Artists aim to turn funding tide

Portland Press Herald
By BOB KEYES, Staff Writer
Thursday, October 12, 2006

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts will begin a three-day visit to Maine this afternoon to talk about federal funding for the arts and suggest how Maine can get more money from the endowment. Funding for Maine-specific projects has declined 32 percent since 2002 to less than $1 million a year.

NEA Chairman Dana Gioia will dedicate most of his visit to meetings with arts leaders on Friday, beginning with a breakfast in Bangor and ending with dinner in Portland.

The visit comes at the suggestion of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who wants to demonstrate how federal arts money is being spent in Maine. Collins, R-Maine and a former member of the NEA's National Council on the Arts, spoke at a recent conference with Gioia and invited him to Maine.

Gioia will visit with the leaders of several arts organizations that have received NEA grants, including the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance in Old Town, Alice James Books in Farmington and Portland Stage Company.
He's scheduled to arrive in Bangor this afternoon and depart from Portland on Saturday following a visit to the Portland Museum of Art.

This will be Gioia's first official trip to Maine since becoming NEA chairman in 2003. "It's long overdue," he said. "Maine is a state that really has a lot of arts organizations in it, and we do give a lot of grants there. The major reasons that we go up there, first of all, are to talk about things the NEA is doing, so people have some perspective. As or more important is for us to listen."

Gioia will bring NEA staff members who will conduct a workshop in Bangor on Friday to help arts organizations navigate NEA funding options.

More than 100 arts groups and their representatives have signed up for the workshop, said Alden Wilson, director of the Maine Arts Commission, which distributes the bulk of NEA grants in Maine.

"We hope the workshop generates a lot more applications to the NEA. The chief purpose of this visit is to bring to the attention of potential grantees the opportunities available from the NEA," Wilson said.

NEA funding in Maine is down from $1.3 million in 2002 to $890,000 this year. Part of that decline is related to the reduced function of the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland, which received as much as $92,000 a year from the NEA as recently as 2004.

That $890,000 figure also does not include funds for NEA's major arts initiatives, including its Shakespeare, jazz and poetry programs, Gioia said. All those national programs received funding in Maine, he said.

The NEA was a lightning rod for controversy in the 1990s, when it funded what many politicians deemed to be offensive art projects and saw its funding threatened by Congress.

In Maine, the most recent NEA controversy involved a 2002 exhibition by Lewiston artist William Pope.L at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art. MECA had received approval for $42,000 in funding for the exhibition, but the NEA later withdrew the money.

Gioia said he is proud that the NEA budget has grown each year of his chairmanship, from $114 million in 2003 to $124 million this year.

"Now we've got a situation where we have bipartisan support in both houses, and I am optimistic about future funding. We have removed the issues that people had with the NEA, and we have done it in a way which has nothing to do with lowering artistic standards or limiting artistic expression," he said.

Gioia will arrive in Portland late Friday afternoon, after a full day of meetings in the Bangor area. He will meet with arts leaders at Portland Stage on Friday evening, have dinner at MECA and then tour the Portland Museum of Art on Saturday morning before leaving the state around noon.
Anita Stewart, Portland Stage artistic and executive director, welcomes the chance to host the NEA chief.
NEA grants enable her to hire choreographers and musicians and also to bring playwrights to Portland to work with directors and actors.

Typically, the grants are in the $20,000 range, she said. "It's not going to make or break our budget, but it allows you to take a leap. It helps me when I go to my board and say, 'Let's try this. I think this is something we can get money from the NEA for.' It allows us to take a risk," she said.

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:
bkeyes@pressherald.com