A Supplement to the Regional Theater Series
[I was able to put together a facsimile of an update to the history of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2008, when Mark Bauerlein and Ellen Grantham ended their chronicle, “National Endowment for the Arts: A History, 1965-2008” (NEA, 2009), and 2023. The result of my effort is below.
[Though there is more detail available if one digs deep enough, I decided to keep the record simple and brief. My intention was to provide a sort of précis of the agency’s past 15 years as an indication of where it was headed since Bauerlein and Grantham finished their comprehensive report.
[Obviously, there isn’t a problem with reading this summary on its own, except for an occasional reference to earlier chapters, but if you haven’t been following the tale of the Arts Endowment, you might want to go back and catch up. The Introduction and Chapter 1 was posted on 5 November; Chapters 2 through 10 and the Epilogue followed on 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, and 30 November, and 3 and 13 December, respectively. The theater section of Part II of the report, “The Impact of the NEA,” ran on 16 December.]
Dana Gioia (b. 1950), a poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist, was appointed the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts by President George W. Bush (b. 1946; 43rd President of the United States: 2001-09) on 29 January 2003. After serving one term, he was reappointed on 9 December 2006, but resigned on 22 January 2009 to return to writing poetry full time (see Chap. 10 [13 December 2023]).
Gioia’s position was filled by former Deputy Chairman for States, Regions, and Local Arts Agencies Patrice Walker Powell (b. 1952), appointed by Barack Obama (b. 1961; 44th President of the United States: 2009-17) to serve as Acting Chairman until August 2009.
It fell to Powell to navigate the rough waters that rose during the economic downturn of 2008. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5), the economic-stimulus bill enacted 17 February 2009, was amended by Congress to exclude a $50 million infusion for the Arts Endowment.
Even several of the NEA’s most stalwart supporters such as Democratic Senators Charles Shumer (b. 1950) of New York and Dianne Feinstein (1933-2023) of California voted for the amendment; it took efforts from House Democrats and lobbying by arts groups and a phone call from actor Robert Redford (b. 1936) to the speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi (b. 1940) of California, to preserve money for the arts in the bill.
On 7 August 2009, President Obama appointed Rocco Landesman (b. 1947), Broadway theater producer, to be the 10th NEA chairman.
For Fiscal Year 2010, the Arts Endowment’s budget reached $167.5 million [$227.1 million in 2023], the level it had been during the mid-1990s, but fell again in FY 2011 to $154.7 million [$203.8 million today].
During his tenure, Landesman oversaw the transformation of the Operation Homecoming initiative (see Chap, 10 & Epilogue [13 December 2023]) into Creative Forces (2013), which brought creative arts therapies to U.S. service members and veterans recovering from post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and other psychological health conditions; the creation of Blue Star Museums (2010), which provided free admission to more than 2,000 museums throughout the country for active-duty military members and their families every summer; and a new grant program, Our Town (2011), which funded arts-based community development founded on the belief that the arts have a unique ability to create a distinct sense of place, jumpstart local economies, and increase creative activity.
Landesman, who was president of Jyjamcyn Theatres, Broadway’s third-largest theater-owner, from 1987—he bought the company in 2005—until his appointment, served until 31 December 2012, when he retired after fulfilling his pledge to serve only one term. He was succeeded by Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa (b. 1936), the former Senior Deputy Chairman and a film and television producer and arts administrator.
More than 18 months passed after Landesman stepped down from the Endowment’s chairmanship before his successor took office. The cause was apparently President Obama’s deliberate talent search, though the White House didn’t make any comments on the delay. Nonetheless, current and former NEA officials and other arts administrators echoed the feelings of the president of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, who said that “the agency tends to drift until you have a chairman coming in.”
The only time a leadership search had taken longer was in 2002, after the death of Michael Hammond after six days in office (see Chaps. 8 & 9 [3 December 2023]). Obama announced his choice, R. Jane Chu, which had to be confirmed by the Senate, on 12 February 2014.
On 12 June 2014, the Senate confirmed Chu (b. 1947) as the Arts Endowment’s 11th chairman. An artist, pianist. and educator, Chairman Chu was, from 2006 until her NEA appointment, president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri.
At the beginning of Chu’s chairmanship, the agency rebounded a bit with a 2015 budget of $146.2 million [$182.4 million]—the same amount as had been appropriated for 2014. (The figure was a slight raise over the 2013 allotment of $138.4 million [$177.9 million].)
The NEA produced the publication The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation in 2014, in which 19 translators and advocates of translation illuminate the challenges of bringing new voices to American audiences. In 2015, the NEA launched an initiative, Creativity Connects, to examine and uncover the ways the agency could support a sustainable future for the arts and creativity in our nation by exploring how the arts connect with other industries.
