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News from the NEA
Reading At Risk
For the first time in modern history, fewer than half of U.S. adults read literature, according to a comprehensive survey recently released by the National Endowment for the Arts. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America presents a detailed but bleak assessment of the decline of reading’s role in the nation’s culture. It is not a report the NEA is happy to issue.
For more information visit www.nea.gov/chairman
Recently Awarded Access to Artistic Excellence/Literature Fellowships
Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre, Cedar Rapids
$10,000
To support a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Falstaff,
designed by Scott Olinger, and related in-school performances performed by singers
from the Young Artists Program. Performances will be held in January 2005 at the
Theatre Cedar Rapids including a free presentation for students in Cedar Rapids
high school humanities programs.
Friends of the Davenport Museum of Art (consortium), Davenport
$70,000
To support a consortium project, the exhibition titled The Great American
Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935, with accompanying catalogue
and education programs. The Davenport Museum is collaborating with the Tacoma,
WA, Museum to present the work of early modernist American artists whose work
is rarely seen in the host cities.
Iowa State University (on behalf of Brunnier Museum
of Art), Ames
$15,000
To support the exhibition titled When Tillage Begins, Other Arts Follow: The
Dawn of a Campus Mural Tradition, with accompanying catalogue and education
programs. The project is based on the work by renowned American artist Grant Wood,
whose work is prominently displayed on the ISU campus.
University of Iowa (on behalf of University of Iowa
Press), Iowa City
$8,000
To support publication costs and related expenses for winning selections from
the Iowa Short Fiction Award and John Simmons Short Fiction Award competitions.
Launched in 1970, the awards are given to two emerging writers each year.
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls
$10,000
To support publication costs and related expenses for issues of the North
American Review. Reaching as many as 750 libraries across the country, the
review will solicit new readers through paid advertisements in such publications
as Poets & Writers, AWP Writers Chronicle, The Writer
and Communication Arts.
Total: $113,000
