If I ran the NEA

ANN COULTER / AUTHOR OF “GUILTY: LIBERAL ‘VICTIMS’ AND THEIR ASSAULT ON AMERICA”

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.

My plan was to so enrage liberals and other half-brights with status anxiety that they would finally join with conservatives in demanding the abolition of that ridiculous agency. Unfortunately, it now appears that I would be heralded as a curating genius. The highest priced living (con)artist ever, Jeff Koons, is famous for exactly the Precious Moments kitsch I would have funded for the express purpose of bringing the NEA into disrepute (see www.jeffkoons.com/site/index.html) and the Guggenheim has already hosted a Norman Rockwell retrospective (see pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/rockwell/).

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BILL T. JONES / CHOREOGRAPHER

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.

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DAVID ROBERTSON / MUSIC DIRECTOR, ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

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.

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JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY / WRITER-DIRECTOR

If I ran the NEA, I would commission writers, musicians, photographers and painters to fan out across grass-roots America to answer two questions:

1. What does our country look like?

2. What do we want our country to look like?

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LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA / LYRICIST AND CREATOR OF “IN THE HEIGHTS”

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.

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NEIL LaBUTE / WRITER-DIRECTOR

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.

I would also support a number of dance programs because, let’s face it, dance gets the short end of the stick in the arts, yet it’s really fun to watch and people often get naked. I like music too, so I would make sure money gets funneled off to a variety of regional orchestras and that sort of thing. Plus, I’d also underwrite big concerts in the park like Elton John and Simon & Garfunkel used to give. I’m sure Sting would be up for it -- promise him that he’s saving a forest somewhere, and that guy will play bare-chested for hours.

And lastly I would fund theater like crazy. Every project you can think of, from crowd-pleasing ideas like more and more musicals based on pop tunes (maybe something using the music of ABBA) to more inspired but experimental notions such as my all-Asian version of “Raisin in the Sun” (I’m off the all-white version now -- that was just stupid).

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NOAH WYLE / ACTOR, ARTISTIC PRODUCER OF THE BLANK THEATRE COMPANY

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.

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PHYLICIA RASHAD / ACTRESS

I would invest the money in arts education in public schools. I would make it a priority.

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TIM MILLER / FOUNDING DIRECTOR, HIGHWAYS PERFORMANCE SPACE

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?)

An arts endowment run by Tim Miller is a notion that terrifies not only me but probably many cautious arts bureaucrats, but I would immediately reintroduce direct support of individual artists. It is shameful that the NEA no longer supports individual artists except for a handful of literature fellowships. I do not imagine these to be fellowships that would just allow artists to dive into their studios but rather would ask them to engage their country. I would propose to support individual artists in deepening a relationship to different communities of American citizens by sharing creative skills and possibilities. From the WPA’s Federal Theater Project of the ‘30s to our own L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs artist-in-residence grants, we have seen that when artists connect to communities -- communities of color, gay folks, the disabled, the homeless -- both the artist’s creative work and the people they connect with are transformed.

President Obama’s arts platform was on target in its valuing of artists as cultural ambassadors and community organizers. Now we need to put the pedal to the metal and truly transform communities and identities through creative citizenship.

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BILL PULLMAN / ACTOR

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.

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DEBBIE ALLEN / DANCER-CHOREOGRAPHER

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.

This would include programs in music, dance, drama, art, photography, electronic music, even martial arts.

Civilizations are remembered for their War and Art. We need to balance the footprint we are leaving behind.

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EDWARD ALBEE / PLAYWRIGHT

Here is my proposal for a correction on the procedures of the National Endowment for the Arts.

At present, 90% of the money given to the NEA does not go to creative artists -- it goes to institutions and buildings; a kind of “Edifice Complex.” Maybe 10% of it goes to the people who do the work that fills these buildings. This is a preposterous distortion of values. Not only should 90% of the money go to creative artists who, if need be, would be perfectly happy to work outdoors, but it should be creative artists who are making the choices as to which creative artists should be given these awards.

I have testified several times before congressional committees in Washington -- especially during my membership on the board of the New York State Council on the Arts -- and I have been continually shocked at the suspicion and hostility displayed by some members of the Congress to makers of the creative act. Maybe if they were writers, composers and visual artists themselves, things would be better.

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JOEL WACHS / PRESIDENT, ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS

If I ran the NEA I would:

1. Speak up for the arts! Tell our story. Creativity is our nation’s greatest natural resource.

2. Mobilize the arts community. Nobody can advocate for the arts more powerfully and more eloquently than artists themselves.

3. Put the arts back in our schools. Make the arts accessible to every American.

4. Integrate the arts into every department and agency. There isn’t a government program or project that couldn’t be enhanced by a cultural component.

5. Insist that arts funding not be seen as a handout. Artists have something of enormous value to offer society -- their talent and creativity -- for which they should be both recognized and compensated.

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JOHN BALDESSARI / ARTIST

If I ran the NEA I would resume the individual artists’ grants and I would strive to increase the budget.

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KURT ANDERSEN / NOVELIST AND PUBLIC RADIO HOST

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.)

I wouldn’t actually want to follow Dana Gioia as chair of the endowment, because it would be so hard to improve on his performance. (If any member of the Bush administration deserved a medal, it was he.) But if I had the job, I might:

* start building a large, modestly paid corps of young and old artists and musicians and writers -- something like Teach for America crossed with 826 -- who would be dispatched to train and inspire kids in schools that have cut back or eliminated arts classes

* establish a national system, in league with the Congress for New Urbanism, the National Charrette Institute, and perhaps HUD, under which communities trying to manage growth and/or preserve or create indigenous local character would have access to NEA-subsidized SWAT teams of sympathetic and experienced urban planners and architects

* steer the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institutes toward seeding and nurturing Web-based enterprises that publish compelling, accessible arts journalism and criticism, to fill the void as print newspapers and magazines retreat and disappear

* create a U.S. version of Britain’s Turner Prize, since visual art is the one major cultural realm that lacks its own major American prize; a credentialed panel of critics and curators would choose the annual shortlist of nominees for our Whistler (or Hopper or Rothko) Prize, and the winner would be chosen by online popular vote.

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NEIL PATRICK HARRIS / ACTOR

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. Uber-important. I can’t imagine our world without them.

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RACHEL MADDOW / HOST OF “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW”

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.

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TIM ROBBINS / ACTOR, DIRECTOR, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF ACTORS’ GANG

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.

I would work with the Department of Education to ensure that no public school in the United States would be without classes and after-school programs in art, music, dance and theater. Any arts institution that receives funding from the NEA would be required to develop or participate in arts education programs in public schools in their area and would have to provide to those schools free access to their institution’s concerts, plays and galleries.

In addition to this, I would increase funding to arts institutions in rural areas and encourage newspaper editors across the country to provide free listings of all theater, music, dance and arts events happening in their communities. Are you listening, L.A. Times?

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TOM HAYDEN / AUTHOR AND FORMER STATE SENATOR

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.

Yet funding for the arts is more controversial than funding for war. For decades, arts subsidies have been targeted as frivolous waste by many of the same conservative Republicans willing to budget trillions for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The arts are attacked for being a gay -- there, I said it -- left-wing luxury by some who think $500,000 pay limits are unfair to failed Wall Street executives.

President Obama can propose that the arts be a bipartisan cause, but the fight for the arts in the trenches of politics will have to be part of a populist agenda, from the bottom up. Even more than graffiti removal, Obama needs smear removal from everything the right wing scorns as “public.” Obama’s long-term model should be Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. The immediate goal should be dispatching his proposed “artists corps” into neighborhoods and schools to promote and mentor in music, poetry and creative writing, murals and computer graphics. He needs the talent and power of the hip-hop generation. He needs to win back our youth from the escapism of the video arcades.

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BILL MAHER / HOST OF “REAL TIME WITH 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.

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EVE ENSLER / WRITER-PERFORMER AND AUTHOR OF “THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES”

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.

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FRANK GEHRY / ARCHITECT

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.

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HARVEY WEINSTEIN / CO-CHAIRMAN OF THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

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.

The other mandate I would have if I ran the NEA would be to work closely with all of the different branches of the academies -- for film, music, theater, television -- and start a mandatory mentoring initiative for the members. This would be an amazing way to give back to local communities, if they had a member of one of the academies speak at their schools, teach a seminar and be available to be hands on with aspiring artists. This could help with a resurgence of regional community theater and dance performers and would only serve to enrich the culture of our schools and youth programs.

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JOEL STEIN / COLUMNIST-WRITER

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.

But if we’re really doing this Keynesian thing, the government should be the arts buyer of last resort. That means the NEA has to step up its policy of making things no one wants to see. Yes, it’s cool that just two months into this year it’s already given $25,000 so the Cleveland TOPS Swingband can force local high schools to endure big band music, and $10,000 to the Keshet Chaim Dancers so Sherman Oaks elementary school students will be submitted to Israeli folk dance. And I’m sure there are great projects coming up for mimes, Noh theater, disco, minstrelsy, Punch and Judy shows and sea shanties.

But that’s not nearly enough. The NEA needs to provide studio time for Busta Rhymes, script deals for Jim Carrey, sitcoms for the CW, subscriptions to TV Guide, the budget for “Indiana Jones V,” and an NHL team for a city in the South. It’s for the good of the economy.

The Keshet Chaim Dancers will understand.

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JON ROBIN BAITZ / PLAYWRIGHT AND SCREENWRITER, CREATOR OF “BROTHERS & SISTERS”

Were I to throw my hat in the ring as culture czar/NEA head, I would start with the following:

I would attempt to pass legislation on a special tax dedicated to the NEA for all artists who make over half a million dollars a year from their work.

I would create a new version of the Federal Arts Project of the 1930s and ‘40s, which would also be funded by this surtax from the artists who have succeeded.

I would attempt to create a superfund from private donations from all studios or Apple, for instance, in order to replenish the coffers. That money would go to school arts programs, which have been slashed for years.

I would fund arts teaching positions through public/private partnerships.

I would create a national architecture czar in an effort to beautify our cities, the way Andre Malraux beautified Paris when he was the French minister of culture.

I would move away from the focus that the NEA has had on minor ethnocentric and folk projects and move into a broad, far-reaching series of projects that question the role of religion and commerce in the life of the nation.

I would encourage the high-tech industry to sponsor filmmakers and visual artists on projects, much as Maurice Tuchman did at LACMA in 1966 in the seminal exhibit “Art & Technology,” which inspired me to become an artist.

I would present a series of lectures for senators and congressional leaders in Washington (open to the public) on the subject of the arts and their importance. It would feature speakers from the arts who had achieved master-status. I would transform the Kennedy Center Honors into the “American Masters Program.”

I would encourage the Office of Faith Based Initiatives to begin a dialogue about tolerance, acceptance, democracy and theology in order to encourage a greater understanding of the powerful link between politics, religion and culture.

I would insist that a percentage of income from networks (both cable and traditional) go to fund both NPR and PBS.

I would bring symphonies to small towns.

I would wear a suit and tie all day, every day, and entertain cultural figures in my Georgetown brownstone and raise money through small private fundraisers there, in addition to initiating an Obama-like Internet fundraising machine for the arts, made up of small donors. I would solicit donations of small works on paper from important American artists to be auctioned online at this site, with money to go to the arts-in-the-schools program.

I would instruct the Smithsonian to develop a wing of political art, whose first exhibition would be about propaganda, torture and the Constitution. I would ask prominent artists and writers to curate shows across the country on this theme. It would be about the effects of war on the soul of a nation. It would be very complex and draw conclusions without simple bromides of either ideology.

I would ask Robert Hughes, Wes Anderson , Bill T. Jones, Frank Gehry, Meryl Streep, Suzan-Lori Parks, Eric Fischl and John Adams for their advice as often as possible, mainly because I admire them. Many others too, but it is too long a list. I would leave the NEA a far more powerful and vital institution than it was when I arrived.

I would make sure that I was a frequent guest at the White House, and I would always bring presents of art for the first children, so that when they grow up, they would include art into whatever magnificent endeavor for the public good that their marvelous parents helped shepherd them into.

If anyone in the administration wishes to discuss this, I am not too hard to find.

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JUDY FISKIN / L.A.-BASED PHOTOGRAPHER AND VIDEO MAKER

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.

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KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR / NBA’S ALL-TIME LEADING SCORER

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.

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KATE BURTON / ACTRESS

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.

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RACHEL DRATCH / FORMER “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE” CAST MEMBER

If I ran the NEA? A rubber chicken in every pot.

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SANDRA TSING LOH / WRITER, PERFORMER, RADIO COMMENTATOR

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.)

We could bemoan the fact that in America, as opposed to, say, Italy (a tiny country whose national arts budget is three times the NEA’s), national “culture” isn’t -- and has never been -- a priority.

On the other hand, given that we will never catch up with our Western peers (Germany has 28 times more opera houses than us), perhaps America’s greatest arts potential is, finally, to be less like Old Europe and possibly more like Bali, the land where, legendarily, everyone makes art. Even the children make art -- although, of course, this would require turning off the endless chatter of TVs and computers and Wiis. No, currently, our national culture is Disney and Sony and Nintendo and hence, due to cultural harm perpetrated by crimping our children’s imaginations, I suggest those entertainment corporations pay a .5% arts tax that is redirected into things like required free piano lessons for all American children. With -- Hey! A play-along CD by Wynton Marsalis. Why not?

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Contributors

Times staff writers Greg Braxton, Claudia Eller, Craig Fisher, Lisa Fung, Matea Gold, Christopher Hawthorne and Sherry Stern contributed to this report.