In 2016, the NEA was awarded a Special Tony Award for “paving the way from Broadway to cities across the U.S.” That same year and again in 2017, the Arts Endowment received Emmy nominations from the Television Academy in the Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series category for its digital story series United States of Arts.
On 16 March 2017, President Donald J. Trump (b. 1946; 45th President of the United States: 2017-21) submitted a budget outline to Congress that would have eliminated all funding for the Arts Endowment; Congress, however, approved a budget that retained the agency’s funding at $149.8 million [$181.3 million].
In 2017, in the midst of this funding crisis, following a series of devastating hurricanes, the National Endowment for the Arts carried out a multipronged relief effort, awarding emergency funding for re-granting to the affected state arts agencies.
For 2018, the Trump White House once more proposed a budget that called for the elimination of NEA funding, but Congress again retained the funding for another year, increased to $152.8 million [$180.9 million]. At the end of Trump’s term the NEA’s annual budget for 2020 had risen to $162.25 million [$187 million].
That year, for its innovative outreach strategy to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the National Endowment for the Arts received a Public Partnership Award in 2019, presented by the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (WHI-HBCU) at its annual conference in Washington, D.C.
During Chu’s term, she traveled to 200 communities in all 50 states, meeting with artists and arts organizations all over the country. The initiative Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge was created during her tenure. This is an opportunity, which started in 2016 as a pilot program, for high school students to develop and showcase musical compositions that could be a part of a musical theater production.
Chu oversaw the 50th anniversary of the agency in 2015, including a symposium with former chairpersons Landesman, Ivey, Alexander, and Hodsoll, moderated by Judy Woodruff (b. 1946), the respected broadcast journalist who was the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour from 2013 to 2022.
In addition, a report was commissioned to update the findings of the Urban Institute’s 2003 study Investing in Creativity, which identified support systems necessary for artists. The new report, Creativity Connects, investigated the major changes and trends affecting artists over the following decade.
A new grant program also called Creativity Connects was created to partner arts organizations with non-arts organizations on projects that advance common goals to benefit communities. The anniversary year culminated in a symposium, In Pursuit of the Creative Life: The Future of Arts and Creativity in America, in which a diverse group from arts and non-arts sectors gathered to explore how creativity permeates nearly all professions, from transportation to engineering.
Chu resigned on 4 June 2018, succeeded by her Senior Deputy Chairwoman, Mary Anne Carter, as Acting Chairman. Though her agency was targeted for elimination twice by the Trump administration, the departing chairman didn’t make any mention of the efforts in her resignation announcement.
Mary Anne Carter (b. 1966), a public affairs consultant, was nominated on 14 December 2018 by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate on 1 August 2019 as the 12th Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. She resigned on 20 January 2021, the day Joseph R. Biden (b. 1942; 46th President of the United States: 2021-[25]) was inaugurated. In her final statement, Carter said, “A new team should have a new leader.”
Carter pushed to make the NEA more accessible to the American people, directing an expansion of Creative Forces (an arts therapy program for U.S. service members and veterans recovering from post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and other psychological health conditions) and bolstering many of its national initiatives, including Shakespeare in American Communities, NEA Big Read, and Poetry Out Loud (all addressed in Chap. 10 [13 December 2023]; Poetry Out Loud is discussed in a sidebar on p. 161 of the published report).
To further expand the reach of the Arts Endowment, Carter held several public meetings of the National Council on the Arts, the NEA’s advisory committee, at locations outside the agency’s offices. These include a June 2018 meeting in Charleston, West Virginia—the first such meeting outside of Washington, D.C., in 27 years—and in June 2019 in Detroit, Michigan.
On 14 February 2020, Native Arts & Culture: Resilience, Reclamation, and Relevance, a first-of-its-kind national convening that was hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, brought members from more than 40 tribal nations as well as the heads of several federal agencies together in Washington, D.C.
At the beginning of 2020, the world experienced its worst pandemic in more than 100 years. In the United States, businesses effectively closed down for much of the year. This was especially devastating for arts organizations and artists.
That year, the NEA received $75 million [$86.5 million] through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to preserve jobs and help support organizations forced to close operations due to the spread of COVID-19. In 2021, the NEA received an additional $135 million [$150.5 million] through the American Rescue Plan (ARP).
On 18 December 2021, Maria Rosario Jackson (b. 1965), appointed by President Biden, was confirmed as the NEA’s 13th chairman. An urban planner with expertise in integrating arts and culture into community development, Jackson is the first African American and Mexican American to lead the Arts Endowment.
Before becoming chairman of the NEA, Jackson had a seat on the National Council on the Arts, appointed by President Obama in 2012. Her term is scheduled to end in 2025 (though a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election, especially if Trump is the GOP nominee, may cause that to change).
