From the Whitehouse press office:
Whitehouse Joins National Arts Council
Distinguished Panel Advises National Endowment for the Arts on Grants, Initiatives
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) has been appointed to serve as an ex-officio member of the National Council on the Arts, the advisory body to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). He was named to the Council by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
“I’m honored to represent the Ocean State on this distinguished panel,� Whitehouse said. “The NEA supports Rhode Island artists, performances, and educational opportunities that make our communities richer, our economy stronger, and our lives more meaningful. Our great senator, Claiborne Pell, championed the NEA, and I’m proud to have the opportunity to assist this organization in its important work.�
The National Council on the Arts serves in an advisory role to the Chairman of the NEA, Dana Gioia, reviewing and making recommendations on grant applications and initiatives. Along with the six ex officio Congressional members, the council consists of 14 people widely recognized for their contribution to the arts. Over the years, members have included Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein, Helen Hayes, and John Steinbeck.
The NEA was created in 1965 with the enactment of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, signed into law by then-President Lyndon Johnson. The bill was originally sponsored by former Senator Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), a champion of the NEA throughout his life. The agency has repeatedly recognized Rhode Island’s contribution to the arts through grants to some of the state’s famous artistic institutions, including the Trinity Repertory Company, the Everett Dance Theater, and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Rhode Islanders are also taking advantage of the NEA’s innovative programs, such as the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s participation in The Big Read program, which will give residents of the city of Warwick the opportunity to read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God together.
This is good news for the arts, since we know Senator Whitehouse will apply himself diligently to funding worthy artists of all kinds. Speaking of which, I would like to raise the issue of whether artistic blogging and computer-generated online creators will be given due consideration when states are handing out their grants to artists.
When I first started Kmareka, I filed for and received 501(c)3 status. Back in its conception, Kmareka was less political and had equal fifths of literary essays and book reviews (the Literature section), essays and interviews on community-building (the Community section), essays and interviews on socially responsible financing and investing (the Finance section), fiction and vegetarian recipes. These all remain key interests for me, but when Kmareka became primarily a blog, we decided to end our 501(c)3 status. The organization had become more than 10% political.
The National Endowment for the Arts has a category for “new media.” I wonder whether art blogs fit within their purview, and whether any online artists have been funded through the NEA. I did a little googling to try to find out but didn’t come up with any clear answers.
Kmareka was rejected for a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts grant in 2005. It said on the anonymous judges’ rejection sheet that Kmareka appeared to be a “one woman show.” I called to discuss the rejection and to remind them that we had published more than 25 writers and artists on the site. The Executive Director of RISCA, Randall Rosenbaum, said something about how we were also rejected because we had “other stuff” that was not art such as vegeterian recipes.
I was pushing the definition of what qualified for a RISCA grant — wanting to get help for the costs of running the website and paying the creators of our artistic and literary content. It didn’t work. Kmareka also had content that could be considered political in its focus, and this probably disqualified us further from the possibility of getting RISCA funding.
But I question whether it is even possible for art, as an expression of humanity, to be non-political. Which is why I hope that blogs that have sufficient artistic content can be considered an art form and people can apply for federal funds to do their work. Perhaps there need to be some limitations on the quantity of political content for online artists, as there is the limit of 10% direct advocacy for legislation for 501(c)3 organizations. But the fact is that some literary works are being created online — take Baghdad Burning, for example, which was nominated for the prestigious Samuel Johnson literary prize in Britain. The possibility of government support for online artists should be available in the US.
Kmareka.com 
Hey, Kiersten, thanks for posting the item on Senator Whitehouse and his appointment as one of the four legislative members of the National Council on the Arts. Given Senator Whitehouse’s support for the arts — both personally and professionally — this is a good thing for public funding for the arts in the U.S. and in Rhode Island.
I wanted to comment a bit about the arts and political speech, and the role that a public funding agency like the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) plays in supporting, with taxpayers dollars, art that addresses political issues or concerns.
I believe that art gives voice to that which challenges a society and its status-quo, perhaps better and more effectively than any other medium. It is, in part, why throughout history totalitarian or authoritarian governments fear and wish to control the arts. Artists will speak the truth to power, someone once said, and it is what makes the artists voice special and something society should support and pay attention to.
RISCA — we hope — supports that artists’ voice by supporting artistic expression with public funds — taxpayers’ dollars. Sometimes that artistic expression takes the form of a nice work by Shubert performed by a wonderful string quartet. Sometimes that expression takes the form of an artist creating a work that directly criticizes the military activities of the present Administration.
Both are valid forms of artistic expression. As a public funding agency using dollars provided by all the people of our state, we look at the quality of the expression (or, in other words, the artistic quality of the artist and the artistic FOCUS of the work), and we distributed our very limited dollars to those projects that have the highest artistic merit. We don’t focus on the importance of the message — although we are human and are sometimes affected by that. We may not even agree with the message. We focus on the quality of the art. We are an arts council. That’s what we do. But we don’t shy away from a project because it is giving voice to something we’re afraid of supporting.
Many times we are asked to support projects that have an arts component that is secondary to the overall effort. Someone produces a website with lots of important information on organic farming, for example, and maybe every other week (or more frequently) there’s a collection of poetry submitted by area artists. It doesn’t matter whether the poetry is about trees, or is anti-[fill in the blank]. The project probably won’t do well because it wasn’t really an arts project in the first place. Even those projects a majority of the work is arts-related sometimes doesn’t get funded, because in that particular cycle the other applications were more clearly focussed on artistic expression.
Agencies like RISCA are beginning to embrace so-called “new media”. We have funded several projects that were well conceived and featured first-rate artists. We have not funded some projects that were less well developed. Sometimes our staff needs to have a better understanding of what we’re dealing with, and that’s where applicants can play a role in educating us.
In any case, I can tell you from a lot of years in this field that arts funding is not a science. We do the best we can, we screw up some times, and we — hopefully — learn from our mistakes.
Anyway, I wanted to add my two cents. I appreciate the work that you and other “new media” artists are doing, and I hope we can sit down — virtually or actually — to talk about ways we can better support your efforts. We need to understand what we’re doing, and you need to understand how to communicate what you do in ways that others can understand and get behind.
All the best,
Randy
————————
Randall Rosenbaum
Executive Director
Rhode Island State Council on the Arts
Hi Randy, Thanks very much for your thorough and thoughtful response. Even though it was painful to be rejected, I am a big fan of RISCA and am thankful for the funding you provide to many wonderful things. Tonight we will be attending Opera on the Hill with some friends, a RISCA-sponsored event and a big favorite for us grown-ups and the kids.
Since relinquishing our 501(c)3 status, we have more aggressively pursued advertising as a way to support Kmareka. If RISCA is interested in supporting us, perhaps you would consider advertising some of your events on our website. Our rates are extremely reasonable and it’s a great way to get the word out to Rhode Islanders (and nationally, for what it’s worth) about what Rhode Island is doing to support the arts. You have control over how to create the ad through blogads. Here is a link to our ad creation page:
http://web.blogads.com/adspotsfolder/ba_adspotsfolder_revision_create_shortcut?persistent_uid=5e843345b7605691b6115a4443f09903
Thanks again for your response. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and learn more about how we can work together.
Regards, Kiersten
Call me anytime. I’ll look at the ad rates. We usually don’t do much (actually, any) paid advertising these days, since most of what we have goes directly out in grants. But the Council is working on being more visible, and that may mean more direct forms of advertising…
Randy