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 | Louisiana Cultural Vistas up for 11 press awards
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| |  LEH's Louisiana Cultural Vistas magazine received eleven nominations in the 52nd annual Press Club of New Orleans Awards competition, including four for LCV magazine designer Toan Nguyen and three for freelance contributors in photography categories. First, second, third and honorable mention designations will be announced at the club's July 17 awards ceremony.
The LCV nominees are: - Michael Sartisky, Editor-in-Chief of Louisiana Cultural Vistas, for his editorial "And Injustice for All: Our Legal System." (Fall 2009)
- Toan Nguyen, designer of Louisiana Cultural Vistas, for two editorial illustrations - a drawing of Ellis Marsalis accompanying the Jazz Notes column (Summer 2009) and an illustration for a fiction excerpt of "The Missing" (Fall 2009). Nguyen also received two nominations in the layout and design category, one for "The Missing" and another for "The World That Made New Orleans" (Winter 2009-10).
- Laura Ladendorf, an assistant designer, for her layout and design of "A Place of Their Own: Women Artists in Louisiana, 1825-1965" (Summer 2009).
- Ben Sandmel, music columnist, for his critical review "The Undying Career of the Late Ernie K-Doe" (Spring 2009).
- Karen Kingsley, architecture history columnist, for her combined essays on the state's diverse and iconic architecture.
- Cheryl Gerber, freelance photographer, for her portrait of novelist and playwright John Biguenet (Fall 2009).
- Richard Sexton, freelance photographer, for his feature photo "Mardi Gras Stroll" accompanying the feature story "The Lexicon of Place" (Winter 2009).
- Lori Waselchuk, freelance photographer, for her photo essay "Grace Before Dying," a documentation of the deathbed care and burial of life-sentenced prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola (Fall 2009).
Over the last two decades, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, now in its 21st year, has received 96 Press Club awards. |
| LEH gets 11th hour state funding
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 At the 11th hour and 59th minute, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities emerged out of the legislative that ended June 21st with $900,000, our lowest state appropriation in 14 years, $200,000 below the current fiscal year and more than $1 million below our peak of two years ago, the last year of Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration. Once the appropriation is official, the LEH will announce its impact on our programming, including grants, grant deadlines, PRIME TIME Family Literacy Programs, RELIC library reading and discussion programs, Teacher Institutes for Advanced Study, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, KnowLA Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture, the Louisiana Humanities Center, etc. We are deeply appreciative of those members of the humanities and cultural community who advocated on our behalf. We also appreciate the extraordinary efforts of Senate President Joel Chaisson, Senator Lydia Jackson, and Reps. Walter Leger III, Helena Moreno and Jim Fannin to secure some meaningful measure of funding for LEH programs and the communities they serve. |
| Teaching American History
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| |  In June, the LEH launched two "Teaching American History" series of summer institutes in American history for public school history teachers in southwest and northeast Louisiana. The Calcasieu Parish series, now in its third and final year, is funded by a $1 million U.S. Department of Education grant. Institutes in northeast Louisiana, in their first year, are underwritten by a $1.6 million U.S. Department of Education grant. The LEH secured both grants for the school districts.
Approximately 64 elementary, middle and high school Calcasieu Parish public school teachers attended four month-long graduate institutes at McNeese State University. The institutes included The American Revolution to 1812 (two sessions, one for elementary and one for middle school teachers), A Multi-Cultural Journey through Louisiana History, and U.S. History from 1850 to 1900. These institutes paralleled the state's grade-level teaching areas for elementary, middle and high school teachers. Teachers completing the program received three hours of graduate credit, a stipend, textbooks and teaching materials to take back to their classrooms. With this summer, a total of 185 Calcasieu Parish teachers have completed the summer institutes in American history at McNeese since the program began in 2008.
In northeast Louisiana, 41 elementary, middle and high school teachers from Ouachita, Richland, Morehouse, East Carroll parishes and Monroe City Schools participated in the following institutes at the University of Louisiana at Monroe: Early Exploration to Colony: 1492-1607, The Founding of a Nation, and U.S. History from the Gilded Age to World War I. Teachers completing the institutes received benefits similar to teachers in Calcasieu Parish.
McNeese State University and the University of Louisiana at Monroe, eager to help teachers and their students increase their content knowledge in American history, waived tuition and most fees, except for mandatory legislative fees that were paid by the grant.
For more information about this program, contact LEH deputy director John Kemp at 504-620-2481 or kemp@leh.org.
