During the Bush administration, the quarterly meetings of the National Council on the Arts were often the stuff of drama.
Protests erupted in the bland, fluorescent-lit room at the Old Post Office Building here. Activists hurled accusations at the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; security guards circled ominously.
Tension enveloped the room as members of the presidentially appointed council viewed art to determine whether it was moral enough for public funding.
But at the post-election meeting of the NEA`s advisory board Friday, high drama turned to muted melodrama, passion to pathos, an aura of agitation to an air of resignation.
”I leave here proud to have served, proud to have been part of the endowment and with no regrets,” said acting chairwoman and Bush appointee Anne-Imelda Radice. She and other political appointees will depart the agency by Bill Clinton`s inauguration in January.
More Top Picks Best Dive Computers
But even as the final curtain began its descent on 12 years of Republican rule, Radice delivered a parting speech defending the administration. In an address reminiscent of the themes of the failed Bush campaign, Radice alluded to ”values” and decried an ”anything goes” attitude. ”We have begun the dialogue about what government money can fund, what it should fund and perhaps what it should avoid,” she said.
Since taking over after John Frohnmayer was fired by Bush in February, Radice has been lauded by conservatives and denounced by arts leaders for succumbing to White House pressure and rejecting controversial grants.
”I think I was unjustly criticized. That`s history,” Radice said, contending that her decisions helped get the NEA`s $174.4 million budget through Congress without content restrictions.
In her farewell remarks, she repeated her position that the chairman holds ultimate power over the democratic peer-panel system that has been the cornerstone of the NEA since 1965.
But there were no protests, no impassioned speeches by poets, no rebellious whispers.
In fact, an ebullient NEA staff already was writing a new script for the agency. Staff members, who sat grimly at past meetings, spoke of the change in administrations with glee. ”The mood is upbeat. People are feeling expectant and hopeful,” one assistant program director said.
NEA insiders distributed-but did not wear-buttons bearing the slogan
”Arrivederci Radice,” while several council members paraded their enthusiasm.
”It is all for the better. Things couldn`t have been worse,” said Harvey Lichtenstein, executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The council voted to form a subcommittee to assist the Clinton transition team.
As one story came to a close, it is not certain whether a new era of enlightenment will arise soon at the NEA. Clinton did not take a public stand on the arts during the campaign, and Arkansas is ranked 49th out of 50 states and six territories in terms of state arts funding, with a budget of just over $1 million.
But Cliff Baker, artistic director of the Arkansas Repertory Theater in Little Rock, described the governor Friday as an arts enthusiast.