President Biden’s new NEA leader has two guiding principles. One’s the premise of “artful lives.” Jackson defines this as “an inclusive concept containing a wide range of arts experiences, including the everyday, deeply meaningful practices and expressions within our daily lives as well as the making, presentation, and distribution of professional art from all disciplines and traditions.”
It’s more than merely being an “audience” or consumer of art, which Jackson feels has been the focus of the NEA’s endeavors. She considers arts participation as encompassing “many other ways of engaging [art], you know, thinking about making, doing, teaching, learning, in addition to participating as audience or to consuming art.”
Jackson’s other principle is “arts in all.” She sees this as “the intention of full integration of the arts in how we live. Not only does the concept push up against the relegation of arts as something separate or just extra, but we’re also leaning into arts integration that will create new opportunities and unlock resources for artists and arts organizations.”
The purpose of this notion, as Jackson sees its application to the Arts Endowment, is to integrate the arts throughout the federal government. Jackson sees this as a mandate for the agency to continue and expand its outreach and collaborations with other, non-arts agencies.
In June 2022, Chairman Jackson appeared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies. Her appearance was anything but routine, as it was the first time in recent history that the chairperson of the Arts Endowment had been invited to testify before Congress to discuss the agency’s budget.
During her first year in office, Jackson traveled to urban, suburban, rural communities in all regions of the country, and talked with artists and arts administrators from all artistic disciplines as well as people from other fields like the health, transportation, and community development who are also working with artists and arts organizations. She met with elected officials and saw the work of many NEA grantees.
For example, she saw evidence of Our Town investments from many years ago that are just now bearing fruit. This Jackson sees as a practical development of her notion of promoting “artful lives” among members of the community.
Jackson expanded the NEA’s work at the intersection of art and health, a function of “arts in all.” The Arts Endowment’s worked for a number of years with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs on the Creative Forces Initiative, but now it also partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CDC Foundation to launch an initiative to engage artists and arts organizations to promote COVID vaccine readiness in their communities.
In 2022. the agency contributed to a long-term recovery and resilience plan, a program led by the Department of Health and Human Services, that uses a whole-of-government approach that emphasizes that arts and culture are critical to achieving success in a number of domains including social cohesion and paying attention to community wellbeing.
On 30 September 2022, Biden issued “Executive Order on Promoting the Arts, the Humanities, and Museum and Library Services” (Executive Order 14084). The president declared the Biden-Harris Administration’s policy to advance equity, accessibility, and opportunities for all Americans, and to strengthen the creative and cultural economy of the United States by promoting the arts, the humanities, and museum and library services.
Jackson proclaimed that she was hopeful that this executive order bolstered the Arts Endowment’s work at the intersection of arts and other sectors. She appointed a senior staff member to move this work forward, and urged the NEA staff to recognize this as a priority.
In the executive order, Biden also re-established the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, after a five-year hiatus. The PCAH is intended to advise the president and the heads of cultural agencies on policy, philanthropic and private sector engagement, and other efforts to enhance federal support for the arts, humanities, and museum and library services.
Ex officio members of the revived PCAH include NEA Chairman Jackson and the heads of key cultural agencies and institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman and the Institute of Museum and Library Services Director, as well as the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art Director, Librarian of Congress, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The honorary chairman of PCAH is Dr. Jill Biden (b. 1951), the First Lady of the United States, which is traditional. Other members include the Co-Chairs Bruce Cohen (b. 1961), an Oscar- and Tony-winning, Emmy-nominated producer of film, theater, and television; and Lady Gaga (b. 1986), the award-winning singer, songwriter, actress, and philanthropist.
Among the other almost two dozen committee members are Jon Batiste (b. 1986), a prolific and accomplished musician who was the popular first bandleader on Late Show with Steven Colbert; Oscar-winning movie actor and filmmaker George Clooney (b. 1961); and writer and actress Anna Deavere Smith (b. 1950).
Biden’s 2023 budget included an appropriation of $207 million for the NEA, up from $180 million [$187.2 million in 2023] for the previous budget.
In October 2023, the annual National Arts and Humanities Month, NEA Chairman Jackson stated:
We cannot tell the complex story of our nation without the arts and humanities, nor envision or achieve a more just, equitable, and hopeful future without them. We celebrate not just the arts and humanities this month, but the imaginative and creative spirit that animates our democracy and makes better American—and global—citizens of us all.
[This chronology was compiled from various sources from the Internet. Most of the information is from various NEA documents and reports.
[I tried to find a summary
of the period of the current Arts Endowment chairman, Maria Rosario Jackson,
but her administration is apparently still too new to have been chronicled,
even for its first three years.
Therefore, I focused on what Jackson said were her goals and objectives,
rather than her accomplishments.
