A History of the National Endowment for the Arts: Introduction & Chapter 1

A Supplement to the Regional Theater Series 

[I’ve recently published several articles concerning the state and background of the regional theater in the United States: “A Crisis In America’s Theaters” on Rick On Theater on 13 September, “The Regional Theater: Change or Die” on 3 October, and “Regional Theater: History” on 8 October.  Because of the seriousness of this subject, I said that I’d post on it from various perspectives from time to time.  Below is my fourth post in that occasional series.

[In 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts issued “National Endowment for the Arts: A History, 1965-2008,” a report edited by Mark Bauerlein with Ellen Grantham.  Bauerlein (b. 1959) is an emeritus professor English at Emory University and a senior editor of First Things, a monthly ecumenical and interreligious journal.  Between 2003 and 2005, Bauerlein worked at the NEA, serving as the director of the Office of Research and Analysis.  Grantham was a program analyst.

[The NEA played a large and important part in the rise and development of the regional or residential theater in this country.  While the regional theater movement may have had it’s origins in the “Little Theater movement” that sprang up around 1912, it didn’t become a significant part of the U.S. theater scene until the early 1960s.

[A small number of professional theaters started before the mid-point of the 20th century: Cleveland Play House opened in 1915 and Chicago’s Goodman Theatre was founded in 1925. The Alley Theatre in Houston and Theater ’47 in Dallas were both founded in 1947, and Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., was established in 1950, but the surge in serious theaters began in 1963 with the opening of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

[The movement took off and suddenly theater outside New York City was a significant reality.  When Public Law 89-209, the “National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965,” was signed by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73; 36th President of the United States: 1963-69) on 29 September 1965, the dam broke.  Theaters of varying sizes and artistic focuses rose up in cities and towns all across the country, as far from New York City as Alaska and Hawaii.

[I intend to serialize the NEA report, excerpting a large portion of the history of the agency.  The report’s book length, so I’m not going to reproduce it all, however.  First of all, I’m going to omit the parts that deal with the non-theater arts, such as music and dance.  Then I will also edit some of the rest as well.  (The text is reproduced online on several sites and it’s also published in print (and therefore available from libraries as well).

[For some reason, there’s little or no updating from the 2008 point at which the report’s history ends—at least not that I can find.  I will try to supply some kind of summary of the past 15 years if I can suss one out.

[Bauerlein and Grantham started their report with an epigraph:

The arts and sciences are essential to the prosperity of the state and to the ornament and happiness of human life.  They have a primary claim to the encouragement of every lover of his country and mankind.   —George Washington (1781)

[Their “Forward” opened with this statement:

This history of the National Endowment for the Arts attempts to give a concise, documentary account of the agency’s major activities over the past forty-three years since its creation by the United States Congress.  The book provides not only an authoritative survey of major programs and influential personnel, but also examines the complex and evolving role of the agency in the cultural and political life of the United States during that time.  The history of the Arts Endowment is an eventful and sometimes controversial one, to be sure, and we have sought to present its many achievements and difficult episodes with candor, clarity, and balance.

[Chapter 1 of “National Endowment for the Arts: A History, 1965-2008,” which recounts the origins of the National Endowment that led to the passage of P. L. 89-209, is transcribed below.] 

“NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS: A HISTORY, 1965-2008”
edited by Mark Bauerlein with Ellen Grantham
(National Endowment for the Arts, 2009) 

part I

The HISTORY of the NEA 

Introduction

The National Endowment for the Arts—the NEA—is a unique agency in the panoply of federal institutions. Created by the Congress of the United States and President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, the NEA was not intended to solve a problem, but rather to embody a hope. The NEA was established to nurture American creativity, to elevate the nation’s culture, and to sustain and preserve the country’s many artistic traditions. The Arts Endowment’s mission was clear—to spread this artistic prosperity throughout the land, from the dense neighborhoods of our largest cities to the vast rural spaces, so that every citizen might enjoy America’s great cultural legacy.

The National Endowment for the Arts differs greatly from the prior federal arts programs established earlier under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) with which historians have most often compared it—the Federal Arts Project and Federal Writers’ Project. These New Deal programs were created in the 1930s to employ jobless artists and writers during a national economic crisis. Out of the 15 million unemployed victims of the Great Depression, nearly ten thousand were artists. New Deal administrator Harry Hopkins defended federal support for artists by saying, “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people.” In many instances the Federal Arts Project and similar efforts associated with it, such as the photographic work of the Farm Security Administration, bolstered President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s political vision of how the nation would recover from economic devastation.

By contrast, the Arts Endowment was created neither to provide work for the unemployed nor to deliver a political message. The idealistic optimism expressed at the birth of the NEA was very different from the hope for restoration of American prosperity during the Depression. In the NEA’s case, hope bore no connection to despair, but functioned purely as an exaltation of the spirit.

