadcast on KSL-TV,

and KSL Radio. The group also plans

to distribute a DVD of the

documentary as an insert in The

Deseret News and The Salt Lake

Tribune, reaching more than

200,000 potential audience

members.

Sundance Institute 

Salt Lake City

E

stablished in 1981, the

Sundance Institute works to

enhance the vitality of

American film and to give voice to

filmmakers working outside of the

commercial mainstream. The

Institute’s goals include developing

and presenting independent films

and cultivating emerging artists.

Institute programs include the

annual Sundance Film Festival, the

Documentary Film Program and

Fund, and the archival Sundance

Collection at UCLA.

In FY 2005, the Sundance Institute

received an NEA Access to Artistic

Excellence grant of $115,000 to

support the Feature Film Program,

which offers emerging screenwriters,

directors, producers, and composers

the opportunity to develop new

creative work. The core components

of the Feature Film Program include

two Screenwriters Labs and one

Filmmakers Lab. Additional activities

include the Screenplay Reading

Series, the Independent Producers

Conference, the Composers Lab, the

Native American Initiative, and film

festival programming. 

For 2005, 25 projects were selected

for the Feature Film program

including co-writer/director Cruz

Angeles and co-writer Maria Topete’s

Don’t Let Me Drown, a film following

two Latino teens in post-9/11 New

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 115

York City experiencing the

transcendent power of love in a

time of fear and violence; director

Andrew Dosunmu and writer Darci

Picoult’s Mother of George about a

woman, torn between her African

culture and new life in America,

struggling to please her husband

with a son to carry on his family’s

legacy; and Wild Tigers I Have

Known, a lyrical coming-of-age

story about a 13-year-old boy

learning to cope with unrequited

love, by writer/director Cam Archer.

Many of the films developed

through the Feature Film program—

including Darren Aronofsky’s

Requiem for a Dream, Kimberly

Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry, and Chris

Eyre and Sherman Alexie’s Smoke

Signals—have gone on to enjoy

critical and commercial success.

Director Cruz Angeles was

a 2005 fellow in the

Sundance Institute’s Feature

Film Program. 

Photo by Michael Mcrae
Vermont Symphony

Orchestra Association 

Burlington

T

raveling throughout

Vermont, in both the larger

cities and smaller, rural

areas, the Vermont Symphony

Orchestra (VSO) provides quality

musical performances and

educational programs. In 2004,

VSO performed 36 concerts, and its

educational outreach program

performed 224 concerts for 172

Vermont schools, reaching a total

of 32,286 students—55 percent of

Vermont’s total student population.

116 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

In FY 2005, Vermont Symphony

Orchestra received an NEA Access to

Artistic Excellence grant of $7,500

for its Made in Vermont Music

Festival, which brings the

orchestra’s classical-sized ensemble

to Vermont’s smaller, more rural

communities and economically

challenged areas whose residents do

not normally have access to such

cultural experiences. On these

tours, VSO performs in such venues

as universities and theaters—places

that give audience members the

experience of enjoying a concert in

an acoustically pleasing

surrounding. Between September

21 and October 2, 2005, VSO

reached nearly 2,300 residents

through nine concerts, which

included pieces from VSO’s standard

canon as well as a newly

commissioned work from VSO Music

Alive composer-in-residence David

Ludwig. For every concert, reduced

price tickets were available for

students, children, seniors, and

families. 

In planning each concert, VSO

worked with community volunteers,

who provided hospitality at venues,

housing and meals for musicians,

and marketing assistance. In one

city, ten high school students

Music Director Jaime Laredo with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra at the Middlebury College

Center for the Arts as part of the VSO’s Made In Vermont Music Festival statewide tour. 

Photo by Albert Bitici
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 117

participated in VSO’s Green Room

Program, which provided them with

personal exposure to VSO musicians

and concerts through specially

designed program notes and

recordings, a pre-concert meal with

the musicians and composer, and

concert tickets. 

Sandglass Center for

Puppetry and Theater

Research 

Putney

T

he Sandglass Center for

Puppetry and Theater

Research was established in

Germany in 1982 and moved to

Vermont in 1986 where the group

researches, develops, and supports

innovative work in the field of

puppet theater. Since its

inception, Sandglass has worked to

broaden the idea of “theater” to

include such performance

techniques as character acting,

physical theater, and storytelling.

Through performances, workshops,

and residencies in Putney, and also

through world tours, Sandglass

Center reaches more than 30,000

people each year. In its own

theater, opened in 1996, Sandglass

presents a biannual season and

regularly presents guest

puppeteers, musicians, comedians,

literary artists, and theater artists.

In larger Vermont venues,

Sandglass organizes international

puppet festivals with artists from

Europe and South Africa. 

In FY 2005, Sandglass received an

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $7,000 to present Voices of

Community, a series of

performances by and discussions

with multicultural artists who use

theater to address social issues.

Three companies took part in the

Spring 2005 series: Cultural Odyssey

from San Francisco, MUGABEE from

Mississippi, and Shishir Kurup from

Los Angeles’s Cornerstone Theater.

Each presented two public

performances as well as

performances for groups of middle

and high school students. 

The artists worked to establish a

special connection with the

community through their

performances. Artists freely

discussed the themes of their work

and artistic process with the

audience and incorporated aspects

of the local community into their

works. 

Vermont

Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor of

Cultural Odyssey, participants in the

Sandglass Center for Puppetry and

Theater Research’s Voices of Community

project. 

Photo by Phyllis Christopher
Signature Theatre 

Arlington

Known for its successful

productions of challenging

musicals, Signature Theatre

in Arlington, Virginia, presents five

to six plays and musicals each

season, often either area or world

premieres. Founded in 1990 and

reaching an average of 40,000

people each season, Signature’s

performances take place in an

intimate space, with unamplified

voices and a live orchestra. In

addition to offering performances,

Signature has three education/

outreach programs: Signature in the

Schools performs an original play

for Arlington high school students

that addresses a subject central to

the students’ curriculum; Overtures

provides musical theatre training

for emerging young performers; and

Signature in the City remounts

productions in Washington, DC,

introducing an urban audience to

the group’s work.

Signature Theatre received an NEA

Access to Artistic Excellence grant

of $30,000 in FY 2005 to present a

new adaptation of Stephen

Sondheim and John Weidman’s

Pacific Overtures, the Theatre’s 14th

production of a Sondheim musical in

15 years. A musical traditionally

viewed as large and difficult to

produce, its score was reorchestrated from a 27-piece

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

118 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Virginia
orchestra to a 7-piece orchestra,

and the cast was reduced from 30

performers to ten, with each actor

playing an average of six characters.

