Alexander, NEA’s Star, Says She’ll Resign This Month

Actress Jane Alexander announced Wednesday that she will step down this month as head of the National Endowment for the Arts after shepherding the agency--wounded but alive--through an ongoing war with Congress.

Appointed by President Clinton in October 1993, Alexander suspended a prolific acting career to head the cultural agency and battle GOP conservatives who tried to abolish it on grounds that it funded obscene and elitist art.

“When I came into the agency I was coming from a successful run [in the play] ‘Sisters Rosensweig’ and I always intended to go back to my profession,” Alexander, 57, said in an interview. “I thought it was a great honor and privilege to be appointed to an agency that I love. I did not know it would get very hard to make sure we got funding every year.”

Her decision not to seek reappointment to a new four-year term was roundly lamented by NEA supporters, who agreed that her personal charm and acting prowess disarmed even the agency’s most strident critics. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who in past debates has often accused the NEA of funding “sewer art,” referred more than once to Alexander as a lovely and gracious woman.

Before heading the NEA, Alexander appeared in 40 films and television programs and performed in more than 100 plays. She is a four-time Academy Award nominee.

The job must now be filled by Clinton, who some observers said would be wise to select an equally famous successor to give continued visibility to an endowment that is still besieged.

“Should he appoint a star? Yes,” said one congressional source. “You need to have a person of really high status to command the attention the agency needs to overcome” the attacks on it.

Although for most Alexander put a face on the NEA--and a well-known one at that--her 30-year acting career was lost on some Washington insiders. She recalled that one senator once greeted her: “So, I hear you did some acting.”

“It might surprise you to know how few people in Congress were acquainted with my work,” Alexander said.

Federal regulations prohibited Alexander from acting for pay during her tenure, and the occasional script that came her way she returned without reading. But government was serving up plenty to keep her busy. She galvanized a splintered cultural community to lend support to the NEA and lobby against the various efforts to kill it. And she reorganized the agency as it adjusted to funding cuts that saw its annual budget decline from a high of $176 million early this decade to about $99.5 million currently.

The most recent attack on the agency came this summer when the House voted to eliminate it. But the NEA won strong support in the Senate and a bill expected to be sent to Clinton soon would cut its funding to $98 million.

“The fact that the NEA survived during this very troubled period was in great measure a tribute to her personality and qualifications,” said Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.), one of the NEA’s most devoted supporters. “She was a superb actress and that lent a certain aura to her. You felt her presence.”

One of her first acts as head of the agency was a cross-country trip to explore firsthand the complex connection between the arts and U.S. communities. The knowledge she gained helped her justify the endowment’s existence and fend off attempts in Congress to strip it of its funds.

“I’m sorry but not surprised. She’s done an extraordinary job under well-known and appallingly difficult circumstances,” Graham W.J. Beal, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, said of Alexander’s departure. “I would think the constant drumbeat that goes on from that section of Congress that doesn’t seem to mind saying the same thing over and over and over again would make that a job you might not want to renew.”