'If I Ran the NEA..."
If I Ran the NEA...
The slogan of the National Endowment for the Arts is "a great nation deserves great art."
March 1, 2009
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
I've been asked what I would do if I were in charge of the NEA. Given that times have taken on a very strong resemblance to the New Deal, I would try to emulate one of the very successful programs from that era. During the 1930s, American artists were hired by the WPA and other agencies to help beautify America in conjunction with many Public Works projects. Thousands of artists, sculptors, landscapers, filmmakers, musicians and writers were involved in using their crafts to help beautify America. The Federal Art Project, the Federal Music Project, the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Writers' Project, and the Historical Records Survey were the vehicles that made this possible. Many of their contributions are still with us and have become a special part of America's cultural landscape. Someone who understands how all this came about would be the perfect person to help make it possible to again create jobs for America's artists and craftsmen.
March 1, 2009
EDWARD ALBEE
Here is my proposal for a correction on the procedures of the National Endowment for the Arts.
March 1, 2009
DEBBIE ALLEN
If I ran the NEA, I would spend every dime to put the arts back into public schools. I would join President Obama in his understanding of connecting with the people and have town meetings across the country to ignite passion about the value of arts education to our young people and our country. This initiative would raise the level of academic achievement, instill confidence, connect whole generations with creativity and triple the enrollment and attendance records of every elementary, middle and high school in America.
March 1, 2009
KURT ANDERSEN
I've sat on both sides of the NEA table. The weekly public radio show I host -- PRI's "Studio 360," the only nationally broadcast program dedicated to covering culture and the arts -- has been receiving an annual NEA grant. And three years ago, I served on an NEA panel charged with parceling out "literature" grants to nonprofit magazines, community writing workshops, book festivals and the like. (Participating in that process and working with NEA employees in Washington -- smart, conscientious and cheerful, do-gooders in the best sense -- entirely changed my default view of the federal government.)
March 1, 2009
JON ROBIN BAITZ
Were I to throw my hat in the ring as culture czar/NEA head, I would start with the following:
March 1, 2009
JOHN BALDESSARI
If I ran the NEA I would resume the individual artists' grants and I would strive to increase the budget.
March 1, 2009
KATE BURTON
If I ran the NEA I would look carefully at the truly deserving arts organizations out there that serve their communities the most effectively. I would also consider giving grants to individual artists who have contributed startling new work to encourage them. In these desperate economic times, the arts are more essential than ever before. Of the six plays I have acted in in the last 12 months, five of them have been at not-for-profit theaters in five different cities and towns. From New York City to the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts to Sag Harbor on Long Island to Los Angeles to Boston, these theaters have all contributed to the rich cultural life of the community. Judging by the responses of the audiences, the power of art helps us weather these hard times.
March 1, 2009
ANN COULTER
I always wanted to run the NEA so I could fund only tacky bourgeois art, such as Precious Moments figurines, thimble collections, dogs playing poker, velvet Elvis paintings, "Scarface" mirrors from the gift shops by the beach, etc. I'd have a major retrospective on Norman Rockwell paintings and make Thomas Kinkade our painter laureate.
March 1, 2009
EVE ENSLER
If I ran the National Endowment for the Arts, I would reassert the importance of art and culture in preserving our democracy, and I would allocate a substantial amount of money for artists who are addressing the most pressing political and social issues of our day. Under the Bush administration, art sadly became the enemy and military marching bands became more important than poetry. I would do everything in my power to help unleash the sassy spoken-word, hip-hopping, music-making, theater-bringing, opera-opening, dance-doing, sculpture-molding, picture-painting, photo-taking, storytelling, movie-mattering cultural warriors. The brave ones, who bring us to our deepest reckoning.