The production is usually produced

in Kabuki/Noh theatre fashion with

an all-male cast. The director, Eric

Schaeffer, broke this tradition and

cast a multi-ethnic cast of both

women and men. 

Pacific Overtures was a critical

success—playing an extended run

to more than 80,000 patrons for

eight weeks in the spring of 2005.

Signature was faced with the

challenge of scaling down the

production while enhancing its

impact and succeeded, ultimately

creating a more focused and

accessible piece. Furthermore, in

adapting the production to meet its

own economic and space

restrictions, Signature created a

production that is more viable for

other small theater companies to

produce. 

Poetry Daily (Daily

Poetry Association) 

Charlottesville

C

reated in 1997 as an effort

to make poetry a part of

more people’s everyday life,

Poetry Daily is a Web anthology of

poetry from current books and

journals. In one year alone,

poetrydaily.org received more than

five million visitors from all walks

of life. The site’s readers range

from students to professionals to

homemakers to members of the

military. Poetry Daily’s selections

are from a large variety of

publications—the editors have

selected poems from hand-stapled

journals and poems printed by large

publishing houses.

In FY 2005, Poetry Daily received an

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence

grant of $7,000 to support its

online publication. Posting a new

poem daily, information about poets

and publishers, a weekly newsletter,

essays, reviews, and poetry-related

creative non-fiction, Poetry Daily is

an excellent window into the world

of contemporary poetry. For 2005,

featured poets included former U.S.

Poets Laureate Ted Kooser and

Robert Pinsky, and NEA Literature

Fellows Jane Hirshfield, Maxine

Kumin, and David Rivard. For

National Poetry Month, Poetry Daily

published five additional issues of

its newsletter each week and

included poets’ favorite classic

poems with commentary.

As the premier Web site for new

poetry in English, as well as

commentary and news about the

poetry world, Poetry Daily is

building a community for lovers of

contemporary poetry. In addition

to benefiting those who read and

enjoy the poetry, Poetry Daily has a

direct effect on the poets whose

work is exposed to a larger and

wider audience.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 119

The Poetry Daily Web site, an online

anthology of poetry from current books

and journals. 

[L to R] Harry A. Winter as the Old

Man and Donna Migliaccio as the

Reciter in the Signature Theatre’s

production of John Weidman’s Pacific

Overtures. 

Photo by Carol Pratt
physical properties can be

measured. Students listened to a

variety of musical excerpts, charted

the energy level of each piece,

discussed their finding in small

groups, and presented their

reasoning to the class.

On the Boards 

Seattle

On the Boards (OTB) of

Seattle, Washington,

presents four major

programs during the year: The New

Performance Series, an annual

season of multidisciplinary events

from September to June; The

Northwest New Works Series,

featuring six to eight eveninglength performances by artists from

Seattle and the Northwest; the

Northwest New Works Festival, a

two-week event featuring 20-

minute showcases by Northwest

regional artists; and 12 Minutes

Max, a monthly series for artists to

test works-in-progress before

audiences. OTB is one of the

leading presenters of contemporary

performance in the Northwest.

In FY 2005, OTB received an Access

to Artistic Excellence grant of

$25,000 to support six of the nine

Tacoma Symphony

Orchestra 

Tacoma

T

he Tacoma Symphony

Orchestra (TSO), founded in

1946, provides eight

concerts, three Pops specials, and

six youth concerts annually to the

second largest metropolitan area in

the state of Washington. In

addition, TSO provides master

classes at local universities, preconcert lectures, open rehearsals,

and educational programming like

Simply Symphonic, a music

education program for fifth-graders

in Pierce, Thurston, and South King

Counties. 

In FY 2005, TSO received an NEA

Learning in the Arts grant of

$15,000 to support its Simply

Symphonic program. Begun in

1996, Simply Symphonic has grown

from 2,400 initial participants to

more than 5,700 students in the

program, serving more than 80

percent of all Pierce County fifthgraders. The program employs a

program coordinator, the orchestra’s

music director, and 80 TSO

musicians. 

Simply Symphonic is integrated into

the schools’ basic curriculum—

guides and CDs were distributed to

97 classrooms in 14 school districts

in February and used in instruction

over several weeks. Musicians

visited the classrooms to talk about

the instruments and creative

process. In May, students were

bused downtown to hear live

concert performances of the pieces

they had been studying. 

The 2005 curriculum theme, “The

Audience Knows the Score,” focused

on music and science. Music became

a part of the classroom curriculum,

using skills and activities linked to

the Washington State Essential

Learning Requirements in Science,

Language Arts, and Social Studies.

In one lesson, students learned that

sound is energy and that its

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

120 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Artwork by students in the Simply

Symphonic music education program by

the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra. 

Image courtesy of Tacoma Symphony Orchestra
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 121

Washington

von Saaz as a poetic, powerful

meditation on religion, faith, values,

and meaning. The version of the

play performed was a new

translation by Irish playwright

Michael West. All six performances

took place from January through

June 2005, reaching approximately

4,000 people.

events of The New Performance

Series’s 2004/05 season. The

performances included dance, music,

and theater. In addition to the

performances, the artists offered

master classes, workshops, and

post-performance discussions. 

The artists included Michelle

Ellsworth in a solo dance

performance, The Monkey Saddle;

John Jaspers presenting the dance

piece Just Two Dancers; Dutch dance

company Emilo Greco/PC fusing

modern and ballet styles in Rimasto

Orfano; and a mini music festival

featuring Mikel Rouse syncing delta

blues with video in Music for

Minorities and Ethel, a modern

string quartet. In addition, the SITI

Company, a New York-based theater

company under the direction of

Anne Bogart, performed Death and

the Ploughman, a play written in

1401 by the Bohemian Johannes Stephen Webber, Ellen Lauren, and Will

Bond in SITI Company’s production of

Death and the Ploughman. 

Photo by Al Zanyk, courtesy of Wexner Center for the Arts
Wheeling Symphony

Society 

Wheeling

F

ounded in 1929, the

Wheeling Symphony is the

second-oldest cultural

institution in West Virginia. The

orchestra regularly performs more

than 18 concerts each year,

including two free outdoor concerts

each summer and a holiday program

in partnership with a local children’s

chorus and young performers from

the Wheeling Figure Skating Club. In

addition, the orchestra sponsors the

Wheeling Symphony Youth

Orchestra, which offers 62 young

musicians from the tri-state area a

15,000 students benefited from

these in-school performances, many

of whom had never before

experienced live symphonic music

or theater. 

