NEA Chairman Receives Wine Country Arts Award

Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County (CA) honors influential man of arts and letters

Santa Rosa, CA (PRWEB) May 22, 2004 --- Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts will return home to Sonoma County on July 31, 2004 to receive the Sixth Annual Achievement in the Arts Award from the Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County. Chairman Gioia, a native Californian and former Sonoma County resident, has won international praise for his lifes work, which has ranged from writing poetry and opera libretti, to providing cultural commentary for BBC radio, to anthology editing and music criticism, to teaching and business marketing.

Gioia, appointed by President Bush in 2003 to chair the Endowment, is praised for making arts more widely available in communities throughout the country. The Endowment has helped Sonoma County arts organizations such as the Santa Rosa Symphony and the Healdsburg Jazz Festival increase their reach and impact to diverse audiences. Because of Chairman Gioias local roots and national stature we expect a great deal of interest in this event," says Karen dOr Executive Director of the Arts Council.

Aware of the issues confronting the arts particularly Californias 75% cut to its state arts budget. In a recent talk to the National Press Club, Gioia said, There is at present a genuine and urgent need to create a new public consensus for government support of arts and arts education. In order to gain the necessary support at the federal, state, and local levels, this new consensus must be positive, inclusive, democratic, and non-divisive rather than confrontational, partisan, polarizing, and elitist. We also need to embody those goals in highly visible programs of indisputable artistic merit and enormous public reach - as in our new Shakespeare in American Communities, the largest tour of Shakespeare in North American history, or in the expanded NEA Jazz Masters program we will begin next January. While it will take many organizations and millions of individuals to build this new consensus, it cannot work without NEA leadership."

Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation's largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.

The CACSC is a federally designated non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the visual, performing and literary arts within Sonoma County. In partnership with the California Arts Council and the County of Sonoma since 1983, the organization coordinates arts information, programs, services, and technical assistance countywide.

For more information, visit http://www.cacsc.org or call (707) 579-2787.
Contact: Karen dOr (707) 579-2787 or Karen Pierce Gonzalez Public Relations (707) 792-4376.