March 1, 2009
JUDY FISKIN
If I were the head of the NEA, I would ditch the argument that we should support art because it's "educational." The NEA started making that argument in the 1990s, after the endowment came under attack from Republicans for giving grants to a group of controversial performance artists. By contending that the value of art is as an educational tool, the NEA was able to stay in business, and art institutions were able to raise more money for their education departments. But those same institutions were left without a good rationale to ask for funding to support the art itself. You get the picture: Everybody can get behind the idea of education -- but art, maybe not. As a result, funding for exhibitions and collecting suffered and is still suffering. It's time to start advocating for art on the grounds that it provides us with a rich and valuable experience in itself that can't be had by any other means.
March 1, 2009
FRANK GEHRY
The arts make serious money and produce serious economic impact. As I understand the numbers, over the years arts venues match sports venues in that department. People line up to go to Disney Hall. They line up to go to the Getty. And the arts are also good for the psyche -- not just for individuals but for the collective psyche. So if I ran the NEA, I'd stress that -- the role the arts play in producing a sense of community, a sense of pride. That's universal, but sometimes we forget it.
March 1, 2009
NEIL PATRICK HARRIS
So long as they keep funding public television and radio, I'm good. I grew up learning lots from "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" -- everything from the alphabet and numbers to sharing and a sense of humor, and I still listen to NPR daily. Ira Glass? "Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!"? Great good times. Über-important. I can't imagine our world without them.
March 1, 2009
TOM HAYDEN
With the Congress including $50 million for the arts in the economic stimulus package, the overall annual budget for the NEA will be just short of $200 million for the coming year. By comparison, we spend more on the Iraq War every day, or $341.4 million, according to the website costofwar.com. This is the real obscenity that goes uncensored.
March 1, 2009
BILL T. JONES
It's common knowledge now that the arts are a significant part of our economic engine and a powerful tool for global diplomacy. As the head of the NEA, I would lobby to create a Cabinet post for the arts. We must move past this notion that the arts and culture are somehow frivolous.
March 1, 2009
NEIL LaBUTE
If I ran the NEA, I would immediately dismantle all "artist" grants (solely because I've never been offered one myself) and use that money to create more diverse arts programs for inner-city schools. Just kidding. I'd definitely dismantle the grants because, as mentioned above, the awarding of said grants is obviously rigged and in desperate need of restructuring. I would not use the extra money in schools, however, because most kids wouldn't know "art" if it marched up and slapped them in the face. I would instead implement and fund various initiatives to examine "the sex lives of insects cited in the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare" and collect "recipe tips from noted female writers -- Aphra Behn to Naomi Wallace." Now that's money well spent on worthwhile projects -- just like my esteemed predecessors used to do.
March 1, 2009
RACHEL MADDOW
The arts are critical to my admittedly totally chauvinistic goals for my country: I want the United States to have the biggest economy in the world, the best standard of living, a healthy population that shoots at each other far less than we do now, systems of governance and justice that are both envy and inspiration to the world, and I want our athletes and artists to be total international badasses. If I ran the NEA, I'd double down on this part of the NEA's mission: "to bring the arts to all Americans." If our artists are going to be badasses, we need to tap all our potential pools of artistic talent, we need to cultivate a national expectation of artistic literacy, and artists need jobs doing and teaching art. My NEA would fund arts education in every juvie, jail and prison in the country -- creating those art jobs, probably slashing recidivism, making our big dumb prison system slightly less pointless, and maybe someday paying off down the road in the form of the next American international art star.
March 1, 2009
BILL MAHER
If I ran the NEA? I'd abolish it. I'd be the Gorbachev of federal arts endowing and destroy my own job as the head of it. Artists are so self-important -- art is basic to human nature, it will always be produced and does not need the government's help. The NEA is a perfect example of Mission Creep: The government's job is to protect you, from external enemies and internal criminals, and to maintain roads, schools, and a social safety net. Art is far afield, and in no danger of going away without government money or guidance.
March 1, 2009
TIM MILLER
As a gay performance artist, one of the so-called NEA Four after my NEA solo theater fellowship was taken away purely because of the content of my work, I spent the rest of the '90s being used as a political football. The fact that I was stripped of NEA funding and kicked around throughout the culture wars until my case landed in the U.S. Supreme Court makes me think I have at least two cents' worth on this subject, which may be all the U.S. spends on the arts per person each year! (It's a bit better than that, but who's counting?)