Prior to each performance, teachers

at participating schools received

teacher’s guides and CDs of the

repertoire to be performed. Postshow discussions also were held

after each performance, giving

students opportunities to interact

with Kamin and members of the

orchestra. Kamin and the orchestra

also performed two free Saturday

Lollipop Concerts targeted to

families with pre-school children.

More than 200 children benefited

from these performances. 

formal, tuition-free venue in which

to train and perform. The orchestra

also sponsors an artist-in-residence

program at two after-school

programs.

In FY 2005, the Wheeling

Symphony Society received an NEA

Challenge America grant of $10,000

to support Young People’s Concerts

with guest artist Dan Kamin, a

mime. The concert tour focused

primarily on West Virginia’s largely

rural and culturally underserved

communities. From January to May

of 2005, the Wheeling Symphony

and Kamin performed ten in-school

concerts in Elkins, Farmington,

Morgantown, Sisterville, and

Wheeling, West Virginia. More than

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

West Virginia

122 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

The Wheeling Symphony

performs a Young People’s

Concert with mime Dan

Kamin. 

Photo courtesy of Wheeling Symphony

Society
GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

Greenbrier Repertory

Theatre 

Lewisburg

Greenbrier Repertory Theatre

is the official state

professional theater of West

Virginia. Founded in 1966, the

theater has evolved from a summer

repertory company to a year-round

Actors’ Equity-affiliated theater. In

addition to producing a regular

season of plays, the company also

sponsors an after-school drama

program and a summer camp for

youth. The company hosts classes,

literary readings, special events

performances, lectures, discussions,

and workshops in its downtown

theater space. 

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 123

In FY 2005, Greenbrier Repertory

Theatre received an NEA Access to

Artistic Excellence grant of $10,000

to support the development and

production of Stories of Mountain

Railroads, a new play with

traditional music. Written by

playwright KC Davis and Artistic

Director Cathey Sawyer, the play

spotlights the crucial role and

impact of railroads in Appalachia.

The text of the play was developed

through historical research,

developmental workshops, and

public open readings. 

From May to July 2005, the theater

presented two readings and a

staged reading/workshop of the

play. A full production of the play

opened September 23, 2005,

running for eight shows at the

company’s theater space. In

October, Greenbrier Repertory

Theater also presented student

matinees of the play and toured the

play to Hinton, Marlinton, and

Richwood, West Virginia. More than

2000 local and regional audience

members benefited from

performances of Stories of Mountain

Railroads and accompanying postshow discussions. For school

performances, the company also

produced free student study guides.

Joe Lehman (above) and Bus Howard as John Henry (right)

perform in Greenbrier Repertory Theatre Company’s

production of Stories of Mountain Railroads. 

Photos by G.P. Cooper
Folklore Village Farm 

Dodgeville

S

ince 1967, the Folklore

Village Farm has created

opportunities for individuals

and communities to honor,

experience, and support ethnic and

traditional folklife. With more than

140 events each year, the Folklore

Village Farm annually reaches nearly

14,000 people, representing a broad

range of ages, education

backgrounds, and income levels.

Programs include Paths of Tradition,

concerts featuring master folk

artists in the region; Folk Culture

Learning Retreats, presentations

and workshops by folk and ethnic

artists from around the world; and

education programs and heritage

exhibits.

In FY 2005, the Folklore Village

Farm received an NEA Access to

Artistic Excellence grant of $23,000

for the Midwest Folklife Festival,

presented in cooperation with other

state folk arts programs in Iowa and

Minnesota. The festival rotates

annually among the three states,

showcasing the Upper Midwest’s

multicultural heritage in a familyfriendly setting. More than 1,000

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

124 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Wisconsin

people attended the two-day

festival August 20 and 21, 2005.

Each day there were seven

performances on the main stage,

highlighting diverse regional music

and dance, as well as five narrative

sessions, providing artists a forum

to share how they learned their art

form and what they want to express

in their work. In addition, there

were folk arts demonstrations,

display booths, and a hands-on

workshop and scavenger hunt for

children. A two-and-a-half day

teachers’ institute was held in

conjunction with the festival to

educate teachers on ways to include

folk arts in their curriculum. 

A total of 95 ethnic and folk artists

took part in the festival, 85 from

Wisconsin and 10 from Iowa and

Illinois. The Folklore Village Farm

recorded sound and took photos of

Sidonka Wadina, a well-known creative weaving master,

demonstrates wheat weaving, a traditional Slovakian art

she learned as a teenager on a visit to Czechoslovakia. 

Photo by Anne Pryor

Performing at the Midwest Folklife Festival, Sones de Mexico Ensemble specializes in son,

a rich and lively Mexican music tradition with many regional styles. 

Photo by Bill Christopher
all of the festival artists and

activities; these materials were

archived at the University of

Wisconsin Mills Music Library.

Wausau Dance Theatre 

Wausau

T

he Wausau Dance Theatre

(WDT), founded in 1973,

cultivates the art of dance

through education, instruction, and

performance. WDT’s performances,

classes, and activities are all

designed to attract individuals with

different interests and abilities and

instill in each an appreciation of

the beauty of dance and an

understanding of the necessity of

art and culture. WDT makes dance

accessible to underserved youth by

offering them free classes.

In FY 2005, the WDT received an

NEA Challenge America grant of

$10,000 for its signature program,

the Storybook Weekend Event,

which reached a total of 25,000

people through a variety of

activities. For 2005, Wausau

focused on Alice in Wonderland,

adapting it into dance through a

partnership with choreographer

Derryl Yeager, Designers Integrity

Designworks, and Lydia Harmon.

May 6-8, 2005, Wausau presented

two public performances and three

student performances, with many

tickets available free of charge to

economically challenged school

groups and to organizations such as

the Boys and Girls Club of Marathon

County and the Children’s Service

Society of Wisconsin. In addition,

Wausau arranged readings at the

local library; Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland: Painting a Story, an

exhibit of paintings by Diane Lakes

at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson

Museum; and the Mad Hatter’s Tea

Party, where more than 9,000

visitors from Wisconsin and its

surrounding states joined characters

from Alice in Wonderland, played

games, and participated in arts and

crafts projects.

