Harvest foundation lane arts council12/2/2023 ![]() In those heady days the University programs, the Eugene Symphony and Ragozzino’s Musical Theatre programs were joined by the Bach Festival, the Saturday Market, the Country Faire, Philip Bayles’s operatic offerings, the early stages of Riley and Toni’s Ballet, the Eugene Theatre Company, Flora Rudolph’s Open Gallery, WOW Hall, the NewMime Circus’s summer parks performances, and numerous other galleries and roving players of all disciplines. The vitality of the Eugene-Springfield community was palpable. Eugene, Portland, Ashland and, to some extent, Salem were flowering with artists spinning out of the 60’s looking for nurturing home soil in which to grow dreams. Artists, like myself, who had assumed managerial roles within companies soon learned that a visit to the OAC offices in Salem was a necessary pilgrimage to learn about incorporation, grants writing and who to talk to if you wanted a grant from the state. In the early 70’s, artists and arts institutions saw the OAC as a rare source of government support. As a natural evolution, by the mid 70’s Arts Commissions across the country began to develop regional arts councils to assist in fulfilling their charters. With a commission of regional representatives appointed by the Governor, the OAC received and distributed block grants from the NEA and worked with local philanthropists and governments to strengthen and promote the arts in Oregon. Therefore, in 1967, the Oregon Arts Commission was established. Although cultural politics mandated that a large portion of the NEA’s resources were to be devoted to the maintenance and development of large established mostly urban, mostly east coast, mostly European based arts institutions, America’s populist nature embedded the notion that “…the NEA supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America.” To achieve a fair and energetic distribution of resources outside the beltway, the founding document determined that a nation wide system of states arts commissions be established. ONE VIEW OF THE LANE ARTS COUNCIL'S EARLY DAYSĪs a part of President Johnson’s Great Society program, the National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965.
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