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| LEH sponsored events
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| |  New Orleans - From July 24 to Oct. 24, the New Orleans Museum of Art presents "Ancestors and Descendants: Ancient Southwestern America at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, Selections from the George Pepper Native American Archive at the Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University." The exhibition consists of 73 antique photographs of Native American subjects, including photographs printed from antique glass lantern slides, as well as eighty-four Native American artifacts including Navaho and Pueblo textiles, pottery and jewelry. All the images and artifacts were collected by George Hubbard Pepper between 1895 and 1905. Pepper was the first anthropologist/archeologist to excavate Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico, America's most spectacular Native American ruin. Images and objects on display are representative of Pepper's large archive that until this exhibition has been mostly unknown, unpublished and rarely seen by the public. For more information, visit www.noma.org or call 504-658-4100.
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| Louisiana Cultural Vistas magazine
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The summer 2010 edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas premiered in mid-June with a portrait of legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint as the cover image. The Rock'n'Roll Hall of Famer was profiled by Kathy Finn as the magazine's lead story. Other topics covered in the issue include: - A photo essay by Bevil Knapp on the preserved architectural and cultural heritage of St. Francisville, La., and its environs.
- A biographical sketch of World War II military hero Gen. Claire Lee Chennault, a man from Monroe, La., who went on to lead the famed "Flying Tigers" volunteer aviation corps in defense of China against Japanese aggression months prior to U.S. entry into World War II.
- The history of French-speaking peoples within Louisiana and efforts to document the varied dialects of French spoken within the state. A recently published Dictionary of Louisiana French, funded in part by the LEH, serves as a definitive record of the state's francophone vocabulary.
- Profiles of Louisiana fiddlers - including Doug Kershaw, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Vertis Roy "Peanut" Conn - from a new book by Ron Yule that surveys the state's practitioners of old-time fiddling.
- Images of Keachi, La., in the 1970s by Travis Whitfield, a photographer who had the foresight to document a disappearing way of life in the rural north Louisiana hamlet.
- Le Petit Salon, a women's club in New Orleans founded in the 1920s whose members engaged in the study of art and literature and the pursuit of the civic good, including the preservation of the French Quarter. Writer Grace King and advice columnist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (Dorothy Dix) were among the founding members.
LCV can be viewed in its entirety in digital format at www.leh.org. Michael Sartisky, LEH executive director and editor-in-chief of Louisiana Cultural Vistas, is regularly interviewed on the WLAE public television show "Greater New Orleans" with each new issue of Louisiana Cultural Vistas. Watch his conversations with host Tom Bagwell online here.
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| LEH hosts workshop for traveling Smithsonian exhibit
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 Representatives from the six Louisiana towns that will host the Smithsonian Institution/Museum on Main Street (MOMS) exhibition Journey Stories during its tour of Louisiana in May 2011-March 2012 will meet in New Orleans. The gathering is scheduled for July 8-9 at the Louisiana Humanities Education Center at Turners' Hall. Louisiana scholars, educators and tradition-bearers will join with project organizers to begin the process of developing local exhibitions and public programs that will complement the themes of Journey Stories while showcasing local history and culture. Journey Stories marks the 5th MOMS project in Louisiana. The LEH partners with the Smithsonian Institution through its MOMS program to bring traveling exhibits to rural audiences and small museums. MOMS gives rural Americans access to prestigious Smithsonian exhibitions and first-rate educational programs. Most importantly, MOMS gives rural museums a chance to demonstrate their enormous talents and their meaningful contributions to small town life. So far, more than 100,000 rural Louisianians have attended MOMS programs and exhibitions. Journey Storieshosts, in order of appearance, are: - St. Martinville - The Acadian Memorial/La Maison Duchamp, May 28-July 9, 2011
- Leesville - Vernon Parish Tourism Commission/Gallery 111, July 16-Aug. 27, 2011
- Denham Springs - Old City Hall Museum, Sept. 3-Oct. 15, 2011
- Lake Providence - Louisiana State Cotton Museum, Oct. 22-Dec. 3, 2011
- Long Leaf - Southern Forest Heritage Museum, Dec. 10, 2011-Jan. 28, 2012
- St. Francisville - West Feliciana Historical Society Museum, Feb. 4-March 18, 2012
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| KnowLA Online Encyclopedia
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 The beta version of KnowLA - Encyclopedia of Louisiana History, Culture and Community will be ready toward the end of this month. If you would like to be notified when the site goes live, please visit www.knowla.org and use the form on that page to register. For more information about KnowLA, contact knowla@leh.org. |
| PRIME TIME selects four states for national expansion
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 PRIME TIME Inc., an affiliate of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, in cooperation with the American Library Association Public Programs Office, selected public libraries in Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Michigan to participate in the national expansion of the LEH's award-winning family reading and discussion program, PRIME TIME FAMILY READING TIME®. National expansion of PRIME TIME is made possible through a $250,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which also supported earlier grants for implementation in Louisiana and initial national expansion.
