Comments on: Stimulus Bill Compromise Will Help Save Thousands of Arts Workers Jobs http://blog.artsusa.org/2009/02/13/stimulus-bill-compromise-will-help-save-thousands-of-arts-workers-jobs/ Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:22:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: The Arts and the Stimulus | The Present Group Journal http://blog.artsusa.org/2009/02/13/stimulus-bill-compromise-will-help-save-thousands-of-arts-workers-jobs/comment-page-1/#comment-21675 The Arts and the Stimulus | The Present Group Journal Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:56:48 +0000 http://blog.artsusa.org/?p=722#comment-21675 [...] Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch writes, The nation’s 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion [...] [...] Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch writes, The nation’s 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion [...]

]]> By: Joseph Weinzettle http://blog.artsusa.org/2009/02/13/stimulus-bill-compromise-will-help-save-thousands-of-arts-workers-jobs/comment-page-1/#comment-234 Joseph Weinzettle Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:47:36 +0000 http://blog.artsusa.org/?p=722#comment-234 Not all the NEA visual arts programs actually work. More than any of NEA's current visual arts grants, the Visual Artist Fellowship Program program recognized achievement and encouraged innovation until its discontinuation in 1995. Congress and the NEA should immediately move to restore this valuable program. I personally benefitted from studying with an NEA Fellow as a college student in New York in 1987-8. My ceramics teacher then was James Makins, who won Fellowships in 1976 and 1980. His innovative wheel-thrown porcelinware was somewhere between the palette of Italian still life painter Giorgio Morandi and the whimsical shapes of Dr. Seuss. His students developed technical proficiency, a spirit of improvisation and a critical eye. The Visual Artist Fellowship was a valuable and effective program, reaching well beyond the individual recipient. The current effect of NEA support for visual artists is diluted at the state level. State programs do not have near the same career impact. State individual grants (for Florida) are $5,000 while the NEA still awards Literature Fellowships of $25,000. Given that visual arts disciplines--ceramics, sculpture, painting, photography--are more expensive, a grant amount of $30,000 would carry equal weight. The national Visual Arts Fellowship needs to be restored. Visual artists have been marginalized by Congress and the NEA since 1995. We need to make their voices heard on how the NEA handles these funds. Not all the NEA visual arts programs actually work. More than any of NEA’s current visual arts grants, the Visual Artist Fellowship Program program recognized achievement and encouraged innovation until its discontinuation in 1995. Congress and the NEA should immediately move to restore this valuable program.

I personally benefitted from studying with an NEA Fellow as a college student in New York in 1987-8. My ceramics teacher then was James Makins, who won Fellowships in 1976 and 1980. His innovative wheel-thrown porcelinware was somewhere between the palette of Italian still life painter Giorgio Morandi and the whimsical shapes of Dr. Seuss. His students developed technical proficiency, a spirit of improvisation and a critical eye. The Visual Artist Fellowship was a valuable and effective program, reaching well beyond the individual recipient.

The current effect of NEA support for visual artists is diluted at the state level. State programs do not have near the same career impact. State individual grants (for Florida) are $5,000 while the NEA still awards Literature Fellowships of $25,000. Given that visual arts disciplines–ceramics, sculpture, painting, photography–are more expensive, a grant amount of $30,000 would carry equal weight. The national Visual Arts Fellowship needs to be restored.

Visual artists have been marginalized by Congress and the NEA since 1995. We need to make their voices heard on how the NEA handles these funds.

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