Memo to President Obama, from the arts world: This is not what we had in mind.
During the campaign, candidate Obama raised high hopes among artists and arts institutions: He “got” their importance, even publishing an arts-policy statement. After the election, Quincy Jones fueled expectations with a crusade to create a Cabinet-level Minister of Culture or an arts czar at the White House. Dreams of bigger budgets for, and prominent chairs of, the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities, exploded like Twitter.
