[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"]
[/caption]Belcourt Theatre, Frist get art grants
By Stephanie Toone
The National Endowment for the Arts recently approved $35,000 in grants for a Hillsboro Village film house and downtown's renowned visual arts center.
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The NEA awarded a $20,000 grant to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts for its upcoming Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior exhibit, which will open on Feb. 20, said Susan Edwards, executive director for the center.
The agency also presented a $15,000 grant to Belcourt Theatre for its Repertory Film and Visiting Artists program.
"I think it says we're one of the most creative communities in the United States," Edwards said. "This is so exciting for us. This will help us show the culture and complexities of Hinduism."
The two Nashville arts organizations were among 1,057 nonprofits to receive the first round of 2011 grants from NEA, said Liz Stark, NEA spokeswoman. The first round of grants will distribute more than $26 million to arts agencies. The second round of recipients will be announced in spring 2011. Since Congress established the agency in 1965, it's awarded more than $4 billion in grants to agencies for innovation, artistic excellence and creativity that benefit the community.
Stephanie Silverman, managing director at Belcourt, said receiving the $15,000 NEA grant will ensure that cinematographers, producers and filmmakers will continue to lecture at Belcourt as a part of its visiting artists program. The funds will supplement the expense of shipping film roles from places such as France, Tokyo and Argentina, she said.
"We had about 20 visiting artists come in and speak this year, and we show hundreds of films each year. Half of those are our repertory films," Silverman said. "It can be unbelievably expensive to ship these prints, so this funding will allow us not to rule that out."
The Frist Center will utilize its artistic excellence grant to support its upcoming exhibition focusing on one of Hinduism's deities, Vishnu. The works will give insight to he meanings and culture of Hinduism's Vaishnava tradition. At the end of the Nashville run, the artwork will be placed at Brooklyn Museum of Art.
"There are three major deities, and there have been major exhibitions on the others, but this is the first to deal with this God and his many incarnations," she said. "We've been working with the Hindu community in Middle Tennessee because we want to present all cultures and help people see the world in a new way."
The installation of the exhibition will begin next month after the Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from Musee d'Orsay ends its run at the Frist.
The Frist Center and Belcourt Theatre offer the local community different forms of visual arts, but both organizations serve the same purpose, Silverman said.
"We're venues that contribute to Nashville's deep and rich artistic community," she said. "The NEA is a national nod to what we're doing locally. That's a real compliment."
