Visionaries and Outcasts
Subtitle: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Arts in America
Publisher: New Press
Published: February 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 160
ISBN-13: 9781565846241
Subjects: Art funding, patronage & sponsorship; Study & Teaching; Federal aid to the arts; Arts And Public Policy; Art; Art & Art Instruction; Political aspects; USA; General; History - Modern (Late 19th Century to 1945); United States; American; 20th century; Art, American; History
Description: "Visionaries and Outcasts documents and analyzes, from hopeful creation to bitter end, the most ambitious experiment in artistic funding in American history. Through the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, this country provided financial support for visual artists without exerting the stringent controls that patronage in the past required. That all ended thirty years laters, as the NEA's funding for individual artists was eliminated while the agency was at the center of a political, cultural, and moral firestorm. Michael Brenson chronicles the "NEA years" with interviews from dozens of artists and scholars with firsthand knowledge of the NEA's lightning-rod individual fellowship program."

"Brenson, former New York Times art critic, vividly captures the eloquent verve with which Congress supported the public funding of artists in 1965 and contrasts that with the political climate of 1995, when fellowships of individual artists were ended and nary a person of political or cultural power came to the artists' defense. This examination of one of the most controversial government programs of our time is essential to the discussion of the place of the artist in America."--Jacket.