KCET Tops List of 6 Local NEA Grant Recipients

Eleven California cultural institutions--six of them in Los Angeles--have been awarded challenge grants totaling $3.4 million from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Public-television station KCET Channel 28 won an $800,000 grant, an award second only in size to the $1-million grant given to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

The grants, which must be matched 3-to-1 over a three-year period, are designed to provide long-term financial stability, according to Endowment Chairman Frank Hodsoll, who announced the grants Thursday at the Otis Parsons Institute of Parsons School of Design. They are among $19.2 million in challenge grants awarded to 68 arts institutions nationwide.

William H. Kobin, KCET’s president and chief executive officer, said the Los Angeles-based station has two reasons to celebrate.

“This will enable us to accelerate our commitment to arts-programming production and broadcasting--a top priority at the station--and for the first time to establish an endowment,” expected to total $3.2 million in three years, Kobin said.

(New York’s Pierpont Morgan Library also received an award of $800,000.)

The grants announced Thursday, which must be matched with new or increased non-federal funds, are expected to generate an additional $100 million nationally ($10.2 million in California), Hodsoll said.

“Our challenge grants are a small contribution,” he told officials from each California institution receiving a grant. “It is the people here today and your colleagues nationwide who have the day-to-day task of making sure the best cultural institutions in the country are strong. Today we see that that (kind of) activity in California is alive and well.”

The White House announced Wednesday that Hodsoll, chairman of the endowment for the past seven years, has been appointed executive associate director of the Office of Management and Budget and chief financial officer. He said Thursday he expects to resign his current job in a couple of weeks.

Thursday’s grant announcement marks the end of the first two phases of the endowment’s challenge program. Future challenge grants will be awarded in phase three, inaugurated last fall, for specific projects of national significance, the endowment said. The next round of Challenge III grants, to total $15 million, will be announced late this year.

Organizations in 27 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands were awarded grants starting at $100,000 on Thursday.

The remaining California institutions to receive grants, most to be used for endowment funds, are:

--Otis Parsons Institute of Parsons School of Design, $500,000, for the school’s $12-million campus expansion project to include a new building with studios for drawing, painting and design, an auditorium and library.

--Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, $300,000.

--Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, $100,000.

--American Cinematheque, Hollywood, a first-time challenge grant recipient, $150,000.

--Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Society, $100,000.

--La Jolla Playhouse, first-time challenge grant recipient, $250,000.

--San Diego Opera Assn., $400,000.

--American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, $250,000.

--Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley, $325,000.

--California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, first-time challenge grant recipient, $250,000.