Archinect - News

ASU's Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson is announced as President Biden's selection for NEA chair

2021-10-06T13:46:00-04:00

Arizona State University professor Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson has been officially named as President Biden’s nominee for chair of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Once confirmed, Dr. Jackson would become the first Black and Mexican American woman ever appointed to the prestigious chair since the agency’s inception during the Johnson administration.

Dr. Jackson holds a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA and has served on the National Council on the Arts since 2013. She is currently a tenured faculty member at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where her work focuses on community revitalization, race and ethnicity studies, and systems change.

Dr. Jackson is a native of Los Angeles and joins Harvard professor Shelly Lowe, a citizen of the Navajo Nation whom Biden tapped for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) chair, on a progressive slate with shared agendas that look to move forward in their mission in the wake of threats to eliminate both agencies that ha...

Trump's 2019 budget includes another attempt at defunding NEA and other cultural agencies

2018-02-14T14:12:00-05:00

The White House has revealed its budget proposal for 2019 and despite recommending a $716 billion spending increase for defense, Trump wants to slash funding for cultural programs. He has suggested cutting the NEA's budget from $150m down to $29m. Other cultural organizations would also see their budgets broken—Trump's plan would cut funding for the National Endowment of Humanities from $150m down to just $42m, the Institute of Museum and Library Services from $231m to $23m, and public television from $495m to just $15m.

Last year, when the President first took office, he similarly tried to institute significant cuts to these federal programs. Despite his best efforts, Congress—who has the final say on passing the federal budget each year—ultimately ended up retaining funding for the various cultural organizations in bipartisan agreement. Beyond being extremely important to the well-being of the country in general, these agencies also support many architectural initiatives that are ...

RIP the National Endowment of the Arts

2017-03-15T13:08:00-04:00

The Hill has penned an obituary for the National Endowment of the Arts, following its defunding at the hands of the Trump administration and the current Republican-controlled government. As the obit notes, the NEA has been threatened many times before, notably in the 80’s and 90’s following a string of controversial, NEA-funded exhibitions. At the onset of the Reagan Administration, the government tried to give the department, which uses up a tiny amount of the national budget, the ax. Later, controversy boiled when the NEA sponsored an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photos depicting gay men in sexualized and aestheticized fashions.

At the end of the day, the NEA was already a drastically underfunded organization, particularly when compared to government-sponsored art funding in other countries. Still, the move leaves the United States as the only country in the world without a federal arts presence, according to the Hill. That’s pretty shocking.

As I outlined in a previous article...

Trump may eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts — here's why that matters for architecture

2017-01-19T13:38:00-05:00

According to a report published by the Hill, President-elect Trump is planning significant cuts to federal programs, including the departments of Transportation, Commerce and Energy. What else is on the chopping block? The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. And, according to the report, they’re not just going to get budgetary cuts—they’re going to be eliminated. This matters.

The United States already barely supports the arts at all in comparison to other developed countries. But still, the NEA and NEH are crucial for the survival of arts and cultural organizations around the country. Best known for supporting the fine arts, these organizations also support many architectural initiatives under the rubric of “Design”, a category which here covers: “architecture, communications and graphic design, fashion design, historic preservation, industrial and product design, interior design, landscape architecture, planning, universal design, social i...

Editor's Picks #290

2012-11-20T11:24:00-05:00

With the latest edition of the Showcase series, Archinect highlighted House Yagiyama in Sendai, Japan by Kazuya Saito Architects. The one-story house for an old couple, located in Sendai's hilly Yagiyama district was photographed by Yasuhiro Takagi.

News
Zaha Hadid Architects was awarded a contract to design and construct a centerpiece, billion-dollar national stadium that forms a key part of Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games. Thayer-D reacted "These images are quite spectacular! The exterior reminds me of some beautiful animal skull that Georgia O'Keefe would have painted. I hope the street level view of this building is as sympathetic as these images" while Will Galloway noted it was "within walking distance of my office. nice area. olympics would be cool here too, but hopefully this stadium makes sense without them coming. looking forward to seeing it go up".

David Ng reported, that this past Saturday the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (also designed by ar...