L.A. Philharmonic Among Local Groups to Receive NEA Grants

The National Endowment for the Arts announced Thursday the awarding of $20.45 million in arts grants to 825 recipients nationwide, including $2.72 million awarded to 122 California recipients. The announcement covers about 24% of the NEA’s total $87 million grants pool for fiscal year 2001.

L.A.-area grants range from $100,000 to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. (to support the 20th anniversary celebration of the Philharmonic’s New Music Group) to $5,000 each to the Arroyo Arts Collective (for a poetry poster display), Diavolo Dance Theatre (to help fund out-of-state touring), Documents magazine (for a three-part “Discussions With Artists” series) and Long Beach’s Rhapsody in Taps (for the creation of a new work uniting American tap dance and Balinese gamelan music).

Among the other large local grants are $70,000 to the L.A. County Arts Commission for its Arts Leadership Initiative training and education program; $55,000 to the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department to support a Design Fellowship Program that will expand the city’s Individual Artist Fellowship Program; $50,000 to the Mark Taper Forum toward a new play to star Alan Alda as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman; $50,000 to the Museum of Contemporary Art to support a retrospective exhibition on modernist architect R.M. Schindler; $38,000 to the Foundation for Advanced Critical Studies to support the Los Angeles-based criticism journal Art Issues; $35,000 to the Greenway Arts Alliance toward a PBS-bound television documentary following the senior year of 15 Fairfax High School students; and $32,000 to Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory for its premiere presentation of “The Beard of Avon” by playwright Amy Freed.

Still other local grants include $15,000 to North Hollywood’s Deaf West Theatre for a new play to be written by “Children of a Lesser God” author Mark Medoff; $10,000 to the Jazz Tap Ensemble for a program featuring new works created by tap masters including Fayard Nicholas, Gregory Hines and Jimmy Slyde; $10,000 to Pasadena Playhouse for a multicultural production of “The Tempest” using live Latino musical accompaniment; $12,500 to the L.A. Master Chorale Assn. to support performances celebrating Music Director Paul Salamunovich’s 54-year career; and $12,000 to the Autry Museum of Western Heritage toward a three-year Native American Theater Initiative aimed at cultivating new stage work by Native American artists.