“The latest round of NEA grants for Access to Artistic Excellence, American Masterpieces, Arts on Radio and Television, Learning in the Arts for Children & Youth and Partnerships is out, and Texas visual arts orgs have got their share.”

..among the recipients are the following Houston Area organizations:

The Galveston Historical Foundation got $12,000 to support a symposium on the preservation of cast-iron storefronts.
The Houston Arts Alliance got $50,000 to identify, document, and present the varied folklife found in Houston.
Rice University, Houston, got $15,000 to support Explosion: East Asia Architecture Today.
Houston’s Spacetaker got $10,000 for its Artist Resource Center

Congratulations to everyone!
full article here

Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, is setting off on a tour of arts organizations around the nation. In this article he also discusses the important role art has to play in an economic recovery, “they have a real economic impact in America…creating jobs and bringing in money…I can go to Congress and the administration and say, ‘The arts should be part of domestic policy, should be part of coming out of this recession, should be a part of the revitalization of our communities and neighborhoods…We need to move [arts] into the West Wing…in the place where they’re making decisions about economic initiatives…We need to be at the table with the grown-ups, and that means the West Wing.”

via NPR

“Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative is a program designed to provide planning assistance and consulting to struggling arts organizations throughout the United States. Open to non-profit 501(c)(3) performing arts organizations, the program will provide counsel from Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser and the Kennedy Center executive staff in the areas of fundraising, building more effective Boards of Trustees, budgeting, marketing, technology, and other areas pertinent to maintaining a vital performing arts organization during a troubled economy.

Click here to read more about this program.

Click here to request Arts in Crisis services.”

from the HAA special opportunities page

Being VOTED ON TODAY….
from Jim on Light
“Attention, Lighting Designers! YOU MUST READ Texas House Bill 2649
Posted May 26, 2009 at 8:33 pm by Jim in Architectural Lighting, Civil and Infrastructure Lighting, Designers, Home Lighting, Industry News, JimOnLight.com, Legal Light, Lighting Design, Lighting Discussion, Lighting Manufacturing, Policy and Legislation, landscape lighting

Everybody, this bill is scheduled for a vote TOMORROW. Texas House Bill 2649 puts us out of business, folks.

I just got information from John Baker in Houston about Texas House Bill 2649. I don’t know what your feelings are on this, but it deserves a read. IALD sent out a letter about voting this down - I have copied both the verbage in the bill and the letter from IALD below.

First and foremost, this bill is going to make it impossible for lighting designers who work in Texas to work on projects without being licensed as either an electrician, architect, engineer, landscape architect, or interior designer.”

Please go to the original article and take action.

“Take four candidates for Houston mayor, place them in a museum auditorium and ask them if they support the arts. Wanna bet their answer will be an artful yes?

It was. There was little room for disagreement among Gene Locke, Peter Brown, Roy Morales and Annise Parker in a forum at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston sponsored by the Houston Arts Alliance, the Houston Downtown Alliance (Theater District) and the Houston Museum District Association. Worth mentioning is that the audience of 300-plus was probably the biggest crowd to view the candidates together so far in the campaign for the November election.”

full article at Houston Politics: A portrait of agreement.

8 feet of water + 15 days to sit = lots of damage….or if you’re a resilient artist, lots of inspiration.

Galveston’s DesignWorks bounces back after Ike | Fine Arts | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle.

“Aleatoric Art, a new web-based not-for-profit gallery featuring artists whose practice blends new-age ritual with old-fashioned automatism is emanating from Houston. The site’s author, J. Coleman Miller, says the site “began as a way for me to catalog artists who deal with chance methods in composition” and will be updated twice yearly. He invites submissions from artists who think they fit it’s criteria. From Zoran Zugic’s surrealist fantasies to Mike Bloom’s abstract watercolor blots, the spirit of Arp, Ernst and Cage is alive and kicking, all against a background music of gentle waterfalls.”

via Glasstire: Texas visual art online - Aleatoric?!??!!.

“Anne Wilkes Tucker, curator of photography at the MFAH, …said she strongly disagrees with those who attribute [photojournalist] Garcia’s success to dumb luck. “When Willie Mays was exactly in the outfield where the ball came down, that was not an accident,” she said. “Photojournalists are like athletes in that way.”

via Iconic shot of Obama began as just another assignment | Fine Arts | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle.

This article is a little dated, but I still felt it was relevant reading.

Houston Arts - Wayne Dolcefino, Art Critic - page 1.

The guys who turned the Art League Houston bungalows into traffic-stopping art on Montrose are at it again. Hopefully this time with less impact on local traffic flow.

Gray: Inversion creators are back for more | Arts columnist | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle.