The Arts and Obama

So, as you all know, I'm a big fan of the arts.  And question #2 in my second ever post, asked about Obama's attitude towards the arts and arts policy.  So I researched a little, and here's what I found:

The official White House policy on the Arts:

Arts

Our nation's creativity has filled the world's libraries, museums, recital halls, movie houses, and marketplaces with works of genius. The arts embody the American spirit of self-definition. As the author of two best-selling books —Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope — President Obama uniquely appreciates the role and value of creative expression.

My take?  The White House is underwhelming me.

The only article I've seen that discusses the state of the arts in the US here, via the NYT. Quote #1:

Given the battle in Congress to include money for the arts in the stimulus package, cultural groups say Washington officials still fail to recognize artists as workers. “The third violinist in a chamber orchestra goes out and buys groceries just like everybody else,” said Bill Ivey, a former chairman of the Endowment.

Teresa Eyring, the executive director of the Theater Communications Group, which represents the country’s nonprofit theaters, said: “Local and regional elected officials and community leaders are seeing and talking about the connection between the arts and the overall health of their communities. The same sensibility hasn’t quite landed at the national level.”

So, at the very least there's SOMETHING going on here.  But what really scares me about Obama's attitude towards the arts is this:

The staff member charged with the arts portfolio, Kareem Dale, is relatively young (in his 30s) and potentially overextended (he is already special assistant to the president for disability policy) with little arts experience. And his position has yet to be defined. Mr. Dale is expected to serve temporarily and to be replaced by someone with full-time responsibility for the arts, said a White House official, who asked to remain anonymous because personnel issues had yet to be resolved.

Can anyone say frightening?  Obama is generally someone who goes for well-qualified people in office.  Plus, we still don't have an official director for the National Endowment for the Arts.  Which is a completely different kettle of fish, with its own problems, like the fact that the NEA's budget still doesn't measure up to the levels of funding it had in 1992, over 10 years ago.

OK, fine.  Obama is overextended.  But the arts are a great way of influencing the mind of the populace (see Shepard Fairey's HOPE poster) and to neglect an office with so much cultural power is seriously ill-informed.  Besides - if he could just appoint ONE person to oversee these issues, he wouldn't have to do much else.  Isn't that what you have assistants for?

And Last, but certainly not least, here's a GREAT post that lays out all the reasons to have a powerful arts coordinator in the US - Green discusses all the problems in the arts world that would be alleviated by a central arts policy that at the VERY least updates the NEA.