ARTS

Humanities Head: Sheldon Hackney, the University of Pennsylvania’s president, will be named to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, an agency official said. Martha Chowning, the agency’s liaison to the White House, told the university newspaper that Hackney, 59, will be nominated for the job. The Clinton Administration declined to confirm the report. Hackney would become the chairman of an agency that annually distributes $160 million in grants to scholars, teachers, writers, colleges, libraries and museums. Hackney’s nomination could provoke opposition from senators who found photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe to be obscene. In 1989, Hackney defended the Institute of Contemporary Art’s decision to host a Mapplethorpe exhibit on Penn’s campus.