EDITH KURZWEIL
Jane Alexander Invites Her Troops
When Jane Alexander, the new chairman of the National Endowment
for the Arts, called the first conference to convene her constituency,
ART
-21,
she knew that she was facing an enom10US challenge: to unite
not only a diverse and multicultural population, but to navigate among
two irreconcilable interests: the proponents of so-called high culture for
the preservation of whose art the NEA originally was founded; and the
arts activists who long ago had taken over via political coalitions, radical
agitation and control over the appointment of decision-making panelists.
In fact, prestigious symphony orchestras, major museums and the best
ballet companies were not represented at Chicago's posh Hyatt Regency
Hotel. They were invited but knew that the deck was stacked against
them, and that they loathed, or at least would be made uncomfortable,
by the inevitable clamor for funds and by the attacks against what is
known as serious art. Still, Alexander forged on to unite all the disparate
groups under her broad, new umbrella by "connecting" artists to
American society by means of arts education. The "elitists," for whom
art is somehow related to meaningful and beautiful experience, perceived
this thrust as yet another step into the populism that abroad often has
made America the butt of jokes, and that turns art into entertainment.
But because an educational mission offers jobs and exposure to artists, in
communities and in schools, it appealed to the more moderate partici–
pants. Yet it did not satisfy the activists who had come to politicize the
NEA even further. They did not want to face the fact that Alexander
must make her argument to Congress, and even if Senator Jesse Helms,
who occasionally was sneerin gly referred to, were no threat to the
agency, it was clear from the onset that the Clinton administration is set
on moving this gravy train onto the superhighway of communication,
onto the road
to
the "global house" of the twenty-first century.
The meeting itself attracted over a thousand people. Jane
Alexander's charm, intelligence and diplomacy dominated, and she was
applauded as the potential Lady Bountiful. She put on a good show
which easily could have run amok. Her agenda was perfectly orchestrated
- beginning with her own and President Clinton's opening remarks (the
Editor's Note: This article was written before the current controversy over the
recent grant awards.
