NEA Tells Artists: Serve the State

Alex Adrianson / September 22, 2009

Yesterday, the new Breitbart Web site BigGovernment.com broke more corruption news by releasing an audio recording and transcript of a controversial conference call that took place in early August between officials at the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and various people in the arts community who had supported President Obama’s campaign.

When the story of the call first broke a few weeks ago, the NEA denied that it had organized the call and also denied that the call was an effort to encourage artists—for whom the NEA (i.e., the taxpayer) is the single largest source of arts funding—to produce works that support the president and his policy initiatives. As the transcripts shows, however, participants on the call—including Patrick Courrielche, the reporter who originally broke the story—could not but perceive it as an attempt to encourage artists to use their art to support the president’s agenda. Here are some choice excerpts:

Michael Skolnick, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons:

I have been asked by the folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that we had. We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country. (more…)