The National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities (NEA/NEH) announced thousands of grants nationwide on January 14, and seven were in San Antonio. Funds went to maintaining an immersive public art project, cataloging historical monuments, and developing a video game about an ancient society.

The NEA and NEH are independent federal agencies, meaning that they're government agencies that operate outside of the federal executive branch. They are major funders of the arts, museums, and other cultural organizations; this wave of funding totaled about $59.4 million.

All the awards for San Antonio except one were from the NEA. They are as follows:

• $20,000 to the United States National Committee for the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) to support a study of the local impact of the Monuments Toolkit Project, which serves as an educational guide to historical monuments.
• $30,000 to the City of San Antonio's Department of Arts and Culture for maintaining an immersive art installation over a bridge called World Walk.
• $20,000 to the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center to "support the CineFestival film festival and related public programming."
• $25,000 to poet Saúl Hernandez for a fellowship in creative writing in the literary arts.
• $55,000 to the San Antonio-based National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) to evaluate the NALAC Leadership Institute program and support a regional arts workshop in Puerto Rico.
• $30,000 to the San Antonio Botanical Garden Society, Inc. to support the public mural project "Flora and Fauna" at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.

“The NEA is proud to continue our nearly 60 years of supporting the efforts of organizations and artists that help to shape our country’s vibrant arts sector and communities of all types across our nation,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD in a press release about World Walk. “It is inspiring to see the wide range of creative projects taking place, including this public art restoration project in San Antonio.”

The NEH awarded one grant to San Antonio, and it's one of the most surprising. It pledges $100,000 to the University of Texas at San Antonio for prototype development of a virtual reality game about what it was like to live in ancient Peru. Led by project director and assistant professor of anthropology Rebecca Bria, the game "explores the history of Peru and teaches archaeological methods," according to the grant list.

There are plenty of other grants spread across Texas including 20 in Houston, 19 in Austin, nine in Dallas, and three in Fort Worth, plus others in smaller cities.