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National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanitites Act of 1965 in the Rose Garden of the White House on 29 September 1965. This new piece of legislation would kick of the The Naitonal Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humnanites, which would go on to support music, dance, literature, visual arts, theater, and education of the arts in the United States. -
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The National Endowment for the Arts
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First Grant Awarded
On this day in Decmember of 1965, vice president Hubert Humphrey, presented the first NEA awarded grant to the American Ballet Theatre. The check was written out for $100,000, and for it's great accomplishments since 1937, including 15 international tours in 41 countries. -
National Endowment for the Arts' reports for fiscal year
In 1969, the end of the fiscal year, Nancy Hanks, the chairman of the NEA, had the honor of announcing the annual report of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Council on the Arts. Her report included, the NEA awarding grants pertaining to music, dance, literature, theatre, and digital media. She included that a $25,000 to $5,000 grants were awarded for a four week rehearsal in dance. The grants were not only awarded to the dancers but also the choreographers. -
Frank Hodsoll
President Reagan appointed Frank Hodsoll as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, he came from being part of the white house staff. In Hodsoll's term of being chairman of the NEA, he had to deal with the issue of the organization being exterminated due budget cuts in the White House. With President Reagan being a former act himself, he advocated that the NEA being kept inspite of the cuts. In result, the NEA's budget ended up being cut 10%. -
Congressional Funding for NEA
During the mid 1990's the congressional funding for the Naitonal Endowment for the arts was between $160 million and $180 million. -
U.S. Congress hits the highest amount of funding for NEA
Congress funded the most for the NEA in 1996 then any other year in the organization's history, starting from 1965. In the year of 1996 congress funded a high of $176 million to the National Endowment for the Arts. -
NEA Funding Increases
After a funding high in the mid 1990's, the congressional funding was cut down to $99.5 million after controversial talk in conservitive groups about the NEA awarding agency grants to artists. Despite the drop in funding during the 1990's, in 2001 congress increased funding for the NEA to $104.7 million. -
Poetry Out Loud
In the spring of 2006 Poetry Out Loud hosted it's first competiton where students dynamically read and memorize poems and they recite them at different levels of competition. The student who won the first season Poetry Out Lound on 10 May 2006, Jasckson Hille, recieved a $20,000 scholorship, which was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. -
The Big Read
After a survey was done in 2004 and discovering that literary reading in America was declining rapidly, the National Endowment for the Arts founded the program The Big Read, which provides people an opportunity to read and analyze classic novels in their communities. As of 2007, over 1,000 grants were awarded by the NEA to communites in the US to host Big Reads.
