NEA: Who's Next?, November 24, 1992, p. 101

Imagine Lauren Bacall as our NEA chair. Lots of people have, despite this Clinton-supporting actress lack of publicly expressed interest in the contemporary arts. This demonstrates what I call the Kitty Carlisle Hart factor: the yearning for a name-brand chair. And why not? But consider Bacall's "candidacy" the equivalent of last year's rumors of Mary Boone gallery's imminent demise: persistent, untraceable, and ultimately untrue.

What becomes an NEA chief most? The new agency head must stake her job on a peer-panel process for awarding grants that is free of content restrictions, despite assurances from the Clinton campaign that the future prez will not allow the NEA to be politicized again. S/he should lobby to expand the arts' role in multicultural education, instruct Congress about the arts' vital economic function, and double the agency's funding, which has been shamefully diminished by the budgetary dirty dealing that siphoned off millions of Endowment dollars to state arts agencies. In Perot-speak, the chair must be a world-class advocate of all the arts, experimental and non-, not to mention a whiz of an administrator.

Clinton campaign adviser Deborah M. Sale could have the job for the asking. On November 2, Sale told the press that an about-to-be-elected Clinton would "reinvigorate" the NEA and the NEH. Sale, chief of staff to New York Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundine, has done virtually everything: she's worked at our local Board of Ed, public television, and Columbia Pictures. During the Carter era, she directed the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, and-as special assistant to veep Walter Mondale-helped Joan Mondale broaden arts awareness. But as one local arts maven observed, "Why should she want the job when she could be chief of staff?"

Plenty of others, however, will. The Clinton transition team must quickly pass over New Yorkers Milton Rhodes and John Brademas, who are being considered for the post, according to several arts organization heads polled by the transition team. Rhodes is president of the American Council for the Arts, a middle-of-the-road lobbying group. The consensus verdict on him from the former head of a Washington-based arts group: "He's wishy-washy, but he does have an impressive board of CEO-dilettantes who've apparently made his case." Former Democratic congressman and ex-NYU president Brademas retains good will as a drafter of the NEA's 1965 enabling legislation and cochair of the 1990 Independent Commission on the NEA, which was created as a sop to Jesse Helms during the first reauthorization fracas. Each aspirant is the embodiment of politics, Old Boy-style.

A progressive candidate who's already been approached is Cynthia Mayeda, the outspoken, Asian-American chair of the Dayton Hudson Foundation in Minneapolis. Her multicultural, queer-friendly interests point to exactly what's needed: an inclusive vision of the arts as an agent of cultural healing. Cuban-born Adolfo (Al) Nodal, head of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, would make an equally impressive chair. He's run major and alternative arts organizations, revitalized L.A.'s MacArthur Park through a public art program, and has crafted the most savvy multicultural arts program in the country.

Don't downplay the importance of the Kitty Carlisle Hart factor, though. (Celebrity aside, Hart has been an extraordinarily effective NYSCA chief.) Two megacharmers with arts-administrative ability are Joan Mondale and Beverly Sills. Another intriguing possibility is Peggy Cooper-Cafritz, the African American radio talk show hostess and socially well-connected former chair of the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

As two Washington sources reminded me, Ohio was key to the Clinton victory and two Ohio politicos may benefit from the Buckeye vote: just defeated Cleveland congresswoman (and check bouncer) Mary Rose Oakar and Ohio Arts Council Executive Director Wayne Lawson. Oakar, a theater professor and eight-term representative, has been pushing for a cabinet-level arts czar and would surely know how to deal with her former congressional colleagues. Lawson, the former chair of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, is well regarded. (Although the most dynamic of the state arts honchos is Anne Hawley-former director of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities and current director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum-who was considered a shoo-in for the NEA post in a Dukakis administration.)

The dizzying range of these possibilities suggests not only the influence of diverse political agendas, but the current confusion about the nature of the position in the art-bashing era. Does the job demand a seasoned administrator or an impassioned arts advocate? A faceless technocrat or a well-known glamourpuss? (Cover the bases, Bill.) Two Clinton insiders told me that the appointment is likely to come fairly quickly-January or February, according to adviser Sale-in order to pack symbolic punch and to jump-start the agency's 1993 reauthorization process. (Democratic congressman/NEA protector Pat Williams, the chair of the House subcommittee that oversees the NEA, was re-elected.) But NEA spokesperson Jill Collins notes that former chair John Frohnmayer was appointed in spring 1989, and not confirmed by the Senate until the fall.

