NEA ANNOUNCES $19.8 MILLION IN GRANTS

The Los Angeles Times reports that on Friday, the National Endowment for the Arts announced $19.8 million in onetime grants as part of President Obama’s stimulus package, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The grants will go to state and regional arts agencies in an effort to prop up the arts sector of the economy, the NEA said. Those agencies will then decide to appropriate the funds to organizations in the performing, visual, and literary arts.

The Sacramento-based California Arts Council will receive $502,400, by far the most that the NEA is awarding to a single state agency. The dollar amount was calculated by a simple formula of equal share for each state plus consideration for population, the NEA told the Times. The Texas Arts Commission will get $427,300 and the New York State Council on the Arts is receiving $399,900. NEA guidelines stipulate that grants should be spent on jobs creation in the arts, not programs.

And there’s more to come. In July, the NEA will announce the recipients for a direct competitive grant in which individual arts organizations can apply for a fixed award of $25,000 or $50,000. (The application deadline was last Monday.) The upcoming grant is part of the overall $50 million that the NEA received as part of the Obama stimulus package.