The distinctive origins of the federal arts programs of the New Deal and of the National Endowment for the Arts were reflected in the kinds of art with which each federal initiative was associated. The New Deal programs produced art, most memorably in the visual fields. Murals, such as those by Thomas Hart Benton, and other paintings in a recognized style, some with a similar visual approach, became a hallmark of WPA-produced art. Other artists not subsidized by these programs echoed this style. A school of “WPA art” thus became a major phenomenon of the New Deal era. Paralleling the political mission of WPA art in supporting New Deal programs, such works also reflected a commitment on the part of many artists in that epoch to collectivist values and the promotion of government in society. In 1940, President [Franklin] Roosevelt spoke of the effects his arts policy initiatives had on the American public:

They have seen, across these last few years, rooms full of paintings by Americans, walls covered with all the paintings of Americans—some of it good, some of it not good, but all of it native, human, eager, and alive—all of it painted by their own kind in their own country, and painted about things they know and look at often and have touched and loved.

Neither the Arts Endowment nor the artists or arts administrators who advised the agency over the past four decades have sought to align the NEA with a sociopolitical agenda. Nevertheless, the NEA has some elements in common with that of New Deal programs for artists and writers. The first and most obvious similarity is that both strived to bring culture to the people. The second is that both endeavors represented irreplaceable records of the intellectual and ideological challenges that have gripped America. During the New Deal, the photographic scrutiny of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and others subsidized by federal arts programs did not turn away from the drama of America struggling to rise from economic deprivation. Similarly, in America over the past 40 years, a wide range of works supported by the NEA, as well as the occasional controversies that have accompanied its activities, have reflected social and cultural changes in direct and illuminating ways. Few federal agencies can offer the public or future historians so thorough and eloquent a record of American cultural development as the NEA.

*  *  *  *

chapter 1

Hope and Inspiration

With the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960, enthusiasm for America as a nation dedicated to the arts seemed poised to become a widespread movement. Even before the election, at the end of the Eisenhower Administration, a precursor of this new energy in the arts was witnessed when poet Carl Sandburg and actor Fredric March addressed a Joint Session of Congress on February 12, 1959 to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

At President Kennedy’s inaugural, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, his Administration’s commitment to creativity was symbolized by Robert Frost reciting a poem, “The Gift Outright,” from the ceremonial dais. Though gusty winds that day rendered him inaudible, the image was captured on television and stirred the public imagination. The Abstract Expressionist painters Franz Kline and Mark Rothko, whose works were anything but conventional, also attended the historic occasion.

Another prominent artistic moment associated with President Kennedy’s term was cellist Pablo Casals’s performance at the White House in 1961. The Casals event was notable in a number of ways, which President Kennedy emphasized in his opening remarks. First, it was intended not only as homage to Casals, but to Puerto Rico and its reforming governor, Luis Muñoz Marín. Second, President Kennedy pointed out that Casals, who was 84 when he performed in 1961, had also played in the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Finally, President Kennedy alluded to Casals’s refusal to return to his native Catalonia, which was then under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The President closed his remarks with the words, “An artist must be a free man.”

At the end of 1961, President Kennedy further recognized the significance of the arts to the national well-being when he sent Labor Secretary Arthur J. Goldberg to settle a pay dispute between the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the American Federation of Musicians. On announcing the resolution of the conflict, Goldberg called for government subsidies to the performing arts and proposed that business join with labor in supporting the arts.

A high point in the intellectual history of the Kennedy Administration involved the French Minister of Culture, novelist, and essayist André Malraux. A flamboyant and venturesome cultural figure from the 1920s through the 1970s, Malraux had played host to the Kennedys when they visited France in 1961. The following year, Malraux came to Washington, where First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy returned the favor. A White House dinner for the French minister included performances by violinist Isaac Stern, pianist Eugene Istomin, and cellist Leonard Rose. During his visit, Mrs. Kennedy asked Malraux if France would be willing to allow Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Louvre to be exhibited in the United States. Malraux assented—to the shock and alarm of French diplomats, who considered the decision hasty. But in January of 1963, Malraux returned to Washington to introduce “the greatest picture in the world,” which was displayed at the National Gallery of Art. The painting was also shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and returned to France aboard the SS United States on March 7. In the 27 days the Mona Lisa was on display in Washington, DC, more than half a million people came to view it.

A New Conception

Notwithstanding the breadth of American creativity and the power of federal authorities, the United States had never established a permanent official body dedicated to the proposition, enunciated by President Kennedy, that the nation has “hundreds of thousands of devoted musicians, painters, architects, those who work to bring about changes in our cities, whose talents are just as important a part of the United States as any of our perhaps more publicized accomplishments.” To recognize their contributions to the United States, President Kennedy named August Heckscher, grandson of a Gilded Age industrialist who founded the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York, as his special consultant on the arts. Heckscher, described by the film critic Richard Schickel as “humane, sweet-tempered, rational, and liberal-minded,” had a long list of accomplishments outside the art world—a master’s degree in government from Harvard, service with the Office of Strategic Services in World War II, member of the U.S. delegation at the United Nations conference in 1945, and chief editorial writer at the New York Herald Tribune in the 1950s. After serving under President Kennedy, he went on to be Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs Commissioner for New York City.

