National Endowment for the Arts

Examples of National Endowment for the Arts in the following topics:

• Promoting Public Welfare and Income Redistribution

  • Social welfare programs seek to provide basic social protections for all Americans.
  • Americans vote for candidates whom they believe have their best interests in mind; American political candidates (and the bureaucracy they marshall) seek to implement policies that will support the welfare of the American public.
  • He did so through the establishment of programs such as Medicare and Medicaid-- federal programs that exist to the present day that ensure certain levels of health care coverage for America's poor and elderly.The Great Society initiative further established educational programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts and generally deployed the executive bureaucracy to better welfare programs for the American public at large.
  • However, the federal government has, in some areas, reorganized funding to promote programs for public wellbeing.
  • Liberals and conservatives are divided on the merits of the law, but regardless of one's political assessment of the law, it speaks to the government's attempts to improve the wellbeing of the public.

• Race and Ethnicity in Postmodernism

  • Postmodernism frequently serves as an ambiguous overarching term for skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism.
  • Galleries and community art centers were developed for the purpose of displaying African-American art, and collegiate teaching positions were created by and for African-American artists .
  • Post-black art arose during this time as a category of contemporary African-American art.
  • The National Endowment for the Arts provided increasing support for these artists.
  • The author bell hooks is widely known for her postmodern writing focused on the connection of race, capitalism, and gender.

• The Great Society

  • Some of the programs were designed to eliminate poverty and racial injustice; others provided for federal involvement in education, medical care, environmental protection, and arts and culture.
  • The Great Society also created programs to benefit the arts.
  • In 1964, the National Commission on the Humanities released a report arguing that the nation's emphasis on science endangered the study of the humanities.
  • In September of 1965, Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, creating both the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
  • For example, the 2011 poverty line was a yearly income of $22,350 for a family of four.

• Tax-Supported Art

  • In the United States, the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the federal government that offers funding to projects it deems exhibit artistic excellence.
  • In Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts funds the projects of artists in much the same way as the NEA, but allots more funding to the arts based on population.
  • In addition to the Canada Council, the provincial and municipal branches of the Canadian government also award grants to artists and arts organizations for a variety of arts-based projects and activities.
  • Project grants are intended to cover the immediate costs of a project as well as the living expenses of the artist for the duration of the project.
  • Discuss the role of government grants in the support of art-making.

• Robber Barons and the Captains of Industry

  • The theme was popular during the Great Depression, a time of public scorn for the abuses of big business.
  • With the fortune he made from the steel industry he built Carnegie Hall, later he turned to philanthropy and interests in education, founding the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
  • John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time .
  • At the height of Morgan's career during the early 1900s, he and his partners had financial investments in many large corporations and were accused by critics of controlling the nation's high finance.
  • To an extent, it did, but it added something quite important for the future of business and the US economy: the power of the federal government to enforce a national policy against monopoly and restraints of trade.

• Aboriginal Australian Art

  • Aboriginal art in Australia can be traced back at least 30,000 years; the rock art of Australian Aborigines is one of the longest continuously practiced artistic traditions in the world.
  • The geometric style (known for its concentric circles, arcs, and dots) found in Central Australia, Tasmania, the Kimberly, and Victoria;
  • Today, they are preserved in national parks throughout the continent and protected through organizations such as the Friends of Australian Rock Art.
  • The influence of Aboriginal artwork in Australia carries over to the 19th and 20th centuries in the works of William Barak, who recorded traditional aboriginal ways for the education of Westerners; Margaret Preston, a non-indigenous painter incorporating Aboriginal influences in her works; Albert Namatjira, an Arrernte artists whose landscapes inspired the Hermannsburg School of art; and Elizabeth Durack, notable for her fusion of Western and indigenous influences.
  • This led to the development of the Papunya Tulaschool, or dot art, now possibly Australia's most recognizable style of art worldwide.

• The Early Middle Ages

  • The Medieval art of the early modern European world covers over 1000 years of art history in Europe, and at times extends into the Middle East and North Africa.
  • It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, and revivals.
  • The history of medieval art can be seen as an ongoing interplay between the elements of classical, early Christian, and "barbarian" art.
  • The medieval period ended with the self-perceived Renaissance recovery of the skills and values of classical art; after this Renaissance shift the artistic legacy of the Middle Ages was disparaged for some centuries.
  • Gold was also used to create sacred objects for churches and palaces, as a solid background for mosaics, or applied as gold leaf to miniatures in manuscripts and panel paintings.

• National Pride

  • Art can be used to advance nationalistic goals by providing a state or nation with political and social legitimacy.
  • Art can be used to advance nationalistic goals by providing a state or nation with political and social legitimacy.
  • After the 1870s, Romantic nationalism became a very familiar movement in the arts that allowed for a form of reinterpretation of the past, without being considered merely historicist.
  • Some degree of art-based national pride still exists today.
  • It is not uncommon for museums and art galleries to be owned by the state, thereby imparting biased and/or nationalistic worldviews on exhibitions.

• Hawaiian Art with Western Influences

  • The art created in these islands can be divided into traditional Hawaiian art; art produced by recently arrived westerners; and art produced by Hawaiians incorporating western materials and ideas.
  • In 1967, Hawaii became the first state in the nation to implement a "Percent for Art" law.
  • The Art in State Buildings Law established the Art in Public Places Program and designated one percent of the construction costs of new public schools and state buildings for the acquisition of works of art, either by commission or by purchase.
  • Public collections of Hawaiian art may be found at the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Bishop Museum (also in Honolulu), the Hawaii State Art Museum, and the Georg-August University of Göttingen in Germany.
  • The annual Merrie Monarch Festival is an international Hula competition, and the state is home to the Hawaii International Film Festival, the premier film festival for Pacific rim cinema.

• Political Art: Race and Ethnicity in the 1990s

  • Street art can be a powerful platform for reaching the public and a potent form of political expression for the oppressed.
  • Taring Padi are well known for the production of cartoonlike posters embedded with political and social justice messages, using the cukil (woodcut) technique onto paper or canvas.
  • After the fall of Suharto, Taring Padi occupied an abandoned art school, which they use as a residence and workspace for creating art, music and theater.
  • Taring Padi regularly run workshops at their studio and undertake collaborative projects with communities and national and international art and political groups.
  • It uses enigmatic themes wherein black can substitute for white.