NEA sponsors artist exchange.

• Position: National Endowment for the Arts - !Ojo!

WHAT DO AN ALASKAN playwright and a Mexico City theater director have in common? A Guadalajara writer and an Indiana furniture maker? They were all part of the first international arts exchange partnership between the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and Mexico's Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

The United States-Mexico Creative Artists' Residencies is the result of a unique collaboration between the Arts Endowment and Mexico's Consejo Nacional represented by the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y Las Artes and the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. In its first two years the program has selected twenty U.S. artists for two-month residencies in Mexico and twenty Mexican artists for residencies in the United States.

Recommended by a binational, bilingual panel, artists in dance, literature, media, music, theater, and visual art are placed with specific arts organizations in their host countries. To broaden community contact with the guest artists, host institutions in both countries arrange master classes, workshops, in-school residencies, and collaborations with civic and social organizations.

Last summer, New York artist Ann Agee spent two months in Guanajuato, having proposed a mural--in the hometown of muralist Diego Rivera--that would be site specific. When she discovered that Guanajuato's designation as a historic site wouldn't permit a mural to be installed, her Mexican hosts were undaunted in finding another location.

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