National Endowment for the Arts chairwoman kicks off Puget Sound visit in Tacoma

The National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t just hand out government money — it also likes to see how it’s spent.

To find out, NEA Chairwoman Jane Chu is paying for a feet-on-the-ground visit to Puget Sound this week. She started Tuesday in Tacoma with a reception at the Pantages Theater and a trip to meet soldiers making art at the Museum of Glass.

Chu’s two-day stay includes visits to other grant recipients in Port Townsend, Bainbridge Island and Seattle, where on Wednesday she will announce a new pilot initiative for the NEA.

“We like to see first-hand the great things going on around the nation,” said Chu during her visit to the Museum of Glass. “The arts are thriving in so many ways, and Tacoma shows that.”

She met military veterans who have participated in the Hot Shop Heroes glassblowing program, which received $45,000 in NEA funding last spring, and watched a demonstration.

Chu also got to meet Italian glass master Lino Tagliapietra, currently at the museum with its visiting artist program, which has been NEA-funded in the past.

Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, the NEA is an independent agency of the U.S. government that funds arts projects throughout the country, with a 2016 budget of $147.9 million.

Since its inception in 1965, the agency has awarded $5 billion in arts funding, the most of any agency in the country. This year direct funding amounts to $71 million.

For Tacoma, that funding has averaged about $60,000 a year since 2010, dropping from five grantees to one or two a year. In the 2015 awards, Seattle received $612,000 for about two dozen organizations.

“In Tacoma, more than in any other place, we’ve seen the transformative role of the arts,” said U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, who hosted Chu during Tuesday’s tour.

“Their role in downtown revitalization, their role in the education system, their capacity to bring the community together. It’s a testament to the good work that Tacoma does, that (Chu) started her tour here.”

Kilmer sits on the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees funding for the NEA, and he’s a big supporter, said Chu, who gave Kilmer credit in helping increase the agency’s latest budget.

He also contributed a video to the NEA’s storybank on how the arts positively affects lives.

At the glass museum’s hot shop Tuesday, Kilmer and Chu watched as three military veterans worked with artist Greg Owen to create a glass vessel.

Rolling out the blob of deep orange glass, the veterans also talked about how the Hot Shop Heroes program — which trains wounded service members and veterans in glassblowing twice a week — is crucial for healing and feeling part of a team.

“Being an artillery man, my job was to destroy things,” said Peter Bazo, whose teardrop-shaped work, “Taste of Blood and Tears,” stands on display in the museum’s front hall. “Here, it’s the complete opposite — I have the ability to create something.

“The biggest part is putting it out there on public display. Glass allows us to express things that are hard to express in other ways. It allows us to show others that they’re not the only ones to feel these things. This program is outstanding — it’s life-changing.”

Self-expression is the most important part of the healing process, said Col. Mike Place of Madigan Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

“Art is expression, and you’re also part of a team,” said Place, who was present for Chu’s visit along with two members of the base’s Transition Battalion, which organizes the hot shop program.

“It’s a very effective form of healing, and easier than talking,” he said.

Part of Chu’s visit to NEA-funded sites is to gather stories to help make a case to Congress for continued funding – especially for programs such as Hot Shop Heroes, which combine art with an additional social purpose.

This year’s NEA budget includes $1.9 million to fund healing arts programs for the military.

The other Tacoma grantee for 2015 was the Tacoma Arts Commission’s Spaceworks project, which fills empty commercial space with art, helps working artists and organizes performances and more to revitalize the city. It received $20,000 last spring.

“To me, Tacoma is one of the great examples of a city that’s reviving itself around the arts, deliberately,” said Karen Hanan, director of the Washington State Arts Commission, who was there for Chu’s visit. “It’s a cool place to live now.”

NEA funding is critical, said Hanan, explaining that 40 percent of the agency’s funding goes directly to state agencies, requiring matching grants and allowing the money to spread into every corner of the state.

NEA statistics show that every dollar granted attracts up to nine more in additional funding, Chu said. Hot Shop Heroes, for example, is also supported by the Russell Family and Bamford foundations, as well as by individuals.

Other Tacoma grants in the past six years include the Broadway Center for diversity in programming and the Tacoma Arts Commission for Art at Work month and public art along the Prairie Line Trail.

Also getting funding were the Tacoma Art Museum, the Washington History Museum and the Tacoma Opera, plus a one-time $200,000 “Our Town” grant to reinvigorate the streetscape in front of the art museum.

The discrepancy between the funding for cities such as Seattle and Tacoma and for individual recipients (Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, for example, which publishes poetry, received $70,000 in 2015, the second-highest Washington grant) raises the question of just who gets NEA money.

“It’s a three-step process,” Chu said.

First, a citizen panel reads the proposals, next a national council of experts casts its vote and finally the chairman decides. The criteria are excellence and merit which, Chu said, opened the door to any kind of arts project.

“The community helps shape it — that’s what America’s all about,” she said.

Today at Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum, Chu will announce an NEA pilot initiative that will affect Seattle. She’ll also visit the Capitol Hill 12th Avenue Arts live/work project and Franklin High School, both NEA grantees.

“The arts are thriving in so many ways,” Chu said at the Museum of Glass. “They’re not in a corner by themselves. We see how many different ways they can touch people.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 3:19 PM with the headline "National Endowment for the Arts chairwoman kicks off Puget Sound visit in Tacoma."