Prior to the performances, Wausau

visited more than 3,000 elementary

school students, giving them a

sneak peek at the production and

explaining how the music,

costumes, and choreography are

chosen and put together to create a

production. Wausau also made

visits to other schools, museums,

cultural centers, and senior housing

to share costumes, stories, and

movements from the production. 

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 125

Carolyn Willems Van Dijk as Alice, Anna Grilley as the Queen of Hearts, and

Patrik Kasper as the King of Hearts in Wausau Dance Theatre’s production of

Alice in Wonderland. 

Photo by Lois Freeberg Hagen
National Museum of

Wildlife Art 

Jackson

T

he National Museum of

Wildlife Art (NMWA),

established in 1987, is

visited by more than 90,000 people

annually. With its collection of

more than 30,000 paintings,

sculptures, and works on paper, the

museum is instrumental in efforts

to have wildlife art recognized as

its own genre. NMWA developed

and regularly conducts diverse

education programs, including film

festivals, teacher workshops, and

classroom and museum visits for

students grades pre-K through 12.

More than 13,000 children and

adults participate in at least one

education program each year.

In FY 2005, NMWA received an NEA

Learning in the Arts grant of

$20,000 in support of There’s an Art

to Education, a program to

demonstrate to students in grades

pre-K through 12 the

interrelatedness of biology, history,

and art. A total of 7,950 students

were reached by the program, which

adheres to the Wyoming Fine and

Performing Arts Content and

Performance Standards. 

Three components comprise the

program: in-school presentations;

early release day classes; and

understanding nature through art,

science, and film. In the first

component, class topics are looked

at in the context of the arts. The

second component provides two- to

five-hour classes on the arts on

days when the normal school

schedule is interrupted for parentteacher conferences or in-service

training. The last component

teaches students to look at a

subject both from artistic and

scientific viewpoints. In this

component, students view a film

related to an animal type being

studied, then split into groups to

participate in hands-on exhibits and

art projects led by biologists and

artists.

Wyoming Arts Council 

Cheyenne

T

he Wyoming Arts Council

enhances the quality of life

for the people of Wyoming

by providing resources to sustain,

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

126 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

Wyoming

A group of Teton Science School Students on a trip to the National Museum of Wildlife

Art learn from Artist-in-Residence painter Nancy Howe. 

Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Wildlife Art
promote, and cultivate the arts.

The state of Wyoming contains a

variety of rich cultural traditions,

with influences from a variety of

different cultures, such as Shoshone

and Arapaho Native Americans,

Chinese, Basque, Mormon, and

Polish. The Arts Council’s folk arts

program, one of its central

programs, works to identify,

preserve, present, and celebrate

these important folk arts and

traditions.

In FY 2005, the Wyoming Arts

Council received an NEA Folk and

Traditional Arts Infrastructure grant

of $40,000 to add a folklife

program specialist to their staff for

the first time in 20 years. This

position is key in supporting and

promoting the state’s cultural

traditions within Wyoming schools

and communities.

The folklife specialist oversaw two

grant programs: an apprenticeship

program and a projects and festivals

program. For 2005, three

apprenticeship grants were awarded

for work on the Wind River

Reservation through the Eastern

Shoshone Cultural Center: one in

traditional saddle-making, one in

doll-making, and one in cradle

boards, a traditional baby carrier.

The folk arts specialist also

managed the events and festivals

program, funding 18 events and

festivals that highlighted local,

traditional, and ethnic communities.

The diverse events in 2005 included

a powwow, a Yiddish food festival,

and a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

The excitement around these events

provided the state with proof that

there was a demand and an interest

in the community for folk and

traditional arts programming, and

resulted in state-approved funding

for a full-time folk arts specialist

position.

GRANT HIGHLIGHTS

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 127

Eastern Shoshone doll and

miniature tail feathers by Manfred

Guina, Sr. of the Wind River

Reservation in Wyoming, a Master

Artist with the Wyoming Arts

Council Folk Arts Program. 

Photo by Marirose Morris, courtesy of the

Wyoming Folklife Collection. 
128 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS

T

he National Endowment for the Arts has provided direct support to literary writers since awarding its first

grants in 1966. In 1967, at the encouragement of National Council on the Arts members Ralph Ellison,

Paul Engle, Harper Lee, and John Steinbeck, a formal program was initiated to support creative writers.

Twenty-three grants were awarded that first year, including grants to poet Mona van Duyn, a future U.S. Poet

Laureate, and fiction writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, a future Nobel Laureate.

For many Literature Fellows, NEA support is crucial to affirming their vocation as a writer. Writer Julia Alvarez, who

received an NEA Literature award in 1987, said, “Every year I’d send off my application for an NEA grant, hoping

that this would be the year my work was recognized. When I got my NEA grant, I felt as if I was now included

among the storytellers and poets of my new country!”

Although artistic merit always has been at the heart of the fellowship awards, today it is the sole basis on which

the grants are given. Over several months, a diverse panel of readers, comprised of distinguished American writers

and one knowledgeable layperson, read through the blind submissions. All applicants must be U.S. citizens.

Panelists do not know the identities of the writers, their publishing histories, academic achievements, or previous

awards. The highest ranked applications are recommended to the National Council on the Arts and the NEA

Chairman as meriting an individual writing fellowship.

Literature Fellowships
2005 ANNUAL REPORT 129

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS

Overall, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $40 million through its Literature Fellowships to more

than 2,750 writers and translators. The record of the Literature Fellowships program shows unparalleled support for

writers at critical, early stages of their careers; many have gone on to win major awards 10 to 20 years after

receiving Arts Endowment support. NEA Literature Fellows include 20 U.S. Poets Laureate and have garnered six

National Medal of Arts, five National Humanities Medals, 91 American Book Awards, 45 National Book Awards, and

41 Pulitzer Prizes. 

This year’s Literature Fellowships are for Poetry (Prose and Poetry fellowships are given in alternate years). Of the

1,590 applications received, 45 writers from 22 states and one living abroad were awarded $20,000 grants,

totaling $900,000. 

In addition to the creative writing fellowships, each year Literature Fellowships are awarded for translation of

literary works written in foreign languages into English (alternating between prose and poetry to coincide with the

creative writing fellowships). Unlike the creative writing fellowships, translation fellowships are awarded for

specific projects. The art of literary translation facilitates the international exchange of fiction, poetry, and drama

among cultures. Without translation, most Americans would not be able to enjoy Ovid, Anna Akhmatova,

Marguerite Duras, or Orhan Pamuk. In 2005, 49 applications for Translation in Poetry grants were received, of

which 14 translators in 10 states and one living abroad were awarded grants totaling $200,000. Grants to

translators are awarded in grants of either $10,000 or $20,000, depending on the translation project. 

CREATIVE WRITING

FELLOWSHIPS—POETRY:

(all grants are $20,000) 

Mary Adams is an associate

professor of Writing at Western

Carolina University. Her book,

Epistles from the Planet

Photosynthesis, was published by the

University Press of Florida.

David Baker is the author or editor

of ten books. He holds the Thomas

B. Fordham Chair of English at

Denison University and serves as

Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.

Michael Blumenthal is the author

of six books of poetry, most recently,

Dusty Angel. Formerly Director of

Creative Writing at Harvard, he is

currently a visiting professor of

American Literature at the Université

Jean-Monnet. 

Allen Braden of Puyallup,

Washington, has published poetry

and prose in The Southern Review,

The Georgia Review, and Shenandoah.

He has also received an Artist

Trust/Washington State Arts

Commission Fellowship in Literary

Arts. 

Cyrus Cassells has won a Lannan

Literary Award, a William Carlos

Williams Award, a Pushcart Prize,

and a Lambda Literary Award. He is

the author of four books of poetry.

Robert Cording has published four

books of poetry, most recently

Against Consolation. He teaches at

Holy Cross College in Worcester,

Massachusetts.

James Daniels is the head of the

Creative Writing Department at

Carnegie Mellon University. His

books include M-80 and Blessing This

House. He also edited the anthology

Letters to America: Contemporary

American Poetry on Race. 

Jon Davis, Creative Writing Chair at

the Institute of American Indian

Arts, is the author of the

screenplays Gift of the Condor and

Catamount Falls, and a play, Anna

Without Angels. His poems have

appeared in Luna and American

Letters & Commentary.

Sally Dawidoff’s poetry has

appeared in several literary journals

including Agni and Boston Review.

She currently teaches a poetry

workshop at the City University of

New York.
Ramola D holds an MFA in Poetry

from George Mason University, and

an MBA and a BS in Physics from

the University of Madras, India. Her

poetry has been twice nominated for

Pushcart Prizes and appeared in Best

American Poetry 1994. 

Matthew Donovan received his MFA

from New York University. The 2003

recipient of Vassar College’s W. K.

Rose Fellowship in the Arts, he is

currently an assistant professor of

Literature and Creative Writing at

the College of Santa Fe.

B. H. Fairchild is the author of four

books of poems. He is the recipient

of Guggenheim and Rockefeller

Fellowships, the National Book

Critics Circle Award, and the Bobbitt

National Prize for Poetry.

Marlon Fick is an assistant professor

of English at Kansas State

University. He has translated the

work of 20 Mexican poets for the

anthology The River is Wide, and his

honors include the Conaculta Award.

Kathleen Flenniken holds an MS

degree in Civil Engineering. Her

first collection, Famous, won the

2005 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in

Poetry. She lives in Seattle.

Gregory Fraser currently teaches

creative writing at the University of

West Georgia. A two-time finalist for

the Walt Whitman Award, Fraser also

won the Walt McDonald Poetry Prize

for his first book, Strange Pietà. 

Alice Fulton is currently the Ann S.

Bowers Professor of English at

Cornell University. Her most recent

book of poems was Cascade

Experiment. She has received a

Pushcart Prize, Bobbitt National

Prize for Poetry, and Guggenheim

Fellowship.

Greg Glazner is a professor at the

College of Santa Fe in New Mexico.

He is the author of two books of

poetry, Singularity and From the Iron

Chair, which won the 1991 Walt

Whitman Award.

James Harms is the author of five

collections of poetry from Carnegie

Mellon University Press. He also

directs the MFA Program in Creative

Writing at West Virginia University. 

Terrance Hayes has won the

Whiting Writers Award, the Kate

Tufts Discovery Award, a National

Poetry Series award, a Pushcart

Prize, and a Best American Poetry

selection. He teaches at Carnegie

Mellon University.

Grey Held was nominated for a

Pushcart Prize in 2002. His poems

have appeared in Slipstream, Sahara,

and the Brooklyn Review. He is the

senior industry analyst for a research

firm.

Jane Hirshfield’s sixth book of

poetry, After, was published in 2006.

She has received Guggenheim and

Rockefeller Fellowships as well as

the Academy of American Poets

Fellowship for Distinguished Writing.

Cathy Hong has been awarded a Van

Lier Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize.

Her poetry has appeared in the

Columbia Journal, Field, McSweeney’s,

and Mudfish.

John Isles is the author of ARK. He

has been awarded a Ruskin Art Club

prize from the Los Angeles Review,

and his work has appeared in

American Letters & Commentary,

Boston Review, and Colorado Review. 

Tyehimba Jess’s first book of

poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of

the 2004 National Poetry Series.

Recognized as one of 2005’s

eighteen debut poets to watch by

Poets and Writers, he teaches at the

University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign.

Kimberly Johnson holds graduate

degrees from Johns Hopkins, the

Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the

University of California-Berkeley.

Her work has appeared recently in

The New Yorker, The Southern Review,

and Arion. She lives in Salt Lake

City.

Laura Kasischke is the author of

three previous books of poetry, Wild

Brides, Housekeeping in a Dream, and

Fire & Flower, in addition to three

novels. She lives in Chelsea,

Michigan.

Sarah Kennedy is the author of four

books of poems. She is the Book

Review Editor for Shenandoah and

teaches at Mary Baldwin College in

Staunton, Virginia.

James Kimbrell has been the

recipient of the Whiting Writers’

Award, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the

“Discovery”/The Nation Award, a

Ford Foundation Fellowship, and has

twice received the Academy of

American Poets Prize. His latest

book of poems is My Psychic.

Karen An-hwei Lee’s first booklength collection, In Medias Res,

won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize

and the Norma Farber First Book

Award. She holds an MFA in Creative

Writing and a doctorate in

Literature.

130 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS
Alex Lemon is the assistant editor

of Luna: A Journal of Poetry and

Translation and teaches at

Macalester College in St. Paul,

Minnesota. His translations of

contemporary Chinese poets have

appeared in Tin House and New

American Writing. 

Robert Hill Long helped found the

North Carolina Writers’ Network in

1984. His work has been

anthologized in Best American

Poetry, Flash Fiction, and The Best of

the Prose Poem.

Ted Mathys is the author of Forge.

