In the Arts: House Panel OK’s NEA, NEH Budget Boosts

A Congressional subcommittee has approved legislation giving the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities fiscal-year 2010 budgets of $170-million each, The New York Times reports.

The measure provides each agency with $15-million more than it got in fiscal 2009 and $9-million more than President Barack Obama proposed for 2010. It now goes to a Senate subcommittee.

In other arts news, a Wall Street Journal opinion column assesses the president’s selections of Jim Leach and Rocco Landesman, respectively, to head the humanities and arts endowments. David A. Smith, a Baylor University lecturer and author of a book on politics and the arts, calls the choices “quite good” and says they signal that Mr. Obama does not think the agencies need great change.

Also, the Los Angeles Times reports that the philanthropist Eli Broad is promising “an amazing turnaround” for the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles.

And Cecilia Fajardo-Hill has been appointed chief curator of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Calif., reports the Los Angeles Times.

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