Ray Mark Rinaldi writes in the Denver Post to describe the vacancy at the top of the NEA:
[Rocco Landesman's] departure gives President Obama a chance to put someone new in the job, a leader who can operate less in fear of being called to the Capitol to explain a grant for an offbeat performance art piece and more toward carrying a banner that puts culture back at the forefront of American identity.
Some actor who can flash a smile on behalf of arts education, some tech guru who can dazzle with ideas about how the Internet can bring Shakespeare to rural areas, some corporate executive who can convince us that our art economy can rise through public-private partnerships, something Landesman pushed effectively, but never got any juice from.
Our next NEA chair needs to make the fine arts trendy, return talk about poetry, literature and classical music to the national conversation. He needs Twitter followers.I think the areas of substance are what we need to drive. Although our next head of the NEA should be a great face of the agency, I think he needs to drive controversy by proposing to change the face of the NEA.
Oh you know what, why pretend. I'm really writing this blog post to repeat that Adam Huttler should fill the vacancy.
