See Jane run

Actress and Brookline native Jane Alexander is stepping down as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. If her replacement doesn't have a radical plan, it could be curtains for the agency.

Culture Watch by Jason Gay

It was the role of a lifetime. In the fall of 1993, shortly after starring in a Broadway comedy, actress Jane Alexander found herself center stage in Washington, D.C., tapped by President Clinton to chair the National Endowment for the Arts. The part was challenging and intense. Alexander, the first working artist to lead the NEA, had been thrust into a meaty Capitol melodrama, with her organization cast against a rabid Republican Congress vowing to sink the agency once and for all.

The GOP almost stole the show. During Alexander's four-year tenure, the Republican-led Congress sawed the NEA's annual budget nearly in half, from $166 million in 1993 to its current $98 million allotment. The cuts slashed funding for arts programs around the country. Here in Massachusetts, NEA grants fell from $6.3 million in 1993 to a little over $3 million this year. Congress also pressured the NEA to stop awarding grants to individuals, because in the past such stipends had funded some controversial works of art. Today, NEA money must go to artistic organizations and cannot be given directly to actors, painters, musicians, or other artists.

Through all the turmoil, Alexander, a Brookline native known for her steely demeanor both on stage and off, focused upon survival. When she announced last week that she will step down when her term ends before the end of the month, she was praised simply for keeping the agency alive. "She did an amazing job under fire," says Bruce Marks, artistic director emeritus of the Boston Ballet. "With anyone else, we might have lost the endowment entirely."

Indeed, there's little doubt that Alexander did a gutsy job of protecting the NEA. But as she bows out, the American arts community remains in crisis. An NEA report released this week, titled "American Canvas," concludes that existing public and private resources cannot meet the financial needs of the country's widening pool of artists and artistic organizations. While putting some of the blame on America's commercialized culture, the report also blasts the artistic community for an elitist image that alienates many people. This pattern of alienation, the report states, made it politically feasible for conservative D'Artagnans to slash the federal arts budget and eliminate individual grants.

As Alexander departs, it's time for the NEA to absorb this critique and reexamine itself. Recently, a Senate-House committee authorized the endowment to explore alternative means of funding its mission. Though most of the discussion so far has centered on private-public fundraising, there's also an opportunity for a broader reassessment of government's role in the creation of culture. Such discussion is critical. As the embattled artistic community seeks to improve its image, the government needs to decide whether it will champion the dreams of American artists, or abandon them entirely.

On to part 2

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.