*NEA chairman answers GOP concerns that his agency has a partisan agenda

Striking a polite, conciliatory note while asserting that there's nothing rotten in the state of the agency he's led for less than two months, National Endowment for the Arts chairman Rocco Landesman responded today to Senate Republicans' request for information about a controversial Aug.10 teleconference that led to the demotion, then resignation, of Yosi Sergant, the NEA's rookie director of communications.

Apart from Sergant's participation in the conference call, "I am unaware of the use of any taxpayer dollars for the...conference call or related activity," Landesman said in his letter to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. Enzi and his nine fellow Republican committee members last week wrote to Landesman, asking that he respond by today to their concerns, including whether NEA funds were being used to advance the Obama administration's legislative agenda on healthcare and other issues.

"This isolated incident, undertaken without agency approval and prior to my tenure, should in no way tarnish" the NEA's achievements and worth to the American public,  wrote Landesman, whose letter was made available to Culture Monster by Enzi's committee staff.

Landesman's response reiterated what he said in a previous written statement on the matter: that Sergant, a former L.A. public relations man who had helped organize and promote artist Shepard Fairey's pro-Obama poster campaign during the 2008 election, had used "inappropriate" language during the teleconference, but did not overstep any of the legal prohibitions against on-the-job politicking by federal employees.

Michelle Obama tells international audience why the arts matter

Michelle Obama hosted a concert this morning at the Pittsburgh Creative & Performing Arts School for its students and the spouses of international leaders deliberating at the G-20 economic summit.  She gave an 11-minute address about the arts as a prelude to performances by guests Sara Bareilles, Yo-Yo Ma and Trisha Yearwood. Here are  excerpts from her speech, from a transcript issued by the White House:

“We believe strongly that the arts aren't somehow an 'extra’ part of our national life, but instead we feel that the arts are at the heart of our national life. It is through our music, our literature, our art, drama and dance that we tell the story of our past and we express our hopes for the future. Our artists challenge our assumptions in ways that many cannot and do not. They expand our understandings, and push us to view our world in new and very unexpected ways….. 

"It's through this constant exchange -- this process of taking and giving, this process of borrowing and creating -- that we learn from each other and we inspire each other.  It is a form of diplomacy in which we can all take part….

“[T]oday ... we're presenting the gifts of these wonderful American artists to our friends from all around the world. And these artists are passing on the gift of their magnificent example to these young people who are here today, studying in this school -- showing them that if they dream big enough, and work hard enough, and believe in themselves, that they can do and achieve some uncommon things in their lifetime….

10 more GOP senators demand answers from the NEA about teleconference

Ten Republican senators have written to National Endowment for the Arts chairman Rocco Landesman, expressing concern that the Obama administration may have violated federal law by trying to use the agency for political purposes -- something the White House and NEA have denied.

The charges stem from an Aug. 10 teleconference in which the NEA's communications director urged members of the arts community to help Obama's efforts to spur volunteer community service.

Yosi Sergant was subsequently demoted by Landesman, and resigned Thursday. It was accepted effective immediately, an NEA spokeswoman said, adding that Sergant left voluntarily because he thought "he felt he was becoming a distraction for the agency."

Sergant, a former Los Angeles publicist, supported Obama's presidential bid and worked closely with artist Shepard Fairey on his independent "Obama Hope" poster campaign.

At the White House, the special counsel's offfice issued a memo to "White House staff and...agency and department heads," urging all hands to avoid "even the appearance of politicization" during "public outreach efforts" like the teleconference. The White House previously had issued a statement of regret about the incident.

Patrick Courrielche, a former employee of Sergant's with his own Los Angeles marketing company, was part of the group phone call and later posted a recording and transcript.  Writing on the Big Hollywood blog, Courrielche said the teleconference was improper political organizing on behalf of the president's legislative agenda. Courrielche also shared his concerns, and parts of the recording, on Glenn Beck's Fox News program.

NEA chairman explains communications director's demotion

"Loose lips sink ships" was a watchword in the U.S. Navy during World War II. In today's culture wars, what got scuttled was a former Los Angeles publicist's brief tenure as communications director of the National Endowment for the Arts, although he remains on the federal arts-grant agency's communications staff.

Rocco Landesman, the new NEA chairman, issued a written explanation today "to clarify the issues" surrounding an Aug. 10 conference call in which Yosi Sergant, representing the NEA, invited representatives from the arts world to get involved in President Obama's United We Serve volunteerism initiative. The teleconference got blogged about as an attempt to enlist artists on behalf of the White House's agenda, prompting Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to issue an open letter to the president expressing alarm over the politicization of the NEA, and suggesting that "this episode appears to merit congressional hearings and sustained oversight."

