Broadway producer and theatre owner, Rocco Landesman, has been nominated by President Obama to be the nation’s next Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Rocco’s experience in both the non-profit and commercial art worlds will enable him to see the merit of supporting unfettered long-term artistic development while recognizing the importance of the arts as an economic engine and urban development franchise. He will take over an agency that has drifted in a sea of political storms that have all but shipwrecked this once potent cultural force.
In 1996, The President’s Committee on the Art and Humanities commissioned me to conduct a study of the interplay of non-profit and commercial theatre. The resulting paper, “The Relationship Among National Endowment for the Arts Funding, the Not-for-Profit Theatre and Broadway with Regard to New Play Production,” is represented in the Committee’s Report to the President, “Creative America.” The report, published in 1997, stated that “over the past twenty years, 44 percent of the new plays produced on Broadway originated in the non-profit sector.” It continued by pointing out that “the peak period of play production in the non-profit sector coincided with the high point of grantmaking activity by the National Endowment to regional theatres.”
Rocco has the opportunity to restore the NEA in a way that will encourage artists and reward Americans on many levels. When President Kennedy spoke in 1963 in honor of poet Robert Frost, who had died earlier that year, he stated that “art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.” He concluded: ” I look forward to an America that will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.”
I wish this honest, intelligent, and bold leader all the best.
George Wachtel