Obama appoints painter, novelist and four non-artists to President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanties

(2-9-10) President Obama has picked six people to join the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanties; two of them, painter-photographer Chuck Close and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short-story writer Jhumpa Lahiri, will become the first visual artist and writer on an advisory panel weighted with actors and business people. No one is sure what this committee actually does.