NEA Gives Arts Grants to 14 Connecticut Groups

By FRANK RIZZO, Hartford Courant

Entertainment Arts and Culture Art Music Theater Artists Colleges and Universities

The National Edowment for the Arts announced 863 grant recipients comprised of organizations and individual writers across the country. The awards total $22.543 million, encompass 15 artistic disciplines and fields, and support projects in 47 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

A total of 14 Connecticut organizations received grants:

They are:

Artspace, Inc.
New Haven, CT
$30,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Visual Arts
To support the presentation of temporary sculpture in Artspace's urban pocket park. Artists Leeza Meskin, Alison Williams, and Formless Finder - a collaboration between Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi - have each proposed projects that imagine new uses for and public engagement within the park that will draw attention to issues of ecology and sustainability.

Capitol Region Education Council
Hartford, CT
$25,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Arts Education
To support the Center for Creative Youth, a five-week pre-professional summer arts residency on the campus of Wesleyan University for talented high school students from throughout the United States. Students are taught in their chosen arts disciplines by professional resident arts instructors and guest artists and take classes to experience the cultural and historic context of arts from around the world.

Connecticut Players Foundation, Inc. (aka Long Wharf Theatre)
New Haven, CT
$20,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Theater
To support the world premiere adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, adapted and directed by associate artistic director Eric Ting. This five-actor adaptation, in which Shakespeare's text is nearly intact, is set during the Vietnam War when the effects of the yet-to-be-identified post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was emerging in American soldiers.

Czepiel, Katherine Leonard
Hamden, CT
$25,000
CATEGORY: Literature Fellowships FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Literature

Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater Center, Inc.
Waterford, CT
$30,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Theater
To support the creation and development of new plays and musical theater works by emerging and mid-career artists at the National Playwrights Conference and the National Music Theater Conference. Approximately 1,600 manuscripts are received through an open-submission process that culminates in the selection of seven to ten plays and two to four musicals, that receive a rehearsal period and staged readings that are open to the public.

Hill-Stead Museum
Farmington, CT
$10,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Presenting
To support the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. This project includes a poetry and music festival, year-round public school outreach, and year-round writing workshops.

Jones, Nalini
Norwalk, CT
$25,000
CATEGORY: Literature Fellowships FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Literature

Neighborhood Studios of Fairfield County (aka formerly Music and Arts Center for Humanity)
Bridgeport, CT
$10,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Arts Education
To support the Alvin Ailey Dance Camp. Minority students will attend a six-week dance camp tutition-free, focusing on jazz, modern, and African dance techniques, and attend personal development workshops addressing peer pressure, drug abuse, interpersonal relationships, and community violence.

Real Art Ways, Inc.
Hartford, CT
$25,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Visual Arts
To support Step Up 2010, an exhibition series featuring the work of emerging artists with accompanying catalogues. The series will include six solo exhibitions by emerging visual artists from New York, New Jersey, and New England whose careers would be advanced by a two-month long exhibition at Real Art Ways.

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Hartford, CT
$21,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Museum
To support the MATRIX exhibition series, featuring emerging contemporary artists. The exhibitions each documented with an artists' brochure, will be presented in a dedicated gallery, and, in the flexible spirit of the program, in other spaces inside and outside the museum.

Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT
$20,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Dance
To support the presentation of dance artists. Artists to be presented include Trisha Brown Company, Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, and Reggie Wilson Fist & Heel Performance Group.

Yale University (on behalf of Yale University Art Gallery)
New Haven, CT
$68,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Museum
To support the exhibition, Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 with accompanying catalogue. The exhibition will explore the universal appeal and lure of Coney Island through the presentation of more than 100 artworks, including paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, posters, architectural artifacts, carousel animals, and film.

Yale University (on behalf of Yale Repertory Theatre)
New Haven, CT
$35,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Theater
To support the world premiere of The Realistic Joneses, a new play by Will Eno, directed by Sam Gold. The play tells the story of two neighboring couples with the same last name in which both husbands are struggling with the same rare, incurable disease and participating in the same experimental drug trial.

Yale-New Haven Hospital
New Haven, CT
$30,000
CATEGORY: Art Works FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Arts Education
To support Child Life Arts and Enrichment Program that engages professional artists to teach hospitalized youth to use video, digital photography, written and spoken word and music in the creation of digital stories. The program serves youth living with sickle cell anemia, diabetes, asthma, cancer, and cystic fibrosis, mental illness, and trauma, or who are experiencing a lengthy or difficult hospital stay.