FORT WORTH, TX.- In its first 50 years, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded more than $5 billion in grants to recipients in every state and U.S. jurisdiction, the only arts funder in the nation to do so. In December, the NEA announced awards totaling more than $27.6 million in its first funding round of fiscal year 2016, including an Art Works award to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. The award will support the catalogue for Nature and Spirit: Marsden Hartley’s Mysticism, the first major exhibition to chronicle the role mysticism played in stimulating and shaping the artist’s modernist practice.

The Art Works category supports the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing work, lifelong learning in the arts, and public engagement with the arts through 13 arts disciplines or fields.

NEA Chairman Jane Chu said, “The arts are part of our everyday lives—no matter who you are or where you live—they have the power to transform individuals, spark economic vibrancy in communities, and transcend the boundaries across diverse sectors of society. Supporting projects like the one from the Amon Carter offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”

The approximate 200-page Nature and Spirit exhibition catalogue will feature a rigorous analysis of Hartley’s paintings and offer a new lens through which the veins of mysticism that permeate the artist’s work can be appreciated. The exhibition is organized by the Amon Carter and debuts at the museum in February 2017.