In Arizona, the Arizona Humanities Council will direct the partnership with the Pima County Public Library system. In Georgia, the Georgia Public Library Service will direct the partnership with the public libraries. In Florida and Michigan, the Florida Humanities Council and the Michigan Humanities Council, respectively, will direct the partnership with the public libraries. A total of four states, representing 16 community libraries, were chosen to participate. The four states and libraries selected are: - Arizona - Valencia Branch Library, Quincie Douglas Branch Library, Southwest Branch Library, and Mission Branch Library. All sites are located in Tucson.
- Florida - North Lauderdale Library, North Lauderdale; Selby Library, Sarasota; Blake Library, Stuart; and Seminole Tribe-Diane Yzaguirre Memorial Library, Immokalee.
- Georgia - Dogwood Branch, Atlanta; Chamblee Branch, Decatur; Fitzgerald-Ben Hill County Library, Fiztgerald; and Lilburn Branch, Lawrenceville.
- Michigan - Hackley Public Library, Muskegon; Peter White Public Library, Marquette; Highland Twp. Public Library, Highland; and Hamtramck Public Library, Hamtramck.
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| American Library Association to meet in Washigton, D.C.
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 As part of its collaboration with the American Library Association (ALA) Public Program's Office on the national expansion project, PRIME TIME Family Reading Time recently facilitated a session on national programming at the 2010 ALA conference in Washington, D.C. The session, titled "PRIME TIME Family Reading Time: A Model Program for Strengthening Families & Building Communities," took place on Sunday, June 27. Approximately 40 attendees gathered to learn specifics on how to engage diverse and underserved families in their communities using the award-winning and nationally replicated PRIME TIME model. A distinguished panel, led by PRIME TIME Associate Director Shantrell Adams, included Dr. Thomas Phelps, Division of Public Programs Director, National Endowment for the Humanities; Lainie Castle, Public Programs Office Project Director, American Library Association; Pat Leach, Director, Lincoln City Libraries in Nebraska; Anne Haimes, Branch Group Manager, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System in Georgia; and Rhonda Butler, Children's and Teens Services Coordinator, Public Libraries of Saginaw in Michigan.
Thanks to the ALA for providing us with another opportunity to meet with current and future partners at this year's conference. Visit the ALA website for additional information.
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| Capital One Bank sponsors PRIME TIME in two Louisiana parishes |
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 Capital One Bank, through a generous $10,000 grant, will sponsor two fall 2010 programs and partner with the PRIME TIME host sites to offer financial literacy to participating families. The grant was made in support of programming for the Tri-Parish area of Assumption, Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes. Assumption Parish will host their PRIME TIME program at Belle Rose Primary School. Lafourche Parish will host their PRIME TIME program at the Larose Branch Library.
The LEH and PRIME TIME staff thanks Capital One Bank and the Tri-Parish area team for its ongoing support of PRIME TIME and other LEH activities.
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| BP America's supports PRIME TIME |
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 In late 2009, BP America and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities partnered to improve literacy in 15 parishes statewide, via a BP America commitment of $225,000 in support of the PRIME TIME Family Reading Time program. PRIME TIME, a unique, nationally-successful, humanities-based initiative offers parents and elementary school-age students an opportunity to learn fundamentals through reading, discussion and storytelling sessions held in schools, public libraries, and in community centers across the state.
BP America's support supplements state funding and ensures that PRIME TIME family literacy programs remain widely available to Louisiana citizens statewide throughout 2010. During the spring 2010 session, the LEH implemented eight programs across eight Louisiana parishes, including Calcasieu, Cameron, Orleans, Iberville, Jefferson Davis, Lafourche, St. Martin and Vermillion. During the fall session, an additional seven programs will be held in Jefferson Davis, Evangeline, St. Mary, Terrebonne, Tensas, Caddo and Jefferson parishes. Approximately 600 participants will be engaged in this nationally-recognized family literacy program that works to create the precondition for future learning by bonding families around the act of reading and boosting critical thinking skills.
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| Boh Bros. Construction Co supports PRIME TIME and family literacy |
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 Boh Bros. Construction Co., LLC has made a $10,000 gift from the Boh Brothers Centennial Fund in support of expanded PRIME TIME programming in the Greater New Orleans area. The generous grant will support one fall 2010 and one spring 2011 PRIME TIME program in the Greater New Orleans area.
The LEH and PRIME TIME staffs appreciate the generosity of Boh Bros. Construction Co., LLC.
