National Endowment for the Arts: A Look Under the Hood at Grants

Today I’ll move from sea to shining sea — my last few stories treated the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem on the Atlantic — to the Swamp. That’s Washington, D.C., “D.C.” for “Diavolo Centrale,” as Dante would have said had he imagined so fetid and malefic a place. I’ve skewered the National Endowment for the Arts — a good idea but a faint shadow of its potential — off and on but rarely look at the National Endowment for the Humanities. For a federal government agency, it does lots of good work.

What’s the difference between the NEA and the NEH? Both were established by Congress in 1965. Though, practically, they overlap — I’ve worked on projects that have gotten grants from both — the NEA focuses on the visual arts and exhibitions and programs that come and go while the NEH aims at published scholarly work. It supports book projects, documentaries, archives, fellowships, and high-octane museum exhibitions with scholarships. Its budget this year is a bit under $200 million. That’s not chump change. Yes, it’s less money than was spent on the freak-show Gaza pier that broke apart after a week, but, in the world of pure scholarship, it’s moolah that matters.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

Today I’ll move from sea to shining sea — my last few stories treated the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem on the Atlantic — to the Swamp. That’s Washington, D.C., “D.C.” for “Diavolo Centrale,” as Dante would have said had he imagined so fetid and malefic a place. I’ve skewered the National Endowment for the Arts — a good idea but a faint shadow of its potential — off and on but rarely look at the National Endowment for the Humanities. For a federal government agency, it does lots of good work.

What’s the difference between the NEA and the NEH? Both were established by Congress in 1965. Though, practically, they overlap — I’ve worked on projects that have gotten grants from both — the NEA focuses on the visual arts and exhibitions and programs that come and go while the NEH aims at published scholarly work. It supports book projects, documentaries, archives, fellowships, and high-octane museum exhibitions with scholarships. Its budget this year is a bit under $200 million. That’s not chump change. Yes, it’s less money than was spent on the freak-show Gaza pier that broke apart after a week, but, in the world of pure scholarship, it’s moolah that matters.