Advocacy

After receiving confirmation from the US Senate last Friday, Jim Leach was sworn in as the ninth chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). A Republican, Leach previously served southeastern Iowa for thirty years in the US House of Representatives, where he chaired the Banking and Financial Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. He also founded and cochaired the Congressional Humanities Caucus.

After leaving Congress in 2007, Leach was John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs in Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. In September 2007, he took a year’s leave of absence from Princeton to serve as the interim director of the Institute of Politics and a lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In a recent staff “town hall” meeting about a new “bridging cultures” theme for the NEH, Leach said, “In an era where declining civility increasingly hallmarks domestic politics and where anarchy has taken root in many parts of the world, it is imperative that cultural differences at home and abroad be respectfully understood, rather than irrationally denigrated.”

Leach graduated from Princeton, received a master’s degree in Soviet politics from the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University, and did additional graduate studies at the London School of Economics. He also holds eight honorary degrees and has received numerous awards, including the Sidney R. Yates Award for Distinguished Public Service to the Humanities from the National Humanities Alliance; the Woodrow Wilson Award from Johns Hopkins; the Adlai Stevenson Award from the United Nations Association; the Edgar Wayburn Award from the Sierra Club; the Wayne Morse Integrity in Politics Award; the Norman Borlaug Award for Public Service; and the Wesley Award for Service to Humanity.

An untitled bill introduced last week in the US Senate may loosen recent government restrictions on fractional gifts of works of art to museums, reports Shelly Banjo of the Wall Street Journal. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), whose state contains many important art museums, patrons, and philanthropists, is sponsoring S 1605, which would reform the rules regulating fractional charitable donations of tangible personal property.

Fractional gifts—which allow Americans to give partial ownership rights of an artwork to a museum or charitable organization and take an income-tax deduction for the donated portion of its value—were common practice in the museum world until 2006, when provisions put into the Pension Protection Act of 2006 by Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) made partial gifts less attractive for donors. (Namely, that work must be fully donated within ten years of the initial fractional gift, and that the value of the artwork is capped when the first gift is made.) Since then, museums noticed that the practice of fractional gifts has nearly disappeared.

Here’s more background information on fractional gifts in the New York Times in 2006 and 2008.

On Friday, August 7, 2009, the US Senate confirmed Rocco Landesman, a Broadway theater producer, as the tenth chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Nominated by President Barack Obama, Landesman succeeds Dana Gioia, who resigned in January 2009. Patrice Walker Powell, the NEA’s deputy chairman for state, regions, and local arts agencies, had served as acting chairman in the interim.

Upon his confirmation Landesman said, “I am honored to receive the Senate’s vote of confirmation. I look forward to serving the nation as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. I believe this is an auspicious time for the NEA and the country. Art is essential to the civic, economic, and cultural vitality of our nation. It reflects who we are and what we stand for—freedom of expression, imagination, and vision. I am eager to work with our many partners to bring quality arts programs to neighborhoods and communities across the country.”

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Landesman pursued his undergraduate education at Colby College and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and earned a doctorate in dramatic literature at the Yale School of Drama. At the completion of his course work, he stayed at the school for four years, working as an assistant professor.

His ensuing career has been a hybrid of commercial, philanthropic, and artistic engagements. In 1977, he left Yale to start a private investment fund, which he ran until his appointment in 1987 as president of Jujamcyn, a company that owns and operates five Broadway theaters. Before and after joining Jujamcyn, Landesman produced Broadway shows, the most notable of which are Big River (1985 Tony for best musical), Angels in America, and The Producers (2001 Tony for best musical). In 2005, he bought Jujamcyn and managed it until President Obama announced his intention to nominate him to the NEA chairmanship.

Landesman has also been active on numerous boards, including the Municipal Arts Society; an advocacy organization concerned with New York City’s public spaces and preservation; the Times Square Alliance, which has radically changed the heart of the city by improving its safety, sanitation, and aesthetic; and the Educational Foundation of America. Over the years, he returned to the Yale School of Drama and Yale Rep to teach.

Photo: Michael Eastman.