Take the "About Last Night" Grant Challenge

Terry Teachout, drama critic for the WSJ, music critic for Commentary, Mencken biographer, and ArtsJournal blogger, passes on this provocative question:

"If you were going to be a seven-figure, major donor to one arts insitution in the USA, what would you pick?"

After thinking about it over the weekend, I'm seriously leaning towards Project Gutenberg, to help them make even more public domain (i.e., old, often out-of-print) fiction, nonfiction, and poetry freely available to anyone with access to a computer. I was also tempted by a passing mention of the in-embryo "Save-a-Book" program at Creative Commons, but without knowing more about what it's intended to entail, I'm going to go with the tried and true program for now. I've downloaded a few books from them over the years, and it's been a great opportunity to read things that are otherwise difficult to track down.

My backup choice, if it qualifies as an arts institution, would be Nicholson Baker's American Newspaper Repository, of which I am somewhat enamored.