National Endowment for the Arts Chair visits Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — For the first time in ten years, the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts is visiting Utah. She toured an America 250 exhibit at the State Capitol with Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson. As they walked along the hallway on the Capitol’s fourth floor, Mary Ann Carter told the Lt. Gov. about a national poetry competition. She pointed to a replica of a flag from 1776. “One of the ones we promoted on social media was a poet, a young poet from Utah who recited ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ because people forget, it was a poem first,” Carter said. She told me about the NEA's plans for this year. “Between the National Endowment for the Arts Funding and our partnership with the states, we’ll actually be funding over 1200 programming events this year,” Carter said. She is particularly impressed with Utahns' support of the arts. Utah, she said, is consistently number one or two with adult attendance of music, theatre or dance productions. But, equally important, she said, she admires the way Utah integrates the arts into schools and teaching “(That) is something I found so valuable and promote all the time,” she said. Yesterday, Carter visited Hill Air Force Base to announce a new NEA-funded program in partnership with Blue Star Families called "Blue Star Museums." The program offers active military and their families free admission to museums from Armistice Day, May 16, through Labor Day, Sept. 7. There are 37 participating museums in Utah. As someone who grew up in a military family and moved many times, Carter believes the program will help children and wishes this could have been available to her when she was younger. “You come to a new community, you want to know you are welcome. You want to know you are accepted. You want to know there’s a place you can go as a family and make memories. And I think that’s why the museums are so important,” she said. Her message to Americans: the arts are important in our lives. They can inspire and they can heal. It’s about much more than how they look, Carter said. “The arts are beautiful, no, they’re necessary," she said. "And we have to show and make the point of why they are necessary in everyday life to every person.”

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