The Bemis Center is awarded two grants from the NEA

By Cheril Lee

Omaha, NE – The National Endowment for the Arts recently awarded the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts with two grants totaling $45,000.

The Bemis is the only visual arts organization to receive grants for two separate projects for 2012. Executive Director Mark Masuoka says the grants will go to support the Bemis' international artists-in-residence program and its new community artist fellowship with Heartland Family Service.

"It's really giving us the opportunity to expand this to a second year. And really what we'd like to do is sort of look at it and increase the scale and the scope of the program into its second year. So it's going to give us a chance to continue to support artists more significantly and also to expand on the idea of what it means when an arts organization partners with a human service agency."

Masuoka says the Bemis staff was excited to receive the grants and look forward to expanding the scale and scope of the program in its second year.

The two grants total $45,000.