A brief history of lighght. via
posted by hototogisu on Sep 10, 2007 - 27 comments

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

The prepared text of the speech delivered by Dana Gioia at Stanford University Commencement on June 17, 2007.
posted by cgc373 on Jun 26, 2007 - 153 comments

For the past three years the National Endowment for the Arts has sponsored a writing project called Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, inviting U.S. troops and their families to share letters, e-mails, poems, stories, and memoirs to be collected in a national archive. An anthology of the work, edited by the historian Andrew Carroll, will be published this fall by Random House. Here, in an audio slide show [Flash required], five servicemen read from their work, accompanied by photographs. [more inside]
posted by ericb on Jul 10, 2006 - 5 comments

State arts programs have been one of the biggest casualties of the widespread budget crises of 2003. In total, state spending for FY2004 has decreased 23%, led by Missouri (entire budget - 100% - slashed), California (91%), and Florida (78%.) Meanwhile, Congress, to its credit, has awarded a modest increase to the NEA. Will private funding take over, as the Libertarians hope? Or is state funding an essential propellant of local economies?
posted by PrinceValium on Dec 30, 2003 - 47 comments

Well what did you expect? After years of forcing taxpayers to pay for stuff they hate, the National Endowment for the Arts "has been transformed from a lightning rod and punching bag into a benign institution, averse to controversy and with a significantly different mission than it had a decade ago."
posted by BGM on Dec 23, 2001 - 32 comments

The NEA and the RIAA (demon spawn) collaborate on a list of the top songs of 20th century, topped by Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The list was picked by hundreds of "music lovers across the country" from "all walks of life," including the "music industry," according to the press release. The voters picked from 1,100 songs provided by the RIAA and the NEA, though write-in spaces were available on the ballots. The announcement of the list is part of a wider effort to bring the songs to school-age children and adolescents, in a project that involves Scholastic publishing and AOL (the Great Satan). Step right up and take a few whacks at them...
posted by jhiggy on Mar 7, 2001 - 43 comments