In Thursday’s (4/15) Washington Post, Jacqueline Trescott writes, “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. … 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. … Whether the congressmen were asking about the NEA, Smithsonian or Kennedy Center programs, they wanted to know about outreach—particularly to rural areas.”
Posted April 16, 2010