His poems have appeared in Chelsea,

Colorado Review, and Verse. Originally

from Ohio, he currently lives in

Manhattan.

Jill McDonough has been a fellow

at the Fine Arts Work Center and the

Boston Athenaeum and teaches

writing in Massachusetts universities

and prisons. Her poems have been

published in Poetry, Harvard Review,

and Slate.

Eric Pankey is the author of seven

collections of poetry, most recently

Oracle Figures and Reliquaries. He

teaches in the MFA Program at

George Mason University. 

Kathleen Peirce’s work has won her

the AWP Award, the Iowa Prize, the

William Carlos Williams Award, and a

fellowship from the Whiting

Foundation. She teaches in Texas

State University’s MFA Program. 

Belle Randall is the author of One

Hundred and One Different Ways of

Playing Solitaire. Her poems and

essays have appeared in Poetry, The

Threepenny Review, and TriQuarterly.

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 131

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS

For fertility, a new bride is lifted to touch it with her left hand,

or possibly kiss it. 

The sound close in, my friend told me later, is almost silent.

At ten kilometers, even those who have never heard it know what it is.

If you stand near during thunder, she said, 

you will hear a reply.

Six weeks and six days from the phone’s small ringing,

replying was over.

She who cooked lamb and loved wine and wild mushroom pastas.

She who when I saw her last was silent as the great Zygmunt mostly is,

a ventilator’s clapper between her dry lips.

Because I could, I spoke. She laid her palm on my cheek to answer. 

And soon again, to say it was time to leave.

I put my lips near the place a tube went into 

the back of one hand. 

The kiss—as if it knew what I did not yet—both full and formal. 

As one would kiss the ring of a cardinal, or the rim 

of that cold iron bell, whose speech can mean “Great joy,”

or—equally—”The city is burning. Come.”

“THE BELL ZYGMUNT” BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

from After (HarperCollins, 2006)

Used by permission of the author

Spencer Reece is the recipient of

the Eighth Annual Levis Reading

Prize for his collection of poetry The

Clerk’s Tale. He is an assistant

manager at Brooks Brothers in Palm

Beach Gardens, Florida. 

Richard Siken won the Yale Series

of Younger Poets Prize for his book

Crush. He is also the founder of the

literary magazine spork. He lives in

Tucson, Arizona. 

Sean Singer was born in

Guadalajara, Mexico, and currently

lives in New York City. His first book

Discography won the 2001 Yale

Series of Younger Poets Prize and

the Norma Farber First Book Award.

Young Smith is an assistant

professor of English at Eastern

Kentucky University. His poems have

appeared in Poetry, Pleiades, and

Crazyhorse.

Mark Smith-Soto received his

doctorate in Comparative Literature

from the University of California at

Berkeley. His full-length collection,

Our Lives are Rivers, was published

in 2003. 

Michael Teig earned his MFA in

Creative Writing from the University
John Balcom is an associate

professor at the Monterey Institute.

His translations include Death of a

Stone Cell by Lo Fu, The Four Seasons

by Xiang Yang, My Village by Wu

Sheng, and Black and White by Lin

Hengtai.

Wayne Cox

Greenville, SC • $10,000

To support the translation from

Catalan of selected poems by Miquel

Martí i Pol (1929-2003). Cox will

collaborate with his wife, Lourdes

Manyé i Martí. One of the most

widely read poets in contemporary

Catalan literature, Martí i Pol was

awarded the Gold Medal for

Excellence in Fine Arts from the

Spanish Ministry of Culture in 1992,

and was nominated for the Nobel

Prize for literature in 2000. 

An associate professor at Anderson

College, Wayne Cox translated

Vacation Notebook with his wife in

1995. It remains the only volume of

Martí i Pol’s poetry available in

English. 

Aaron Crippen

Houston, TX • $10,000

To support the translation from

Chinese of selected poems by Gu

Cheng (1956-1993). Gu Cheng is one

of the most important voices to

emerge from China’s Cultural

Revolution. He arrived on the

literary scene during the Democracy

Wall movement of 1979, publishing

in Communist China’s first

underground magazine, Today.

Currently pursuing a PhD at the

University of Houston, Aaron

Crippen has published numerous

translations in such journals as

Northwest Quarterly, Oklahoma

Review, Nimrod, Mid-American

Review, and Manoa.

Marjolijn de Jager

Stamford, CT • $10,000

To support the translation from

Dutch of The School by the Sea by

Huub Beursken (1950-). Beursken is

a painter, translator, critic, and

writer. The School by the Sea, a

recent work, shows the influence of

American poet William Carlos

Williams and Beursken’s interest in

the visual arts. 

Born in Borneo, Indonesia, when the

nation was still a colony of The

Netherlands (the Dutch East Indies),

Marjolijn de Jager grew up with

Dutch as her first language. She

spent her adolescent years in

Amsterdam and immigrated to the

U.S. in 1958. She currently teaches

Dutch at New York University’s

School of Continuing and

Professional Studies.

Leonard Fox

Charleston, SC • $20,000

To support the translation from

Malagasy of Jean-Joseph

Rabearivelo’s Almost Dreams (1934),

Translated from the Night (1935),

and from French of his Old Songs

from the Imerina Lands, a collection

of translations and adaptations of

traditional Malagasy oral poetry

(published posthumously, 1939).

Considered the most important 20thcentury poet of Madagascar,

Rabearivelo wrote in both Malagasy

and French. 

Leonard Fox works as an independent

translator for publishers and other

private clients throughout the U.S.

His translations include Hainteny: The

132 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS

of Massachusetts, where he studied

with the late Agha Shahid Ali. He

also founded the literary magazine

Jubilat. His book, Big Back Yard,

won the 2002 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry

Prize. 

Jeffrey Thomson has published

three collections, most recently The

Country of Lost Sons. His work has

won the Academy of American Poets

Prize on three occasions. He directs

the MFA in Writing Program at

Chatham College.

Mark Wunderlich is the author of

Voluntary Servitude and The

Anchorage, which won the Lambda

Literary Award. He is currently a

professor of Literature at

Bennington College in Vermont. 

Kevin Young’s work has appeared in

The New Yorker, The New York Times

Book Review, The Paris Review, and

The Kenyon Review. He teaches at

Emory University in Atlanta,

Georgia.

TRANSLATION

PROJECTS IN POETRY:

John J. Balcom 

Monterey, CA • $10,000

To support the translation from

Chinese of selected poems by Lo Fu.

