Livingston Biddle, 83; Wrote Bill Creating U.S. Arts Agency, Later Led It

Livingston L. Biddle Jr., 83, who helped write legislation creating the National Endowment for the Arts and was named by President Jimmy Carter to head the agency from 1977 to 1981, died Friday at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D.C. He had been in ill health for some time, but no cause of death was given.

Born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., Biddle came from a long line of wealthy and influential ancestors. His great-great-grandfather, Nicholas Biddle, founded the Second Bank of the United States. Another relative, Francis Biddle, was attorney general under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was chief judge at the Nuremberg Nazi trials.

As an aide to Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), Biddle drafted the legislation that in 1965 established the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Council on the Arts. Biddle was a lifelong advocate of excellence in the arts and of government funding to make the arts accessible to the population at large in small towns and rural areas, as well as in urban art centers.

Biddle often lamented the threat posed to the agency after congressional conservatives discovered in 1989 that endowment funds were used to support an exhibition by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe that included homosexual and sadomasochistic themes and pictures of nude children.