NEA Grant to BWAF for Podcasts Elevating ‘Forgotten Women’ in Architecture (Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation)

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation has received a significant grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for its work on a major audio documentary series called New Angle: Voice, dedicated to preserving and sharing the impactful lives of the most influential women in the history of architecture and design. 

The podcast series New Angle: Voice – Pioneering Women of American Architecture, which has been awarded a $30,000 NEA grant, will soon debut its second season, further demonstrating how digital media plays an essential role in the preservation of women’s histories. Late last year the audio documentaries, conceived and created by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF), also won a $100,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and major grant from the prestigious Graham Foundation.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” says NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, Ph.D. “Projects such as this one with the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.”

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced a total of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards from across the United States, totaling nearly $28.8 million as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants. The monetary awards supporting a wide range of projects in education and scholarly pursuits, including the BWAF episodes. More:

https://www.arts.gov/news/press-releases/2023/national-endowment-arts-announces-first-round-fiscal-year-2023-grants

The outright award for the audio documentary episodes of New Angle: Voice further recognizes the project director Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, AIA, executive director of BWAF, and the series that NEH called “a multiplatform project about the history of women’s contributions to American architecture.” It was awarded under the grant category of Grants for Arts Projects – Design.

About New Angle: Voice

Hosted by Kracauer and produced by Brandi Howell, a name behind several award-winning shows, the first season of New Angle: Voice debuted last year and reveals intimate details and challenges faced by five legendary names in architecture: Julia Morgan, Natalie de Blois, Helen Fong, Florence Knoll and Norma Sklarek. The listening audience jumped from a few thousand to over 40,000, and growing, during the spring of this year. In 2023, the second season of New Angle: Voice will debut on International Women’s Day, March 8, with the premiere episode on Ray Eames (1912–1988).

The inspiring story of Eames, the modernist industrial designer, will tell the story behind the iconic furniture, architecture, textiles, and graphics she created herself and in partnership wither husband, noted designer and architect Charles Eames and their firm The Eames Office. (To listen to the podcast, visit https://bwaf.org/resources/podcast on March 8 or contact C.C. Sullivan for press-only previews.)

Future 2023 episodes of the podcast series document the lives of Boston’s legendary TAC founders Jean Bodman Fletcher and Sarah Pillsbury Harkness, as well as the African American architect and hidden talent Amaza Lee Meredith. Later in the year, BWAF will present additional episodes on inventor and suffragist Anna Wagner Keichline and the first-ever winner of a Pulitzer Prize for architecture criticism, Ada Louise Huxtable.

New Angle: Voice is sponsored by Knoll, a MillerKnoll company, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Current episodes are found everywhere podcasts are available, including on Apple Podcasts apple.co/3t9xUqP and at bwaf.org/resources/podcaston the BWAF website.