NEA program puts arts on tour

The National Endowment for the Arts has scaled back a new initiative to send the best of American culture around the country and is starting with a tour only of visual arts. Earlier plans included dance and music components.

Among those selected to participate in the first year of “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius” is the Phillips Collection. The NEA announced this week that it is giving the Phillips a grant of $100,000 to support a traveling exhibition of 20th century painter Jacob Lawrence.

“We are going to put together a small but nutritious exhibition that shows the originality of Lawrence, how he was an important new voice in American visual arts in the 1940s and how he tells a great American story,” said Jay Gates, director of the Phillips.

The exhibition will consist of 16 panels about African American life from Lawrence’s well-known “Migration Series.” The Phillips purchased 30 of the panels in 1942 and has been at the forefront of Lawrence scholarship. The gallery is developing a new brochure for the tour that will include material from interviews with Lawrence that have never been published.

The museum has to match the NEA money, which Gates predicted wouldn’t be hard because “Lawrence is such a beloved figure.”

Participants in the first “American Masterpieces” programs are receiving almost $1.2 million. Late last year, Congress approved $2 million for the project, far less than the $18 million the White House had requested. Legislators on Capitol Hill said it was the best they could do in a tight funding year.

The plan is designed to take touring programs to communities outside major arts centers. The NEA retooled the project after the cuts, shelving the dance and music components.

Other tours will include an exhibit on the history of silver design, from the Dallas Museum of Art; a photography show from the George Eastman House; paintings from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; works by Native American artists from New York’s Museum of Arts & Design; and art from the Norman Rockwell Museum.