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| PRIME TIME announces fall Louisiana Sites |
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Congratulations to all fall 2010 PRIME TIME grant recipients! Approximately 25 requests for PRIME TIME funding were received for fall 2010 programming in Louisiana. However, due to drastically reduced state funding for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, only 5 programs could be covered by those funds. Grants and donations solicited from other sources will underwrite an additional 15 programs. Click here for more information on these programs.
Fall 2010 Sites: - Arnold Ledoux Library, Eunice
- Prairie Elementary School, Lafayette
- Terrebonne Parish Library, Houma
- Mamou Elementary School, Mamou
- Newellton Elementary School, Newellton
- Volunteers of America PIRC, Shreveport
- Jefferson Davis Parish Title I Parent Center, Hathaway
- Central Intermediate School, Baton Rouge
- Lafourche Parish Library, Larose
- Jefferson Parish Library, Harvey
- St. John Parish Library, LaPlace
- Dillard University Community Development Corporation, New Orleans
- East Iberville Parish Library, St. Gabriel
- Ouachita Parish Library, Monroe
- St. Mary Parish Library, Patterson
- Literacy Council of SWLA, Lake Charles
- Mahalia Jackson Center, New Orleans
- Louisiana Children's Museum, New Orleans
- Belle Rose Primary School, Belle Rose
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| RELIC: Readings in Literature and Culture
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 A sad event came to pass in June when the Concordia Parish Library had to drop its annual fall RELIC program from its calendar because of extensive cuts in state funding for the humanities. This is the first time that this parish library has cancelled a RELIC program since its participation began 25 years ago. Efforts by its director to arrange local funding were unsuccessful.
Many other libraries facing similar prospects have been more fortunate in finding local resources to ensure no interruption in programming for the current year. Others may meet the same fate as the people of Concordia. If you reside near any of the locations in which a RELIC program is scheduled for the fall, contact the hosting library and consider registering for it. Here is the fall schedule: - Abbeville, Vermilion Parish Library. 337-893-2674. "Louisiana History: Perspectives on the Pelican State." Tuesdays, Sept. 7-Oct. 12, 6-8 p.m.
- Alexandria, Westside Regional Branch, Rapides Parish Library. 318-445-2411. "Where Is North Louisiana?" Tuesdays, Sept. 14-Oct. 19, 6-8 p.m.
- Bastrop, Morehouse Parish Library. 318-281-3696. "Folktales and Stories of the South and Louisiana." Tuesdays, Sept. 7-Oct. 12, 6:30-8:30 p. m.
- Bossier City, Bossier Parish Historical Center. 318-746-7717. "Where Is North Louisiana?" Thursdays, Aug. 19-Sept. 23, 6-8 p.m.
- Galvez, Ascension Parish Library. 225-622-3339. "The Creole Identity and Experience in Louisiana Literature and History." Tuesdays, September 21-October 26, 6-8 p.m.
- Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish Public Library. 337-721-7170. "The American West in Fact and Fiction." Thursdays, Sept. 23- Oct. 28, 6-8 p.m.
- Metairie, Jefferson Parish Library. 504-838-1100. "Louisiana Characters: Biographies of the Bayou State." Tuesdays, Oct. 12-Nov. 16, 6:30-8:30 pm.
- Natchitoches, Natchitoches Parish Library. 318-357-3280. "Louisiana Characters: Biographies of the Bayou State." Tuesdays, Oct. 12-Nov. 16, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
- New Iberia, Parkview Branch, Iberia Parish Library. 337-364-7024. "The Creole Identity and Experience in Louisiana Literature and History." Thursdays, Oct. 7-Nov. 11, 6-8 p.m.
- New Roads, Pointe Coupée Parish Library. 225-638-9841. "Battleground Louisiana: Civil War Events and Experiences." Thursdays, Sept. 9-Oct. 14, 2-4 pm.
- Ringgold, Bienville Parish Library. 318-894-9770. "Where Is North Louisiana?" Tuesdays, Sept. 14-Oct. 26, 6-8 p.m.
- Ruston, Lincoln Parish Library. 318-251-5030. "Where Is North Louisiana?" Tuesdays, Nov. 2-Dec. 7, 6-8 p.m.
- Stonewall, Desoto Parish Library. 318-925-9191. "The Louisiana Purchase: Impact and Legacy." Thursdays, Sept. 30-Nov. 4, 4-6 p.m.
- Winnfield, Winn Parish Library. 318-628-4478. "Where Is North Louisiana?" Tuesdays, Sept. 7-Oct. 12, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
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| LEH grant deadlines |
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Due to reductions in state funding, LEH leadership is compelled to announce the cancellation of the following 2010-2011 grant deadlines: - Oct. 1 - Public Humanities
- Oct. 1 - Teacher Institutes for Advanced Study
- March 1 - Outreach
Remaining 2010-2011 grant deadlines are:
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