Give to art that appeals to masses
I found Christopher Knight’s piece about the National Endowment for the Arts politically naive [“Can He Bring the NEA Out of Hiding?†May 14].
The NEA has its critics and most of them fail to appreciate that the Endowment currently enjoys its highest level of bipartisan support among elected officials in many years. This is precisely because the former chairman, Dana Gioia, understood that the Endowment is funded by taxpayer dollars and therefore has the responsibility to support art that speaks to as broad a patchwork of American people as is possible.
The Endowment’s existence is no longer a matter of controversy because the art it supports resonates its everyday populist patrons, the U.S. taxpayers. No small feat.
They also tend to forget that under the former administration, with the support of Laura Bush, the NEA enjoyed small increases is its budget.
Ben Donenberg
Los Angeles
The writer is executive artistic director of the Shakespeare Festival/LA.
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