CAA News Today

The White House released its FY 2003 budget proposal on February 4, 2002, in which President George W. Bush calls for dramatic increases in spending for defense (a $48 billion increase), homeland security, and the war on terrorism, and makes dramatic cuts in other programs. In light of this, the nation’s cultural institutions seem to have fared fairly well.

Bush has requested almost $117.4 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (a $2.1 million or a 1.7 percent increase from FY 2002) and about $126.9 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities (a $2 million or a 1.9 percent increase from last year). The increases for these are aimed at funding the full costs associated with the proposed legislative change in accounting for retirement and health-benefits costs; program budgets are identical with the present fiscal year.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services’s projected budget of $210.7 million is an increase of 8.1 percent over last year. The administration’s budget request for the Smithsonian Institution calls for an increase of $9 million; this figure represents a 1.8 percent increase from the previous year. The total $528 million budget proposal for the Smithsonian includes $10 million for the construction of the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as $5.2 million for staffing and exhibition planning for the new museum. Funding has also been proposed for continuing the renovation work on the historic Patent Office Building, which houses the National Portrait Gallery.

Because of successful lobbying by arts advocates, the Fiscal Year 2002 Interior Appropriations bill also includes funds for the Center for Materials Research and Education at the Smithsonian Institution, despite the fact that the Bush administration previously had accepted the Smithsonian leaderships proposal to close the center. It will remain open for at least another year.

Heritage Preservation received a Chairman’s Emergency Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for “A Survey and Report on the Extent of Damage and Loss to Cultural Resources after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks.” The project will collect information about the impact of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 99 museums, libraries, and archives; 67 historic landmarks; and 245 works of outdoor sculpture in lower Manhattan, along with significant art collections and business archives maintained by many nonprofit organizations. A report will document the extent of damage and loss to cultural resources and the responses of museums, libraries, and archives to this unprecedented tragedy.

For more information on this project, please visit Heritage Preservation’s website at www.heritagepreservation.org.

The art historian Bruce Cole was sworn in December 11, 2001, as the eighth chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Previously, he taught for twenty-eight years at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he was distinguished professor of fine arts and chairman of the Department of the History of Art.

Cole has written fourteen books, many of them about the Renaissance. They include The Renaissance Artist at Work; Sienese Painting in the Age of the Renaissance: Italian Art, 1250-1550; The Relation of Art to Life and Society; Titian and Venetian Art, 1450-1590; and Art of the Western World: From Ancient Greece to Post-Modernism. His most recent book is The Informed Eye: Understanding Masterpieces of Western Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Cole received his BA from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, his MA from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and his Ph.D. in 1969 from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Cole’s relationship with the NEH dates from 1971, when he was awarded a fellowship to do research on “The Origins and Development of Early Florentine Painting.” He has served as a panelist in the NEH’s peer-review system, and in 1992 was named by President George H. W. Bush to the National Council on the Humanities, the NEH’s twenty-six-member advisory board, where he served for seven years.

On November 5, 2001, President George W. Bush signed the Fiscal Year 2002 Interior Appropriations bill into law, increasing funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The NEA received a $10.5 million increase; the NEH received a $4.5 million increase; and the IMLS received a $2.1 million increase, compared to FY 2001 funding levels.

Susan Ball, executive director of College Art Association, has been elected vice president of the National Humanities Alliance, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., that speaks on behalf of individuals engaged in research, writing, teaching, and public presentations of the humanities. Her term of service as vice president will last until May 2002.

The Senate confirmed Bruce Cole as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on September 14, 2001. Cole, an art historian, will teach during the fall term at Indiana University, and will take up his duties at the NEH in December of this year.

Michael Hammond, currently dean of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Tex., has been selected by President Bush to chair the National Endowment for the Arts. Hammond was educated at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisc., and Delhi University in India and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England. He has earned degrees in philosophy, psychology, and physiology. As a composer and conductor, Hammond has written numerous scores for theater in the United States and abroad. His interests include the music of Southeast Asia, Western medieval and Renaissance music, and the relationships between music and the brain.

His nomination will be sent to the U.S. Senate for confirmation.

The Mid-America Arts Alliance (MAAA) Executive Director Henry Moran has accepted an appointment by President George W. Bush to serve as executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. At MAAA, a nonprofit regional arts organization based in Kansas City, Mo., Moran has worked in partnership with state arts agencies, with the National Endowment for the Arts, and with foundations and corporations on regional, multiregional, national, and international arts and humanities programs.

The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities was created by Presidential Executive Order in 1982 to encourage private-sector support of the arts and to increase public appreciation of the value of the arts and the humanities through projects, publications, and meetings.

Partisan bickering is likely to be replaced with a concerted effort to quickly complete work on the appropriations bills in light of the recent terrorist attacks. Many of the controversial appropriations issues are likely to take a back seat, and spending bills could be consolidated under one large piece of legislation to expedite the process.

In other news, three senators who vehemently opposed national funding of artists and the arts-Jesse Helms (R-NC), Strom Thurmond (R-SC), and Phil Gramm (R-TX)-have announced their intention to retire from the U.S. Senate.

-Marta Teegen, CAA manager of governance, advocacy, and special projects