ROCCO IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Submitted by Tommer on November 3, 2009
Veteran Broadway theater producer Rocco Landesman, off to a rocky start in his new gig as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), demonstrated at a meeting of arts funders in Brooklyn two weeks ago that he had no plans to change his act. In the first major speech since assuming his post in mid-August (a keynote address at the annual conference of Grantmakers in the Arts), the chairman acknowledged the “reconstructive” work of his predecessors, Dana Gioia and Bill Ivey, in rebuilding the agency’s “credibility—good grant by good grant.”
He then said: “It’s time now to move the ball down the field.”