Born in China’s Hunan Province, Lo

Fu served in the military during the

Sino-Japanese War (1939-45), began

writing poetry in the 1940s, and

moved to Taiwan in 1949. His 12

volumes of poetry have received

major literary awards in Taiwan,

including the China Times Literary

Award and the National Literary

Award. 
Traditional Poetry of Madagascar, the

first study in English of Malagasy

traditional poetry.

Kent L. Johnson

Freeport, IL • $10,000

To support the translation from

Spanish of The Night, a book-length

poem by Bolivian writer Jaime Saenz

(1921-1986). Johnson will

collaborate with Forrest Gander.

Published in 1984, The Night was

Saenz’s last poem, composed of four

parts touching on the themes of

alcoholism, identity, and Bolivian

history. 

Kent Johnson currently teaches at

Highland Community College. His

translations include Immanent

Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime

Saenz, published in 2002.

Kerry Shawn Keys

Boiling Springs, PA • $20,000

To support the translation from

Lithuanian of a book-length

selection of poetry by Laurynas

Katkus. In addition to newer pieces,

many of the poems included will be

from two previously untranslated

books, Voices, Notes (1998) and

Diving Lessons (2003). 

Kerry Shawn Keys is a widely

published translator and author who

divides his time between

Pennsylvania and Lithuania. He has

published numerous books and

anthologies of both poetry and

prose, and his work has appeared in

many American and international

journals and magazines.

Janet Lembke

Stauton, VA • $20,000

To support the retranslation from

Latin of Virgil’s four-book Georgics.

Virgil’s Georgics, the second of his

three poetic works, comprises 2,172

lines of Latin hexameters on

farming. This project will add a new

translation in American English with

the goal of reaching general readers

interested in poetry and ancient

history, as well as gardening and

farming.

Janet Lembke is a writer, translator,

and naturalist. Her translations

include Euripides’s Electra and

Hecuba, Aeschylus’s Persians and

Suppliants, and Bronze and Iron: Old

Latin Poetry from Its Beginnings to

100 B.C.

Bill Porter (Red Pine)

Port Townsend, WA • $10,000

To support the translation from

classical Chinese of the poetry of

Wei Ying-wu. Born in 737, Wei Yingwu is recognized as one of the great

poets of the T’ang period, especially

in terms of his ability to describe

landscapes and natural settings, and

to conjure the moods of seclusion

and serenity. This project renders

into English about one-third (150-

200) of his surviving poems. 

Bill Porter, who writes under the

pseudonym Red Pine, first began

translating Chinese poetry in 1973,

while living in a Buddhist monastery

in Taiwan. The author of numerous

translations, his most recent

anthology of China’s best-known

T’ang and Sung poetry, Poems of the

Masters, was published in 2003. Over

the years, he has received many

honors for his work and has

produced more than one thousand

radio programs about Chinese

culture.

Martha Ann Selby

Cambridge, MA • $20,000

To support the retranslation from

classical Tamil of Ainkurunuru, a

fourth-century anthology of love

poems. The Ainkurunuru contains the

work of five poets, each of whom

composed 100 poems devoted to one

of five “landscapes” of reciprocal

love (jealous quarreling, tortured

separation and lament, clandestine

love, abject separation, and domestic

bliss). Only one complete translation

of the text has been published in

English, and it is marred by

inaccuracies and outdated usages. 

Martha Ann Selby is an associate

professor of Asian Studies at the

University of Texas at Austin. Her

previous translations include Grow

Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems

from Classical India and A Circle of

Six Seasons: Old Tamil, Prakrit, and

Sanskrit Verse. 

Andrew Shields

Switzerland, FO • $20,000

To support the translation from

French of selected poems by Jacques

Réda. Born in Luneville, France, in

1929, Réda currently lives in Paris.

This project includes poems from

nine volumes published since 1968.

No English volume of his work is

currently in print. 

Since receiving his PhD in

Comparative Literature from the

University of Pennsylvania in 1995,

Andrew Shields has been an English

language teacher in Switzerland. An

accomplished translator of both

French and German, he has had his

work published in journals such as

Poetry, Marlboro Review, and Grand

Street.

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 133

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS
Adam Sorkin

Havertown, PA • $10,000

To support the translation from

Romanian of Magda Cârneci’s book

of poems, Chaosmos. Born in 1955,

Cârneci is a widely respected poet,

essayist, and art critic. Chaosmos

(combining chaos and cosmos) was

originally published in 1992 and was

seen as a breakthrough work in its

introduction of elements of daily life

into poetic language. 

Adam Sorkin is Distinguished

Professor of English at Pennsylvania

State University, Delaware County,

where he has taught since 1978. He

has translated more than 135

contemporary Romanian poets and

published 19 books. 

Steven Stewart

Reno, NV • $10,000

To support the translation from

Spanish of Angel Crespo’s Poemas en

Prosa 1965-1994. In the 1940s,

Crespo co-founded the Postism

movement in Spain, which

emphasized imaginative play on

language, and has had far-reaching

influence on contemporary Spanish

poetry. 

Steven Stewart teaches in the

English Department at the University

of Nevada, Reno. He holds his PhD

in Creative Writing from Florida

State University, and his translations

have appeared in numerous journals

and magazines including Harper’s,

Crazyhorse, and jubilat. His book of

translations of the work of Rafael

Perez Estrada, Devoured by the Moon,

was recently published by Hanging

Loose Press.

Virlana Tkacz

New York, NY • $20,000

To support the translation from

Ukrainian of Serhiy Zhadan’s two

most recent books of poetry. 

Tkacz will collaborate with Wanda

Phipps. Born in 1974, Zhadan is one

of the most popular poets of the

post-independence generation in

Ukraine. 

Virlana Tkacz is a translator, writer,

and theater director, and currently

serves as the artistic director of Yara

Arts Group, a resident company at La

MaMa Experimental Theatre. With her

long-time collaborator, Phipps, she

has translated Ukrainian poetry of

more than 20 poets, and they

received the National Theatre

Translation Fund Award for their

translation of Lesia Ukrainka’s verse

drama The Forest Song.

134 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 

LITERATURE FELLOWSHIPS

The green river water

slows in warm bends

fish zeppelins

scatter the plankton

and tired bird catchers

attempt to catch

every word.

Hold on to

the brightly colored rags and scotch tape

that bind the slashed wrists

of these heroic times.

One day you will turn off this radio,

you’ll get used to her,

to her breathing

and, dressed in your T-shirt,

she’ll bring you water in the middle of the night.

