Pacific Chorale gets NEA grant

The Pacific Chorale and the organizers of “Craft in America,” a seven-city touring exhibition that opened recently in Little Rock, Ark., are the only L.A.-area recipients reaping six-figure support in a round of federal grants announced Tuesday by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Santa Ana-based singing group will get $100,000 for its American Masterpieces Choral Music Festival, focused on American composers, as will the touring survey of about 200 craft objects from the late 1800s to the present, whose Southern California stops are Oct. 20 to Jan. 27, 2008, at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego and later at Palm Springs Art Museum.

Cornerstone Theater Company will receive $80,000 for two new plays, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, will get $50,000 to mount an exhibition from its permanent collection. Nationally, the NEA funded 649 exhibition and performance proposals in the round, with an average grant of $25,000.

The Music Center got the top education grant in this round, $76,000 to help advance programs in area school districts. Groups in Chicago, Detroit and Seattle received $75,000. Education grants of $60,000 will go to the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, to develop artist residencies in schools, and to Inner-City Arts for a theater and literacy program for middle school students with limited English. Deaf West Theatre Company of North Hollywood will get $55,000 to work with kids in elementary and middle schools, and a $50,000 grant goes to Venice Arts in Neighborhoods for after-school and summer photography workshops. The average education grant nationally was $31,000.

Of 66 grants totaling $3.7 million for arts on radio and TV, only three are for L.A. organizations: $26,000 for L.A. Theatre Works’ weekly series, “The Play’s the Thing”; $20,000 for Culver City-based Slavenska Dance Preservation Inc., for a documentary film feature on ballerina Mia Slavenska; and $5,000 to the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra to record concerts for broadcast on KUSC-FM (91.5). L.A. Theatre Works also received $30,000 to send its audio plays to schools and libraries in all 50 states.

*

mike.boehm@latimes.com