Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2006 - (Page 4) LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Vice president’s hunting accident blew artist William Joyce’s cover ——————————————————————————— ——————————————————————————— ——————————————————————————— ——————————————————————————— The New Yorker had retained Shreveport artist to provide February issue’s cover art At the Our grants support both popular and classical humanities. Since 1971, the LEH has provided over $22.3 million for more than 1,700 projects. More than 3,400 middle and high school teachers from across Louisiana have attended LEH Summer Teacher Institutes, bringing back to their 250,000 students new perspectives on humanities subjects ranging from the Harlem Renaissance to Chinese culture and history. Louisiana history, Southern folktales, Southeastern Native American culture, and literature of the American West are four of the subjects currently covered in the LEH-funded reading program for adults: Readings in Literature and Culture. RELIC has enrolled 80,000 readers in 61 parishes. Louisiana Cultural Vistas quarterly magazine brings LEH grant projects to the printed page for 50,000 Louisianians. PRIME TIME FAMILY READING TIME, a unique LEH literacy program, brings at-risk families together with storytellers and scholars to improve literacy skills and to share new worlds through reading. Call 1 (800) 909-7990 Editor’s Note: When The New Yorker pulled William Joyce’s illustration depicting New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, post-Katrina, from the cover of its Feb. 27 issue in favor of a cover story on Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident, Joyce kindly consented to allow its use on the cover of Louisiana Cultural Vistas. In Joyce’s words: “I was asked some months back to do a New Yorker cover depicting some aspect of how New Orleans was dealing with Mardi Gras in the post-Katrina world. “I’ve done occasional covers for The New Yorker since 1994 and since I am a native Louisianan and still live here, the editors hoped I’d have an informed perspective on the tragedy and its aftermath. “My schedule has been crazed. The movie business demands all you’ve got and more. But this was a labor of love and something I felt I had to do. “Coming up with a concept that tempered my rage with some hope was not easy, but I got inspiration from an old photograph of Mardi Gras in the ‘30s by J. Guttman, called ‘The Game.’ It’s a wonderful, eerie image of New Orleans and its curious magic. “The editors were very pleased with the results. The proof looked great. Some friends cried when I showed it to them. “The image did what I’d hoped. It made people from here sad and proud at the same time. “I was hoping it would, I don’t know, somehow help. Help call attention to our plight. Help people understand us. “Then Dick Cheney shot his friend instead of a bird.” photos, from top: painting by Clementine Hunter, courtesy of New Orleans Museum of Art; antique locket courtesy of Louisiana State Museum; streetcar courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection; Mardi Gras Indian by Syndey Byrd. 4 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES/Spring 2006 Download grant guidelines and applications, research past issues of Louisiana Cultural Vistas, learn more about LEH-sponsored programs and the dates of Prime Time and RELIC sessions, and find a humanities video available for rental, all at www.leh.org, the Web site of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. LEH on-line: http://www.leh.org
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