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OSF and other arts organizations receive legislative funding

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's signature stage at the Allen Elizabethan Theatre. Featured in the photo is the 2017 set and ensemble in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
Kim Budd
/
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's signature stage at the Allen Elizabethan Theatre. Featured in the photo is the 2017 set and ensemble in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

At the end of the Oregon legislative session this week, lawmakers approved funding of nearly $6 million for a handful of arts and cultural organizations.

The money is aimed at 20 organizations in response to financial impacts from the COVID pandemic. The biggest appropriation will go to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland which will receive more than $2.5 million. The Oregon Symphony and the Clatsop County Historical Society will each get around $1 million.

One arts organization was not approved for the total funding originally planned. The High Desert Museum outside of Bend got more than $379,000. But, it had originally been planned to get an additional $2 million.

An additional appropriation of nearly $13.5 million for grant funds to cultural organizations in Oregon was not funded.

Erik Neumann is JPR's news director. He earned a master's degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and joined JPR as a reporter in 2019 after working at NPR member station KUER in Salt Lake City.