Collins, unlike newly hired Visual Arts Program Director Rosilyn Alter, is one of nine political appointees at the endowment (along with 26 presidentially appointed National Council on the Arts members, three of whose slots will open in January). The spectacularly unqualified Alter received a standard two-year contract. Last month she attended the National Association of Artists Organizations (NAAO) conference of alternative art-space directors in Austin, but uttered not a public word to the group whose mission is to support often marginalized and controversial art. The message from the ancien régime has been clear. Now out with the old, ASAP.

Jane's Campaign, September 28, 1993

Mainstream media-watchers may wrongly regard NEA-chair-designate Jane Alexander's nomination as a parable about grassroots democracy. According to this narrative, the actress name was first publicly floated in a March 11 letter from art dealer Richard Feigen to Bill Clinton (and carbon copied to op-ed page editors at The New York Times and Washington Post). Co-signed by E. L. Doctorow, Michael Douglas, Anne Jackson, Ellsworth Kelly, Itzhak Perlman, Heather Watts, and their stellar likes, Feigen's letter offers a straightforward plea for Alexander's appointment, largely because she is an artist. (The dealer confirmed to me that Alexander is a long-time friend and that his sister used to represent the actress.)

But, as Feigen noted, Alexander's name had been under consideration before he inserted himself into the public discussion in March. (I first heard her mentioned as a candidate in January.) According to the heads of numerous arts and lobbying groups, Alexander's candidacy was urged by advisers to Hillary Rodham Clinton-primarily by her deputy chief of staff, Melanne Verveer. (Verveer would not comment, on the record, for this column.) The former Washington head of People for the American Way, Verveer is one of several Clinton staffers and advisers drawn from the liberal lobbying group founded by producer Norman Lear. Feigen also noted that PAW's New York director, Barbara Handman, was "in touch" about Alexander before he wrote his March 11 letter. (Handman said that "He called me to ask if he should send his letter and I said, 'Why not?'")

Is there a People for the American Way cabal running the federal government, as the right-wing Washington Times has implied? Not exactly. Verveer, for instance, was friends with both Clintons long before People for the American Way existed. But Alexander does embody PAW's public relations approach to problem solving. As one arts lobbyist put it, "Having originated in Hollywood, they're starstruck and image-obsessed. They need to tackle, head on, the question of people's values and the manipulation of those values by the right." And despite its rhetoric and penchant for the spotlight, PAW hasn't always been there when the First Amendment going got tough. Several attorneys involved in the successful legal challenge to the NEA's decency language told me that PAW refused to join with them until they'd won their first Los Angeles courtroom victory last year. (PAW's Elliot Mincberg confirmed this.)

Does this make Alexander an unqualified pawn of PAW? Far from it. Alexander's assets include her access to Verveer and the White House, along with the credibility she brings as an artist and not as a bureaucrat. On the down side, conventional wisdom inside the Beltway vastly overestimates the importance of Alexander's star power. Jesse Helms and his ilk aren't likely to let a few Tony and Oscar nominations deter their grandstanding about the NEA. It's likely, too, that the White House west wing underestimates Alexander's potential interest in policy-, as well as pronouncement-, making. (Alexander won't be available for interviews until after her confirmation hearing.)

According to sources in New York and Washington, White House aides are close to selecting three key NEA deputies, allowing Alexander to be an arts "ambassador," rather than an administrator. (This is known as the "Kitty Carlisle Hart strategy" in honor of our own, similarly constituted, New York State Council on the Arts.) The three likely deputies-to-be are: Alexander (Sandy) Crary as liaison to Capital Hill (Crary is professional staff member for Senator Claiborne Pell, chair of the Senate's NEA oversight committee), Ana Steele, a long-time NEA staffer, as the agency's internal administrator, and Ellen McCulloch-Lovell (who is Senator Patrick Leahy's chief of staff and former head of the Vermont Council on the Arts) as liaison to state and local arts agencies. Asked about an upcoming NEA appointment, McCulloch-Lovell replied, "That's news to me," although she admitted that there have been "discussions" about her assuming the position; Crary denied that he will be the arts agency's next political liaison.