On the terrace the left-over cups of tea,

are filling up with rain water

and cigarette butts,

you and I share a cold

you and I share long conversations—

you don’t notice the morning rain

you go to sleep late

and you wake up late

I write poems about how I love

this woman and I invent

newer and newer words

to avoid

telling her.

“ALCOHOL” BY SERHIY ZHADAN 

Translated from Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps

Used by permission of the author
NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THE ARTS

T

he 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. 

National Council on the Arts

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 135

Sworn in by then Supreme Court Justice Sandra

Day O’Connor (2nd from left) are from left

James Ballinger, Terry Teachout, and Gerard

Schwarz. 

Photo by Kathy Plowitz-Worden
NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THE ARTS

136 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

James Ballinger

Museum Director

Phoenix, Arizona

Don V. Cogman

Patron/Trustee

Scottsdale, Arizona

Mary Costa

Opera Singer

Knoxville, Tennessee

Gordon Davidson *

Theater Center Director/Producer

Los Angeles, California

Katharine Cramer DeWitt

Patron/Trustee

Cincinnati, Ohio

Makoto Fujimura

Visual Artist

New York, New York

David H. Gelernter

Author/Critic/Educator

Woodbridge, Connecticut

Teresa Lozano Long

Patron/Trustee

Austin, Texas

James McBride **

Author/Musician/Composer

Carversville, Pennsylvania

Maribeth Walton McGinley

Art Director/Designer

Glendale, California

Jerry Pinkney

Artist/Illustrator

Croton-on-Hudson, New York

Cleo Parker Robinson *

Dance Company

Director/Choreographer

Denver, Colorado

Deedie Potter Rose

Patron/Trustee

Dallas, Texas

Gerard Schwarz

Symphony Orchestra Conductor

Seattle, Washington

Terry Teachout

Critic/Author

New York, New York

Karen Lias Wolff

Music Educator

Ann Arbor, Michigan

The following Council members served in FY 2005: 

Cass Ballenger*

U.S. House of Representatives

(R-North Carolina)

Robert Bennett

U.S. Senate

(R-Utah)

Mike DeWine 

U.S. Senate

(R-Ohio)

Patrick Leahy

U.S. Senate

(D-Vermont)

Betty McCollum

U.S. House of Representatives

(D-Minnesota)

Howard “Buck” McKeon

U.S. House of Representatives

(R-California)

Harry Reid*

U.S. Senate

(D-Nevada)

Patrick Tiberi

U.S. House of Representatives

(R-Ohio)

Ex officio members

* End of term in FY 2004 but served in FY 2005 until their replacements were confirmed.

** Resigned in FY 2005. 

* End of term in FY 2005
FINANCIAL SUMMARY

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 137

SUMMARY OF FUNDS AVAILABLE1 FY 2005

Appropriated Program and State/Regional Grant Funds $99,451,734

Appropriated Balance, Prior Year1 3,457,133

Nonfederal Gifts1 2,907,143

Interagency Transfers1 2,994,625

TOTAL PROGRAM FUNDS AVAILABLE $108,810,635

TOTAL PROGRAM SUPPORT FUNDS AVAILABLE2 1,793,161

TOTAL SALARY AND EXPENSE FUNDS AVAILABLE3,4 22,794,726

TOTAL FUNDS AVAILABLE $133,398,522

1 Includes FY 2004 unobligated funds brought forward into FY 2005 and prior year deobligations carried forward into FY 2005.

2 Includes appropriated funds and nonfederal gifts including FY 2004 unobligated funds brought forward into FY 2005 and prior year deobligations brought

forward into FY 2005.

3 Includes appropriated funds, nonfederal gifts, and interagency transfers including FY 2004 unobligated funds brought forward into FY 2005 and prior year

deobligations brought forward into FY 2005.

4 Includes nonfederal gifts and interagency transfers held on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

Financial Summary
FINANCIAL SUMMARY

138 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

SUMMARY OF FUNDS OBLIGATED1 FY 2005 

($ in thousands)

Access to Artistic Excellence:

Direct Endowment Grants

Project Support2 37,895

Challenge America: Reaching Every Community 13,408

American Masterpieces 1,183

Total Access to Artistic Excellence 52,486

Learning in the Arts

Direct Endowment Grants

Project Support 9,526

Partnerships for the Arts 1,850

Total Learning in the Arts 11,376

Partnerships for the Arts

State Partnerships

State & Regional 23,961

Underserved 6,552

Challenge America: Reaching Every Community 8,570

Subtotal State Partnerships 39,083

Direct Endowment Grants 1,467

Total Partnerships for the Arts 40,550

Total Program Funds 104,412

Total Program Support 1,290

Total Salaries & Expenses3 21,386

TOTAL 127,088

1 Includes appropriated funds, appropriated fund balances brought forward into FY 2005 from prior years, nonfederal gifts and interagency transfers. 2 Includes $2,225,000 for Save America’s Treasures and $3,900,000 for Arts on Radio and Television 3 Includes funds from nonfederal gifts and interagency transfers obligated on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities of which

$216,000 was obligated in support of grants and cooperative agreements.
APPROPRIATIONS HISTORY

2005 ANNUAL REPORT 139

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

Fiscal Year Total Funds

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

Fiscal Year Total Funds

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

2003 $115,731,000

2004 $120,970,815

2005 $121,263,000

* In 1976, the Federal government changed the

beginning of the fiscal year from July 1 to

October 1, hence the 1976 Transition (T)

Quarter.

Appropriations History

Fiscal Years 1966 – 2005
140 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

2005 Annual Report published by:

National Endowment for the Arts

Office of Communications

Felicia K. Knight, Director

Don Ball, Publications Manager/Editor

September 2006

Researched and written by 

Don Ball, Paulette Beete, and Elizabeth Stark. 

With thanks to NEA staff for their assistance, 

and to grantees for their photographs and information. 

This annual report, as well as all grant and panel information 

for FY 2005, can be ordered free of charge and accessed 

electronically at the NEA Web site: www.arts.gov.

National Endowment for the Arts

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20506-0001

(202) 682-5400

2005 Annual Report designed by:

Fletcher Design, Inc. 

Washington, DC

Cover Photo: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885-86) by John Singer Sargent, part of the Great

Expectations: John Singer Sargent Painting Children exhibition indemnified under the Arts and

Artifacts Indemnity Program administered by the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Image courtesy of Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, New York

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.

CREDITS