NEA At A Glance

A Great Nation Deserves Great Art

The National Endowment for the Arts is the largest annual funder of the arts in the United States. An independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Arts is the official arts organization of the United States government.

Mission: The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.

Vision: A nation in which artistic excellence is celebrated, supported, and available to all Americans.

The Arts Endowment has made America a better place to live. Before the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, the arts were limited mostly to a few big cities. The Arts Endowment has helped create regional theater, opera, ballet, symphony orchestras, museums and other art organizations that Americans now enjoy. In its 40-year history, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded more than 120,000 grants that have brought art to Americans in communities large and small.

The Arts Endowment awards grants to nonprofit organizations in three areas: Access to Artistic Excellence, Learning in the Arts, Challenge America, and Partnership Agreements. Forty percent of its funds are awarded to state and jurisdictional arts agencies and six regional arts organizations. In addition to the NEA Jazz Masters, the Arts Endowment awards fellowships in literature and the folk and traditional arts. And it is the National Endowment for the Arts that solicits nominations from the public for the National Medal of Arts and forwards them to the President for his final decision.

The National Endowment for the Arts believes a great nation deserves great art. The Arts Endowment has helped the arts become accessible to more Americans, which in turn has increased public participation in the arts. For instance, in fewer than three decades, nonprofit professional theaters have grown from 50 to a network of 600 today. The agency also supports cultural activities that strengthen our economy. Nationally, the nonprofit arts contribute an estimated $37 billion to the economy every year.

Other accomplishments and funded projects of the Arts Endowment include:

• Since 1990, 39 of the 58 recipients of National Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Awards, and Pulitzer Prizes in fiction and poetry were awarded Arts Endowment Literature Fellowships, often 10 to 20 years earlier.
• Sponsoring the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the most visited tourist attraction in the nation's capital.
• Giving early and critical funding to:
  o The Sundance Film Festival
  o Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  o Minnesota Public Radio's A Prairie Home Companion
  o Spoleto Festival U.S.A.
  o PBS's Great Performances series
  
• Creating and funding the American Film Institute

For more information, visit the National Endowment for the Arts web site at www.arts.gov or call the Communication Office at 202-682-5570.

National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20506

What's this?