Mr. Broadway Storms Capitol Hill (New York: The New York Times)
ROCCO LANDESMAN, the larger-than-life Broadway producer, was digging into a hefty cheese steak and fries in the Philadelphia train station one night last month, waiting to catch the Acela back to his new home in Georgetown.
Mr. Landesman, whose culinary tastes are not nearly as sophisticated as his tastes in theater, had a hankering for some Popeyes fried chicken. But, hey, this was Philadelphia, so he figured he’d have the cheese steak.
It had been a grueling day of touring art galleries and talking up local business leaders and city officials, another chapter in the self-education of Mr. Landesman, who last August traded his Broadway career for a government job: chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal grant-making agency. Ever since, he has been giving himself crash courses on the arts in American life and the peculiar customs of the nation’s capital.
Mr. Landesman is not exactly the Washington type; he is a fast-moving, risk-taking entrepreneur who is colorful (his passions include horse racing, gambling, baseball and alligator cowboy boots) and blunt. Now Mr. Broadway is busy transforming himself into Mr. Bureaucracy. It has been, he confesses, a bit of a challenge.
“You have to be very careful what you say,” he said, as his press secretary hustled to the table with bottles of chili sauce and Tabasco. Mr. Landesman took the chili sauce and kept talking.
“Everyone’s parsing every word that you utter, and I’m not used to that,” he said. “If the consequences are just you, it’s one thing. But everything has all these repercussions. I’m trying to find a balance because I have to be me, and I pride myself on being candid and direct and saying what I think. But occasionally I have to think about what I say.”
On Tuesday, the new, perhaps more politic Mr. Landesman will make his debut on Capitol Hill to testify about his agency’s 2011 proposed budget. In Washington budget testimony is a big deal: a chance for department chiefs to lay out their agendas and beg Congress for cash. Mr. Landesman, who is trying to use his star power to develop the Endowment into a catalyst that can generate far-reaching investment in the arts, has made clear that he has big ideas for his little agency.
The trouble is, he doesn’t have much money. On the up side, the culture wars that nearly put the agency out of business in the 1980s and 1990s now seem a thing of the past. But in an era of deep recession Washington is consumed with cutting the deficit, not spending more on the arts.
President Obama is requesting $161.3 million for the Endowment, the same as his request for the current fiscal year: a piddling sum in a city where budgets are typically measured in billions. Before coming to Washington, Mr. Landesman called the agency’s budget “pathetic.” Now, he insists, he will be “pounding the table” for it.
“Understandably, I don’t think the administration appreciates my complaining about the budget all the time,” he said. “If every head of every agency did that, you’d have a pretty unruly situation.” He paused for a moment to admonish himself: “I’ve got to cut down on the whining.”
So instead of just whining, Mr. Landesman has become politically creative, hitting the road to promote his new slogan, “Art Works.” It is a muscular phrase, intended to persuade Americans — including those Americans who happen to be members of Congress — that investment in art can build stronger communities and revive a flagging economy. Typically his tours are arranged by local foundations, key patrons of the arts. Always his mantra is the same: “Arts jobs are real jobs.”
Along the way he has become a kind of Pied Piper for the arts. In Peoria, Ill., a city he chose after sticking his foot in his mouth with an impolitic comment about the quality of theater there, he took in a local production of “Rent.” In Philadelphia he took a bus tour of the city’s famed murals. In San Diego he strolled through Balboa Park wearing yellow cowboy boots and a turquoise tie. And it was no accident that he turned up Monday in Idaho, home of the top Republican on the panel that controls Endowment financing.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Mr. Landesman has been sticking to his script, avoiding in-depth interviews as he prepares for his testimony. He is also quietly cultivating powerful allies in Mr. Obama’s cabinet, hoping to make an end run around his budget constraints by joining with agencies that have more money than his.
If the Transportation Department is paying for pedestrian walkways and light rail, Mr. Landesman reasons, why not bring in artists to paint murals? If the Housing and Urban Development Department is revitalizing blighted neighborhoods, why not include gallery space?
Continued at The New York Times...
Source: The New York Times, April 7, 2010
Author: Sheryl Gay Stolberg