Landesman's statement reiterated the NEA's previous response that the purpose of the teleconference was supposed to be to inform the arts community of opportunities to take part in volunteerism programs, and "not a means to promote any legislative agenda."

Michelle Obama offers Warhol Museum trek to spouses of world leaders

While President Obama and leaders from 19 other world economic powers meet at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, Michelle Obama is scheduled to shepherd dignitaries' spouses through a day of arts-hopping Friday.

In the morning, they'll tour a local arts middle school/high school, the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School, where students will give a concert with Yo-Yo Ma, pop singer Sarah Bareilles and country music star Trisha Yearwood as ringers.

Then it's on to the Andy Warhol Museum, repository for the art and archives of a leading Pittsburgh native son. Lunch at the museum follows the tour, and Culture Monster wants to know whether the fare will include site-specific helpings of Campbell's soup.

The newest kid on Pittsburgh's cultural block, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, named for the playwright who set all but one of the 10 plays in his cycle on black America during the 20th century in his hometown's Hill District, opened Thursday and was hoping for summit-related action. "We didn't make the cut," says Shay Wafer, vice president for programming (and former managing director of L.A.'s Cornerstone Theatre Company). But, she added, "we're still hoping we might get a surprise. We're directly across the street from the convention center, and if they ask for a private tour, we'll be happy to give them one."

The Obamas got lots of attention -- not all of it positive -- when they took in a Broadway performance of Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" this year during one of their date nights. Some griped that the first couple and their security entourage shouldn't have shuttled up to Manhattan on the taxpayers' tab.

-- Mike Boehm

Related stories:

The latest news and analysis about the G20

The Obamas give their regards to Broadway

Photos: Michelle Obama; bust of Andy Warhol by Choi Jeong Hwa. Credits: Win McNamee/Getty Images, Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times.

Monster Mash: Gilbert's debut with N.Y. Phil; art stolen from Madoff home; Obama's cultural appointments

 

-- Taking his bow: Times music critic Mark Swed had the first review of Alan Gilbert's debut with the New York Philharmonic as music director.

-- Payback: A rusted steel sculpture has apparently been stolen from the Long Island home of convicted financier Bernard Madoff.

-- Over the rainbow: Andrew Lloyd Webber says he is writing six new songs for the upcoming London stage production of "The Wizard of Oz."

-- Budget crunch: Long Beach has cut $400,000 in funding for the Long Beach Museum of Art.

-- New cultural venue: The August Wilson Center for African American Culture is set to open today in the playwright's hometown of Pittsburgh.

-- Up in smoke: A house fire in the Hollywood Hills claims a Stradivarius violin, a Faberge egg and other artwork.

-- Economic boon: Boston art galleries are benefiting from the influx of movie production crews.

-- Forging ahead: London's Tate Modern will move ahead with a building extension designed by Herzog & de Meuron even though only a third of the costs have been raised.

-- Heading to Washington: President Obama has made three appointments to his Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

-- Upswing: The value of artwork by Damien Hirst appears to be rebounding to levels comparable to those seen during the art boom.

-- Surprise: Gustavo Dudamel tops a list published by The Daily Beast titled "Young Rock Stars of the Conducting World."

-- David Ng

Photo: conductor Alan Gilbert at Wednesday night's concert in New York. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

City cuts $400,000 from Long Beach Museum of Art

The Long Beach Museum of Art is facing austerity measures after the City Council cut most of its government funding on Tuesday.

The budget passed by the council gives the museum $169,000, down from $569,000 the previous year. The cut will help defray the city’s overall budget deficit, but also was spurred by officials’ ire at having to pay off a $3.06-million bond that museum leaders had promised years ago to cover, but then failed to when their fund-raising campaign fizzled.

The council was more lenient to the museum than Mayor Bob Foster, who had proposed eliminating its funding after the museum decided not to pay the principal on city-backed construction bonds for its 2000 renovation and expansion. Foster has the authority to veto budget line items, but a spokeswoman for the mayor said Wednesday that he considers the $169,000 “a reasonable position.”

Ronald Nelson, the art museum’s executive director, on Tuesday described the $400,000 budget cut as “punitive and rather short-sighted,” given that the museum is public property and the city relies on the nonprofit foundation that runs it for its proper upkeep.

