What: NEH 40th Anniversary
When: Thursday, October 27, 2005
Where: Bass Lecture Hall
Humanities Texas and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Humanities with a free public program on October 27 at 6 p.m. at the LBJ Library’s Bass Lecture Hall.
NEH Chairman Bruce Cole and former chairmen Joseph D. Duffey, William R. Ferris and Sheldon Hackney will reflect on their leadership of the NEH and the Endowment’s contribution to the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. Betty Sue Flowers, director of the LBJ Library and Museum, will moderate the panel discussion.
“For four decades, the NEH has supported programs and scholarship that have enriched the lives of millions of Americans,” said Michael L. Gillette, executive director of Humanities Texas. “As the state partner of the NEH, Humanities Texas is delighted to co-sponsor this event with the LBJ Library commemorating such an important educational initiative.”
On September 29, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act into law, creating both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Betty Sue Flowers, Director of the Johnson Presidential Library, commented that support for the arts and humanities was an important part of President Johnson’s larger vision of what constitutes a Great Society. “In his State of the Union address the year the bill was passed, President Johnson called the arts and humanities ‘essential’ to ‘intellectual and spiritual growth’—and I think that’s because he thought a Great Society asks, as he put it, ‘not only how much but how good; not only how to create wealth, but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed.’”
For more information about the founding of the National Endowment for the Humanities, see http://www.neh.gov/nehat40. For more information about the NEH 40th anniversary program in Austin, please call Humanities Texas at 512/440.1991.