Minnesota ranks 8th in the country for 2013 NEA grants

The biggest 2013 NEA grant winners for Minnesota are Graywolf Press and Mixed Blood Theatre.

Last week, two Minnesota authors won the big-deal National Book Award. Yesterday, our state again showed the country's culture snobs that we have arts in the water up here, when the National Endowment for the Arts announced its 2013 grant recipients.

Minnesotans won enough of them to make us the eighth-ranked state in the country for the prestigious awards.

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- St. Paul's Other Book Baron

Of $23.3 million in available NEA funds, Minnesota groups won 28 grants totaling $877,500. That's an increase of over $100K from last year, when the state took home $731,000.

The states that beat us out are predictable ones, with big cities and big populations: New York received $7 million for 236 grants, followed by California with $3.7 million, Illinois with $1.1 million, Massachusetts and Texas with amounts around $1 million, Pennsylvania at $973,000, and D.C. at $900,000.

Of the Minnesotans taking home national arts money, Mixed Blood Theatre leads the pack with a whopping $100,000. The award is $80,000 more than company received in 2012, and is earmarked to produce two new works and tour two other commissioned pieces.

Graywolf Press comes in second with $90,000 (a $20,000 increase), and our other beloved local presses, Milkweed Editions and Coffee House, will receive $65,000 each.

The full list of winners reads like an exciting sneak-peek at the upcoming year in arts in the Twin Cities and the state, including plans for the Minnesota Opera's world premiere of Doubt ($40,000) and a Northern Spark installation that will involve U of M architecture students recreating Marcel Breuer's St. Paul house, floating it down the Mississippi, and then setting it on fire "as a symbolic act of celebration and destruction" ($15,000). Check out all of the awards at the NEA site.