Culture Chronicle

Cultural Agency Administrators Plead with House Panel to Pass Their Budgets
The Washington Post - April 15, 2010
By Jacqueline Trescott

The congressmen were hearing what they wanted to hear.

"We want to run a tight ship and maximize every federal dollar," promised G. Wayne Clough, the secretary of the Smithsonian, asking a congressional panel to approve $797 million for the museum's 2011 budget, an increase of more than $30 million over the previous year.

Clough was one of a parade of cultural agency administrators who appeared this week before the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the purse strings of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center and others. This year saw Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) take over the chairmanship of the panel even as his fellow members pressed arts administrators on how the tight dollars were being spent.

The sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday were serious yet chummy, with Moran telling Rocco Landesman, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, "This is one of the most exciting aspects of the appropriations bill." The temperature level in the hearing room Tuesday did appear to rise a bit in the presence of Hollywood types such as Kyle MacLachlan and Jeff Daniels, who testified about the value of arts in education and as economic engines. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) even claimed to be jealous of Earl A. Powell III, who directs the National Gallery. "You have one of the greatest jobs in Washington," noted Simpson. For the full article, click here