Reagan Expected to Name UCI Dean to Arts Council

Robert Garfias, dean of the School of Fine Arts at UC Irvine, is being considered for a presidential nomination to the National Council on the Arts, state and federal arts officials said Tuesday.

His formal nomination to the council, the 26-member policy-setting body of the National Endowment for the Arts, is expected in early 1987 and will be subject to congressional approval.

“He is under consideration at the White House,” said a highly placed staffer at the National Endowment for the Arts who asked not to be identified. “The formal nomination (by President Reagan) will not come until early January.”

Garfias, 54, an ethnomusicologist--one who specializes in the study of music as ethnic expression--has a broad interest in folk arts. He has written on such subjects as the influence of Turkish classical music on Romanian Gypsy music, links between African musical traditions, and the marimba music of Latin America. He has been dean of the School of Fine Arts since 1982 and is president of the Orange County Arts Alliance, an umbrella organization for county arts groups.

“There has been no folk arts slot on the council before, and . . . we feel there is a need to represent that field,” said the National Endowment for the Arts staffer. “(Garfias) has a very strong background.”

Mark Weinberg, a White House assistant press secretary, declined to comment on the nomination, saying that presidential appointments are not discussed before a formal announcement. Garfias said he has been in touch with the White House and has been told that the nomination is awaiting the outcome of a routine background check.

Joanne Kozberg, vice chairwoman of the Los Angeles Music Center’s board of governors, who advises U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) on arts matters, said Wilson recommended Garfias several months ago to National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Frank Hodsoll as a candidate for the council.

“The senator was very supportive of his nomination because of his specialty as an ethnomusicologist,” Kozberg said. “He is highly regarded in the field. There is a sense that he really has a contribution to make.”

The arts council’s recommendations affect allocation of National Endowment for the Arts grants that will total $165 million for the 1986-87 fiscal year. The amount for folk arts--for museums, performance groups and artist-in-residence programs that promote traditional arts--is $3 million, and it is expected that Garfias’ main role will be to give input on the use of that money.

The council meets four times a year in Washington. Members serve six-year terms and are paid a small stipend.

Garfias was recently named as vice chairman of a 12-member folk arts advisory panel to the California Arts Council, the state arts agency. The committee has been formed to help the state council shape a new program to support folk arts and crafts in California. “We have been very deficient in folk arts,” Kozberg said.

“In folk art, it is not the unique and original creativity of an individual artist that is emphasized but the overall customs and tradition of a group of people,” Garfias said. “In Orange County, for example, we have a large Korean population, a Vietnamese population and many Hispanics. They have their own art forms and traditions. The continuity of those traditions is very important to me. My parents were Mexican immigrants, and I spoke Spanish until I entered the public schools.”

Born in San Francisco, Garfias grew up in that city’s Mexican-American district, playing jazz piano and saxophone in local nightclubs. After musical studies at San Francisco State College and graduate work at UCLA, he went to Japan as an ethnomusicologist on a Ford Foundation grant. Over the years, he has also studied musical traditions of Burma, Mexico, Central and South America.

Before moving to Southern California, Garfias was a vice provost at the University of Washington in Seattle, where his administrative career started in 1977 after 15 years on the faculty.

In Orange County, Garfias’ efforts have included assisting the South Coast Repertory Theatre’s Hispanic Playwrights Project, which brought eight playwrights from around the country to Costa Mesa for workshops to develop their writing.

“He is on the advisory committee of people who help us to get the word out in the national Hispanic community about the project,” said Jose Gonzalez, who runs the program. An NEA fellowship allowed Gonzalez to come to South Coast Rep where his efforts spawned the Hispanic Playwrights Project.

“Bob Garfias understands many different cultures,” said Paul Apodaca, curator of folk art at Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum, whose programs and exhibitions focus on Pacific Rim cultures.

Apodaca, who also worked with Garfias at SCR, added: “Bob is multilingual. He speaks Japanese, Spanish, English and a couple of other languages, and being multilingual gives him greater sensitivity to ethnicity. The Bowers has not sought NEA funding in the past but knowing there is someone there who shares our goals and objectives, we would certainly pursue it.

“I think his appointment would give a shot in the arm to many people in the folk arts community around the country.”