Ivanka Trump performs in The Nutcracker (Photo: Ivanka Trump/Twitter)

Let’s start with the positive, though I’m afraid that won’t last long.

In her New York Times article, “Might Ivanka Trump Speak Up If Her Father Guts The Arts?,” Robin Pogrebin makes a series of suppositions rooted in an aspect of arts education that is rarely discussed. That element is the reality that the vast majority of students – elementary, secondary, university – who study or participate in the arts won’t probably go on to careers in the arts. However, their exposure might yield a lifelong affinity. This isn’t something that’s unique among the many subjects students are exposed to in education – many people study biology without becoming scientists or doctors. Yet whereas one who retains an interest in biology can’t necessarily spend a free evening in an operating theatre, someone who was exposed to or participated in the arts in their youth may well choose to attend the opera, the ballet, the symphony and so on for the remainder of their lives.

Under that theory, coupled with reports that Ms. Trump and her husband Jared Kushner may have intervened with her father on behalf of LGBTQ rights, Ms. Pogrebin theorizes that as a childhood student of ballet and present-day collector of fine art, Ms. Trump might emerge as an arts advocate on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts. It’s a lovely theory, and if it came to pass, it would no doubt be welcomed, but it is spun from the slightest of threads.

In fact, Ms. Pogrebin’s review of Ms. Trump’s personal arts history is formed from very little evidence. It rises only to the level of article, as opposed to editorial or op-ed, because it is padded out with a lengthy quotation from Ms. Trump’s 2009 book The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life about her dance lessons and – in an experience shared by virtually no one else on the planet – her youthful fear that attendance by her neighbor Michael Jackson at a Nutcracker performance in which she had a role would distract from the event itself. In all, in an article of 1,045 words (as calculated by Microsoft Word), Ms. Pogrebin offers us 504 words directly from Ms. Trump’s book, 48% of the total piece.

Certainly no one can call the extended quotation from The Trump Card fake news, because it is a) legitimately a quote from the book, and b) like any work of autobiography, the entirely subjective point of view of the author (and perhaps their ghostwriters, should that apply). But the thesis of Ms. Pogrebin’s piece is essentially invented. “Might” asks the headline; “could” Ms. Trump “emerge,” wonders Ms. Pogrebin. In fact, when Pogrebin requested an interview on the matter, all she got back was a prepared 67-word ballet-centric statement in support of the arts, which makes up another 6% of the article. Given the opportunity, Ms. Trump did not offer any solace to the NEA and its supporters. “Might” her failure to win a role in Les Misérables be working against the interests of the NEA?

The National Endowment for the Arts and the arts in America are certainly in need of support. At this time, the NEA may well need a savior. Could that savior be Ivanka Trump? Sure. But there’s no evidence on the table that she will be. This Times article is all supposition, not even managing to produce anonymous sources.

In covering the newest threat to the NEA, Pogrebin’s 1,000+ words would have had more value to the national conversation had they involved seeking out the arts backgrounds, writings and statements by members of the US Senate, particularly the Republicans, because the arts aren’t a strictly partisan issue. Senators may not be able to whisper in Daddy’s ear to potentially rescue pet projects, but it would only take a few Senators standing fast in support of the NEA, blocking the budget, to have an effect that doesn’t require the manipulation of family ties in order to determine the trajectory of one small program with a great impact on American life. If the public, if advocates, knew more about the stances of Senators, then the American people might know with whom they could best make their case, or how little chance there may still be.

One last note: we don’t know whether Ms. Trump spent much time taking humanities-related electives while getting her economics degree at the Wharton School, or whether she liked Sherlock, Downton or tales from Lake Wobegon. Does this mean the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are utterly out of luck? Sad.

November 21, 2013

President Barack Obama

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC  20500

Dear President Obama:

There was an anniversary yesterday, and I’m willing to bet that you forgot all about it. You didn’t need to send a card, but it would have been nice if you’d made some gesture of recognition, of concern. Presidents often do that sort of thing, especially when they’re stalling about something. But since you were silent, I’ll remind you: yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the day that Rocco Landesman announced his resignation as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Now I can understand if you don’t remember the letter I wrote you about this in June, expressing my concern about this issue; it might have registered somewhere in your press office, but there are probably lots of bloggers yapping about this issue or that every day. Yet in August, your inaction on this topic was written about on successive days by Robin Pogrebin in The New York Times and Frank Rizzo in The Hartford Courant, and surely those are outlets that your media team pays closer attention to. But months have passed since then, still without a word.

I wouldn’t, as David Letterman says, give your problems to a monkey on a rock, especially with the current Obamacare debacle and the Senate denying hearings on some of your judicial nominations. But as a citizen who places the arts very highly among issues dear to me, your seeming abdication of responsibility or interest in the National Endowment for the Arts and its empty chairmanship has become not only absurd but insulting.  It’s bad enough that the NEA is a frequent and easy target for those who want to carve up the budget willy-nilly or wage some fatuous war on culture, but without the full force of the presidency behind the agency, the government’s commitment to the arts (and the humanities, since the NEH is in the same boat) suggests that they are of no value to anyone at all in Washington, since it is the Democrats who usually speak up most strongly in defense of government funding of the arts.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, if you don’t have the time to have someone on your staff deal with this, then by all means nominate Joan Shikegawa, the acting chair, and let her fully assume the leadership mantle. The agency may be functioning as it stands, but you’re hobbling it by not appointing an officially vested leader. It’s also worth mentioning that in the past few weeks, two key staff positions have also opened up at the NEA, as Ralph Remington, head of the theatre and musical theatre program leaves for a job with Actors Equity, and the agency’s chief of staff Jamie Bennett decamps for ArtPlace America. I’m not saying there’s any connection here, simply that at a time when the agency has important decisions to make very soon, you have proven unable to make one after a full year’s time.

I take no pleasure in watching you struggle these days, but after an almost playful tone in my prior communiqué, my sense of humor on this topic is pretty much gone. I still support you, Mr. President, but I’m impatient now. Surely someone in your staff can vet candidates and get someone appropriate ready for your review. But in the meantime, your silence is sending a very negative message about the future of government funding of the arts and the value of the arts in Americans’ lives. You disappoint me and my colleagues and to be honest Mr. President, when you start making us angry, you’re really chipping away at your base.

Sincerely,

Howard Sherman

Addendum: 20 minutes after I posted this letter, Mark Swed, music critic at The Los Angeles Times, posted an excellent essay about President Kennedy’s one-time role as “arts patron in chief.” It speaks directly to the leadership gap in this area today and throws the problem of the NEA into even greater relief.