“As the news spread that the White House budget office had included the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities on a list of programs it was considering trying to eliminate, arts leaders … began making plans to fight for their survival,” write Michael Cooper, Michael Paulson, Graham Bowley, Robin Pogrebin, and Randy Kennedy in Sunday’s (2/19) New York Times. “A prominent Broadway producer pledged to make the case for the value of the arts directly to the Trump administration. The St. Louis Symphony drafted an email urging its board members to call their elected representatives…. Together, the three programs that may be targeted account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of annual federal spending…. Arts administrators around the nation said in interviews that culture had enjoyed bipartisan support in recent years…. Andrew Kipe, the executive director of the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky … said that orchestra officials had already planned to go to Washington on March 20 for an advocacy day organized by Americans for the Arts … but that now the trip had taken on greater urgency.”
Posted February 21, 2017