March 1, 2009
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA
I'd work to make music education a mandatory component of every elementary and middle school curriculum in America. I was lucky to have a public school education with a strong music program, and it just about saved my life.
March 1, 2009
BILL PULLMAN
The $50 million for the NEA is tacked on, and -- when fed into the existing pipeline -- will disappear like water on fresh pavement. These projects have to be visible and bold in their impact on our national psyche in the next year. We don't have time to address fears of becoming labeled (socialist, Maoist, etc.), but we need the stiff hit of a new aesthetic playing through some focused creativity to kick us into new models of who we are. Brand the use of this little pile of money and call it "Fresh Approach." Decree that the projects will go to individuals, not institutions. The individuals' projects must be their response to: How can I be of service to the common good of our citizens? The aesthetic of the art of the New Deal was the answer to a question of who we are. It can still be seen in murals in post offices, travel books by unexpected authors, and our use of terms for theater like "living newspaper." The actual look of the aesthetic of "Fresh Approach" can't be predicted now, but it should give us a caffeine jolt for the huge national endeavor we are beginning that will restate who we are to the world.
March 1, 2009
TIM ROBBINS
If I ran the NEA, I would put the emphasis on arts education for the young. I would encourage artists throughout the country to volunteer a few hours a week to mentor students in public schools.
March 1, 2009
PHYLICIA RASHAD
I would invest the money in arts education in public schools. I would make it a priority.
March 1, 2009
DAVID ROBERTSON
I would first see about increasing its budget by two- or fourfold, because while art often contains an element of entertainment, it also -- always -- contains a large component that has to do with searching. So, for me, the National Endowment for the Arts resembles nothing so much as an endowment for research. Artists of all sorts are often following leads that may go nowhere or may discover something that is right before us, but without their exploration something that is in our midst might never be discovered.
March 1, 2009
JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY
If I ran the NEA, I would commission writers, musicians, photographers and painters to fan out across grass-roots America to answer two questions:
March 1, 2009
JOEL STEIN
The government should not be in the art business. Have you ever talked to a representative? You might as well put them in charge of our finest restaurants or producing our video games. These are people who, by definition, like parades.
March 1, 2009
SANDRA TSING LOH
Oh, if only I were head of the NEA! The mighty power I would wield, at the helm of a cultural institution whose annual budget is less than half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the U.S. military's. (Alternate yardstick I noticed recently, in comparing pie charts: The NEA budget is about the size of a recent U.S. Department of Transportation program dealing exclusively with traffic congestion.) On the one hand, we could bemoan this fig leaf-like paucity of dollars -- oh, what will happen, particularly in a depression, to the various Smithsonian medals and touring chamber ensembles and archival recordings of long-dead American jazz masters or whatever else it is the NEA is always earnestly, fustily and obscurely busy doing? (The mistake of throwing a few dollars to obscene, Jesse Helms-baiting NEA Four performance artists is now far, far in the past.)
March 1, 2009
HARVEY WEINSTEIN
If I ran the NEA, I would work to create a Cinema Hall of Fame in New York City, the birthplace of American cinema. I think that while working with the Museum of the Moving Image and other great organizations in New York City, the NEA could fund a profitable enterprise. Film preservation is something that all artists could benefit from.
March 1, 2009
NOAH WYLE
If I were NEA chief, I would hope to remember this: While the "nonprofit" arts industry enriches the cultural aspects of our society, we are not a charity. We are businesses that give fantastic return on invested dollars. In 2005, we had 2.6 million full-time employees. We expended $63.1 billion and generated $6.3 billion in local and state taxes. Our work generated an additional $103 billion for local merchants and their communities (sustaining 3.1 million jobs and over $16 billion in local, state and federal taxes). I would tell everyone I meet to invest in us. We give great economic stimulus to every community where we work.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
E-mail
Digg
Twitter
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Save more than