IN AN ADMINISTRATION THAT HAD NO SHORTAGE OF THEM...:

Gioia Leaves NEA After Changing Debate Over Arts Funding (KATE TAYLOR, September 12, 2008, NY Sun)

Among the programs Mr. Gioia initiated are Shakespeare in American Communities, a program that funds professional theater companies to tour Shakespeare productions in schools; the Big Read, which encourages communities to read and discuss one of 26 selected works of American and world literature; NEA Jazz Masters, which includes both live performances and educational resources about jazz; Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest for high school students, and Operation Homecoming, which provides writing workshops for troops and their spouses.

During Mr. Gioia's tenure, the NEA has also produced several major research reports, including "Reading at Risk" (2004), which found dramatic declines in adult reading of literature; "The Arts and Civic Engagement" (2006), which showed that people who participate in the arts also participate in other civic activities, and "Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005" (2008), a nationwide look at artists' demographic and employment patterns.

Under Mr. Gioia, the NEA has also dramatically broadened the geographic impact of its funding through an initiative called Challenge America, which awards grants to small- and midsize organizations that bring art to underserved populations. Previously, in an average year, direct grants reached only three-quarters of the country, as measured by congressional district. Since 2005, grants have reached at least one organization in every congressional district.

"I can go into a congressman's office and ask him to name any high school in his district, and we've been there," Mr. Gioia said. "That changes the conversation."

The NEA's grants are largely one-to-one matching grants — that is, they require that the recipient get the same amount of funding from a private source, as well.

"The NEA does not subsidize the arts: We give the grants that make a project possible," Mr. Gioia said, offering what is clearly a finely honed argument. "If we give [our] grant, it tells other potential funders that on a national basis this project was selected as of the highest quality." An organization can go to a potential funding source and say, "'[I]f you don't match this we'll lose it,'" Mr. Gioia said. "It gives it a level of urgency. And that's the leverage that makes the American system, which is largely privately funded, work better."

...Mr. Gioia might have been the most effective appointment.

MORE:
Farewell Mapplethorpe, Hello Shakespeare : The NEA, the W. way. (Roger Kimball, 2004, National Review)

Within a matter of months, Mr. Gioia has transformed that moribund institution into a vibrant force for the preservation and transmission of artistic culture. He has cut out the cutting edge and put back the art. Instead of supporting repellent "transgressive" freaks, he has instituted an important new program to bring Shakespeare to communities across America. And by Shakespeare I mean Shakespeare, not some PoMo rendition that portrays Hamlet in drag or sets A Midsummer Night's Dream in a concentration camp. (Check the website www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org for more information.)

Mr. Gioia is moving on other fronts as well. He has hired a number of able deputies who care about art and understand that what the public wants is more access to good art — opera, poetry, theater, literature — not greater exposure to social pathology dressed up as art. After a couple of decades of cultural schizophrenia, the NEA has become a clear-sighted, robust institution intent on bringing important art to the American people.

It's quite odd, really. People keep telling us — that is, professors and CNN commentators and Hollywood actors keep telling us — how very stupid President Bush is. Yet everywhere one looks he is supporting some of the most intelligent and dynamic people ever to occupy their cultural posts. Dana Gioia at the NEA, his counterpart Bruce Cole at the National Endowment for the Humanities, Leon Kass and his panel of distinguished scientists and philosophers at the President's Council on Bioethics (see their website www.bioethics.gov to get a sense of the good work they are doing on clarifying the enormous moral issues surrounding the debate over biotechnology). The Left keeps screaming about how dim George Bush is, but in the meantime, he has illuminated one area of public life after another with immensely talented and articulate people.

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