Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to receive $20K grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has been awarded a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to preserve and prolong the life of the Hillside Theatre Curtain at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million that were announced by the NEA as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.

The Hillside Theatre Curtain, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is an iconic piece of architecture that has been a staple of Taliesin for many years. Created as a gift to Wright on his 89th birthday by the Taliesin Fellowship, the curtain captures the rural landscape of the area with Taliesin overlooking the Wisconsin River.

The grant will be used to install two sets of protective curtains in the front and the back of the original curtain, which will be hung on motorized tracks. This will help preserve the Hillside Theatre Curtain for display during tours and expand programming use of the theater to include live music, lectures, and performances.

"The restoration of the curtain is one of the last pieces needed to make the theater available for the public once again," said Stuart Graff, President and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. "Grants like this one help us preserve Wright’s legacy while allowing his spaces to continue to flourish with

new life and ideas."

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, established by Wright in 1940, is dedicated to preserving Taliesin and Taliesin West, both on the UNESCO World Heritage List, for future generations. The foundation also aims to inspire people to discover and embrace

Riverway Board sets 2023 meeting schedule, moves to six meetings

The Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board met virtually on Thursday, January 12th, to conduct a regular monthly business meeting. The board adopted a motion to reduce the number of business meetings from twelve to six with a corresponding increase in the number of events available to the public designed to highlight features of the Riverway related to scenic beauty and natural and cultural history. Business meetings will be a combination of inperson and virtual with some meetings being virtual only and meetings will be held at locations up and down the lower Wisconsin River valley. The dates of the 2023 LWSRB meetings are listed below with locations to be announced in February: March 9, May 11, July 13, September 14, November 9.

The guest speaker for the meeting was Brad Hutnik, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Silviculturist, who discussed research related to climate change adaptation strategies for forested lands in the Driftless Region. Hutnik said the research is a cooperative endeavor between the public and private sectors, including academic institutions, and is intended to identify challenges and opportunities for woodland landowners as weather patterns continue to change in the coming decades. Models suggest there will be periods of heavier rains, longer droughts, less frozen ground, increased stressors, changes in species composition and challenges with new invasive plants and insects. Hutnik said preparing for these changes and understanding how to adapt in an architecture for better living through meaningful connections to nature, the arts, and each other. The Foundation continues the Frank Lloyd Wright legacy by broadening access to his ideas, work and organic design principles, considered just as relevant today as in his own time, and provides new pathways for audiences to create beauty and connectedness in their own lives.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “Projects such as this one with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.” managing your woods will be important for private landowners, public land managers as well as for the timber industry as a whole. The research will take place in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota and will include sites in the Riverway. For further information, contact Hutnik at Bradley.Hutnik@ wi.gov.

The restoration will be completed later in 2023 with programming beginning in 2024. For more information on the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, visit FrankLloydWright.org. For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

In other action, Mark Cupp, Executive Director, reported permits had been issued to Mary Burke for a solar panel