A FINE BALANCE: This Sunday vista on Scudder Plaza adjacent to the Woodrow Wilson School has a formal balance that the plaza’s architect Minoru Yamasaki might have admired and that makes an interesting frame for the brilliant chaos of James Fitzgerald’s “Fountain of Freedom” (Photo by Emily Reeves)

Area recipients of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) gathered at the Princeton Public Library Monday morning to talk about their respective programs with NEH Chair Jim Leach and Congressman Rush Holt (D-12).

The event was among the highlights of a tour taken by Mr. Leach and Mr. Holt that day to explore the impact of the NEH in Central New Jersey. Other stops included Lore Elementary in Ewing, where they learned about a Study Roundtable on Character and Civility Education Program; and lunch at the Eagleton Institute of Politics in New Brunswick to talk with Rutgers University faculty who have received NEH grants.

NEH is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.

Participants at the Princeton Public Library program included library executive director Leslie Burger; Stanley Katz, chair of the library’s Advisory Council on the Humanities; Mary Rizzo and Sharon Holt of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities; Barbara Obserg, editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson; People and Stories/Gente y Cuentes executive director Patricia Andres; Princeton University librarian Karin Trainer; and Trenton-based Passage Theatre director June Ballinger.

Four years ago, the Princeton Public Library was itself the recipient of a $500,000 NEH challenge grant, and in his opening comments, Mr. Leach acknowledged it as “one of the great public libraries in the United States.”

Ms. Holt (no relation to Mr. Holt) described the New Jersey Council’s upcoming 40th anniversary celebration on October 10 at Drew University, where the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning, Princeton University faculty member Tracy K. Smith will talk about “Why Poetry is Essential to Democracy.” Ms. Andres described “the quest for internal freedom through stories” engaged in by People & Stories participants, and Ms. Oberg recalled the importance of books to Thomas Jefferson.

“NEH has been a long supporter of the preservation of fragile libraries,” noted Ms. Trainer, citing preservation and digitization projects that ensure the availability of materials to people around the world. Ms. Ballinger thanked the NEH for its support of Passage Theatre’s recent oral history project, and reported that the company’s latest project concerns “the elephant in the room,” race and identity. “It’s quite a subject in Trenton,” she observed.

Noting that research is not limited to laboratories, Mr. Leach commended NEH-supported work being done at the local level. Mr. Holt expressed concern about recent budget cuts to the humanities, despite the fact that businesses often prefer new hires to have a humanities background and the ability to write well.

NEH proposals are examined by panels of independent external reviewers. Grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars.