2009 Robin Pogrebin and Jo Craven McGinty:
[excerpted] "Bill Ivey and Dana Gioia, the endowment chairmen who served through most of the years after the deep cutbacks of 1996, worked hard to make the most of the depleted agency they inherited, spending much of their time and energy trying to rebuild the N.E.A.’s prestige and credibility with Congress. Even if Mr. [Rocco] Landesman [NEA chairman-designate] hopes to strike out on a new path, say, by pushing to restore grants to individual artists — something many people in the arts considered “the heart and soul of the endowment,” as the painter Chuck Close put it in an interview — he may find himself looking to the tenures of Mr. Gioia and Mr. Ivey.
[...]
Some say that it is unlikely that the grants will be revived, because they require the N.E.A. to approve art before knowing its content. “I don’t know if we’re at a point where the political process can withstand the vicissitudes of contemporary art,” Mr. Ivey said. “It does expose the agency more than any other single activity.”
On the other hand, he continued, “I think it’s much closer to being brought back” — and he said he believes it should be. The grants would represent “a kind of signature investment by the federal government in the vitality of the nation’s cultural life,” Mr. Ivey said. “The American people should have the nerve to invest in the work of individual artists.”
At the very least, cultural professionals say they are hopeful about a growing potential for art to be taken seriously as part of the national identity, rather than disparaged as an elitist, effete enterprise unworthy of federal support. “I hope that time is over, the period when artist have been held as suspicious by the politicians,” said Michael Conforti, president of the Association of Art Museum Directors."Pogrebin, R. "For New Leader of Arts Endowment, Lessons from a Shaky Past." The New York Times. July 22, 2009. accessed July 22, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/arts/23funding.html?_r=1&ref=arts
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