ROCCO LANDESMAN PICKED TO LEAD NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
Rocco Landesman, the colorful theatrical producer and racetrack aficionado who brought hits like Big River, Angels in America, and The Producers to Broadway, has been nominated as the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, reports Robin Pogrebin for the New York Times.
The appointment surprised many in the arts world. It ends months of speculation about who would be selected to lead the nation’s largest and most important arts organization.
“It’s potentially the best news the arts community in the United States has had since the birth of Walt Whitman,” said the playwright Tony Kushner. “He’s an absolutely brilliant and brave and perfect choice for the job.”
Choosing Landesman, sixty-one, signals that Obama plans to shake things up at the endowment. While a major source of money for arts groups around the country, it has historically been something of a sleepy bureaucracy, still best known to some for the culture wars of the 1990s. Since then, the agency has been trying to rebuild its image on Capitol Hill, along with its budget. The current allocation stands at $145 million, and though Obama has requested $161 million for 2010, that is still short of its high of $176 million in 1992.
Landesman, who would fill the post vacated by Dana Gioia, is expected to lobby hard for more arts money. As the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five Broadway houses, Landesman is accustomed to calling the shots, not working within a bureaucracy. Arts executives say this is a plus. “He is a great entrepreneur and producer, and it indicates to me that the administration wants to have somebody in this position who will be much more than simply a distributor of funds,” said Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera. “The relationship between the government and the arts needs to be energized. It needs someone like Rocco.”
If confirmed by Congress, Landesman would be the tenth chairman since Congress created the endowment in 1965. While previous chairmen have tried to argue the case for a stronger agency, this task will fall to the next chairman in an even tougher economic climate. “The day of the NEA being this political football of the right—maybe those days are over and we’re going to start to take it seriously,” Kushner said.
