NewsHour Backgrounders
June 25, 1998:
A NewsHour interview with the new head of the NEA, Willliam Ivey.
March 31, 1998:
The Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of the NEA vs. Finley.
February 6, 1998:
An Online Forum explores to benefits and pitfalls of corporate sponsorship of the arts.
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Arts & Entertainment.
OUTSIDE
LINKS
NEA
|
|
|
|
A question from Symone Ma of Cedar Falls, IA:
With budget cuts coming through congress, are there other sources of funding that you can turn to-- or will individual artists/organizations have to try and find other sources of funding themselves?
William Ivey answers:
The Endowment is a federal agency, and like any federal agency, it acquires its funds chiefly through the legislative process. The agency was created by Congress in 1965 because the American people deemed the arts sufficiently important for the nation's well being to be worthy of public support. Congress established the NEA for the explicit purpose of providing federal funding for the arts, so any calls to privatize the Endowment are inconsistent with our founding legislation. Our NEA grants process brings federal dollars to arts organizations all over the country through a very rigorous application & review process. I know, through my experience with the Country Music Foundation as an NEA grantee, that these federal, NEA dollars are particularly valuable in generating support and visibility for artists and arts institutions. Ways of supplementing our appropriated funds with private money may exist, and I plan to look into that during my tenure. But there is a unique role for this federal agency, so our main source of funding will always be the Congress and ultimately, of course, the taxpayers.
Regardless of the size of the Endowment's budget, artists and arts organizations need to be on the lookout for other sources of support in addition to any assistance they may receive us. While I expect to build the case for a long-overdue increase in our budget, under current law we are prohibited from giving grants to most individual artists, and our organizational grants require matching funds from other sources. Because each NEA grant leverages additional private sector support, taxpayers receive a substantial return for their small investment in the arts. Few other federal agencies can claim such a success.
Go to the next question ....
|