City officials reconsider museum funding each year, but Nelson said he expects Tuesday’s cut to be just the first installment in a multi-year bid by City Hall to recoup the $3 million.

Long Beach Museum of Art faces $400,000 cut in city funding

The Long Beach City Council is expected to pass a budget tonight cutting the funding of the  Long Beach Museum of Art -- and the museum isn't expecting a last-minute reversal of fortune.

Instead of the $569,000 it received in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the museum has been tentatively penciled in for $169,000, based on a recommendation last week by the council's budget oversight committee, and adopted by a 6-3 vote of the full council.

That's more generous than the elimination of all funding that Mayor Bob Foster had proposed as payback for the museum's failure to pay the $3.06 million that the city had to fork over this month to retire expiring construction bonds for the museum's 2000 renovation and expansion. Whether the museum can sustain a $400,000 cut without having to lay off employees and close a second day a week could depend on whether donors are able to ramp up their gifts to offset the loss, Ronald Nelson, the museum's executive director, said today.

Nelson said he is "quite certain" that the  proposed funding cut -- which he calls "punitive and rather short-sighted" -- will stand after the final budget vote, as elected officials scramble to balance the $2.9 billion city budget at a time of faltering revenue. And although he hasn't gotten any official word yet, Nelson believes City Hall aims to keep the $400,000 reduction in force for years to come, anteing up a smaller contribution to the private, nonprofit museum until the bond principal is paid back.

Obama will return to Occidental College -- via photo exhibit

Having done a bonanza business during a three-month engagement at M+B Gallery in West Hollywood, the photography exhibition "Barack Obama: The Freshman" will mark a presidential homecoming of sorts with its move next month to the campus where "Barry," as he was then known, spent his first two years of college.

Sixteen of the black-and-white images that photography student Lisa Jack took of Obama when he was a 19-year-old freshman at Occidental College will be on display Oct. 12 to Nov. 6 in the campus' Coons Administration Center. The pictures of the president-as-callow-youth, deploying a cigarette and a Panama hat for that likable-but-cool effect, were taken in the living room of the little apartment Jack rented a stone's throw from the Eagle Rock campus. Now the pictures will take up residence in a prominent spot, the foyer of the college president's office, as part of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Oct. 24 inauguration of Jonathan Veitch as Oxy's new president.

Shannon Richardson, the M+B Gallery's director, said plans are in the works for the show to move on to a gallery in Paris after the photos are displayed at Occidental. M+B sold more than 300 limited edition prints of the future president -- priced from $1,000 to $4,500 -- during the gallery show that ended Aug. 29, she said.

As photography shows at commercial galleries go, that qualifies as "extraordinary," says Stephen White, a curator, collector, dealer and historian of art photography. While running his own L.A. photography gallery from 1975 to 1991, White said, he was delighted when a show resulted in 10 or 15 sales. White suspects that Obama-mania, rather than connoisseurship of the photographic art, drove most of those sales during what he says has been a down market for art photography. "It was a very smart show to do, let's put it that way."

"I had one guy who flew in from Florida after seeing it on the 'Today' show," Richardson said. "He bought a big one."

-- Mike Boehm

Related

Photos show President Barack Obama as Barry the freshman

The story behind the `Barack Obama: The Freshman' photo exhibition

Occidental recalls `Barry' Obama

Photo: Barack Obama in 1980. Credit: Lisa Jack / Getty Images

Texas senator warns Obama against 'politicization of the NEA'*

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) issued an open letter Wednesday asking President Obama to "take the necessary steps to ensure that the NEA and the American arts community it supports remain independent from political manipulation by the White House."

Cornyn's letter followed a blogger's critical report about a telephone conference last month in which the National Endowment for the Arts combined with the White House Office of Public Engagement to enlist artists on behalf of the administration's "United We Serve" volunteer service initiative.

Posting the letter on his official website, Cornyn said that "steering the arts community toward a pro-Administration political message" would violate the NEA's nonpartisan mandate. The endowment's main purpose is disbursing federal grants to nonprofit arts organizations.

Cornyn cautioned that NEA involvement in recruiting artists for a presidential initiative could suggest that "NEA grant opportunities ... may be tied to artists' willingness to use their creative talents to advance your administration's policies." He added: "this episode appears to merit congressional hearings and sustained oversight."

Responding by e-mail Wednesday, White House spokesman Shin Inouye said the Aug. 10 teleconference "was not meant to promote any legislative agenda -- it was a discussion on the United We Serve effort and how all Americans can participate."