SAN ANTONIO, TX.- In its first 50 years, the National Endowment for the Arts 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. The NEA announced awards totaling more than $27.6 million in its first funding round of fiscal year 2016, including an Art Works award of $35,000 to the McNay Art Museum to engage, connect and collaborate with the community through contemporary photography.

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 McNay Art Museum offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”

McNay Director, William J. Chiego said “The NEA Art Works grant helps us to fund and organize an exhibition of renowned contemporary photography that will expand the exhibition programs of the McNay Art Museum.”

The NEA Art Works grant supports the upcoming exhibition Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography with an accompanying publication and related programs. The exhibition will include photography from the 1970s to the present, including nearly 50 works by artists such as Tina Barney, Gregory Crewdson, Mitch Epstein, Julie Blackmon, Justine Kurland, and Lori Nix. The museum will develop a wide range of creative programming to engage all audiences.

Rene Paul Barilleaux, Chief Curator and Curator of Art after 1945 said, “Telling Tales is the first major exhibition at the museum to survey recent developments in photography. Many contemporary artists explore photographic imagery as it is filtered through and mediated by technology and the internet, others exploit photography’s ability to present a momentary, frozen narrative. The photographs are often large-scale and reference everything from classical painting and avant-garde cinema to science fiction illustration and Alfred Hitchcock. Telling Tales includes imagery employing all of these approaches.”