Barry has a politely worded and very on-the-nose response to Kalpen Modi's time as White House Liason to the arts. My sense was somewhat the same. I'm glad that Barry did his due diligence and tried to poke around to get an official response.
Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be much of one yet. According to what Barry heard, most of the stuff has been interfacing with lobby groups -- after all, Americans for the Arts may be our lobbyists, but they are lobbyists. Otherwise, it was mostly working with the different arts organizations within the Obama Administration.
In a way, some of the expectations I had around Kalpen Modi came from the fact that he was a celebrity. I presumed that the choice of Modi would be an attempt to bring the arts more into the public sphere of discussion. And, interestingly, there was some small gesture at bringing the arts into the public sphere of discussion -- but that was by Michelle Obama, through the highly publicized jazz workshop at the White House, and similar events. Perhaps my expectations were also set by the name "Office of Public Engagement."
At any rate, Barry's call for an exit interview from Kalpen Modi would be fantastic. I hope that Kalpen Modi does a debrief somewhere -- if not Barry's blog, then somewhere else.