Heckscher completed the report, “The Arts and the National Government,” in May 1963, and submitted it to Congress and the President six months before President Kennedy’s death [22 November 1963]. A few months earlier, in January, Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY), with co-sponsors Senators Joseph Clark (D-PA), Hubert Humphrey (D-MN), and Claiborne Pell (D-RI), had introduced S.R. 165 “to establish a U.S. National Arts Foundation,” and in April Senator Humphrey had introduced S.R. 1316 “to establish a National Council on the Arts and a National Arts Foundation to assist the growth and development of the arts in the U.S.” Initial co-sponsors of S.R. 1316 besides Clark, Pell, and Javits, were John Sherman Cooper (R-KY), Russell B. Long (D-LA), Lee Metcalf (D-MT), Jennings Randolph (D-WV), Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT), and Hugh Scott (R-PA). Supported by the Senate’s actions, Heckscher’s report led to the establishment of the President’s Advisory Council on the Arts, the direct predecessor of the current National Council on the Arts.

President Kennedy’s death delayed the appointment of members to the Advisory Council. But his vision for the arts did not perish with him. At the time of Kennedy’s assassination, a proposal was already in the works for a National Cultural Center in Washington, DC. The project was launched in 1958, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Cultural Center Act—legislation authorizing construction of a performance and educational space that would be independent and privately funded. (President Eisenhower’s role in the project is memorialized in the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center.) In 1961, Roger L. Stevens, who later became the first chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was named chairman of the board for the new performing arts center, which became The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—a national memorial to the late president. Jarold A. Kieffer, the first board secretary and executive director of the project, wrote in his 2004 memoir, From National Cultural Center to Kennedy Center, “With bipartisan support in the Congress, President Johnson . . . signed legislation authorizing that the Center bear Kennedy’s name and providing a grant of $15.5 million in public funds. Congress specified that this grant was to be matched by an equal sum that the trustees had to raise from strictly private sources.”

President Kennedy’s legacy remained as much represented by Heckscher’s efforts as by the new center. Significantly, Heckscher avoided discussing what America needed from a federal agency for promotion of the arts. In a somewhat flat, governmental tone, his report broached topics that would be non-issues in the first four decades of the NEA, such as acquisitions for “government collections of art, public buildings, American embassies,” as well as urban planning in Washington, postal rates, copyright laws, employment of artists to memorialize military events and space-exploration episodes, and a wide range of other official concerns.

Yet Heckscher’s report did identify the essential stimulus for the creation of a new federal arts agency—the historical development in American society that propelled the process to fruition. America in the 1960s was different from America at the end of the nineteenth century, when its wealthy elite created many of the major cultural institutions in the U.S., and different from America stricken by the heartbreak of the Depression, when citizens needed reassurance that their collective dream could be renewed. When Theodore Roosevelt hosted Casals at the White House, and the New Deal hired artists and writers, impetus for such efforts came from above. Heckscher’s report described an avid interest in the arts felt among the populace, and this demand was fueled by growing prosperity and rising expectations. Heckscher wrote, “Recent years have witnessed in the U.S. a rapidly developing interest in the arts. Attendance at museums and concerts has increased dramatically. Symphony orchestras, community theaters, opera groups, and other cultural institutions exist in numbers which would have been thought impossible a generation ago.”

Heckscher offered a simple explanation for these trends—namely, “increasing amount of free time, not only in the working week, but in the life cycle as a whole.” Heckscher paid due homage to President Kennedy’s ideal of an America that would lead the free world to victory over totalitarianism. As Kennedy once said, “The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose . . . and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.” Most of all, the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts was unquestionably a product of youthful energy and presidential leadership of the 1960s, reflecting a broader interest in the fine arts that began to flower in America after the Second World War.

America was changing profoundly, with more Americans attending college than ever before. As baby boomers matured, so did America’s taste, habits, and mores. Far from the traditional centers of culture, people were demanding a local presence for music, dance, theater, and visual art. More and more, along with European immigrants who wanted classical culture, citizens were claiming the heritage of Walt Whitman, Edward Hopper, Frank Lloyd Wright, Martha Graham, Louis Armstrong, and other great American artists as their birthright, and they wanted access to music education, dance performances, professional drama, and regional artists. The National Endowment for the Arts, it turned out, would play a central role in heeding that call. 

[I will be posting “Chapter 2: A New World Beckons” on Wednesday, 8 November.  I hope you will come back to Rick On Theater to read the next stage in the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts and then follow through on the subsequent development of the agency that had such an impact on our regional theater’s growth.]