What is the purpose of the NEA?
WILLIAM IVEY: Well, there’s a real role for the federal government in nurturing America’s living cultural heritage. And we’re really coming to the end of what has so clearly been the American century. It’s so clear that the arts are what Americans in families and in communities, in ethnic communities, use to present themselves to one another. And it’s clear that our nation as a whole uses the arts, uses our creative character to spread the dream of democracy around the world. In many ways, our expressive life is democracy’s calling card. And so I think in an age in which there are so many forces in our society telling us that we’re really not one thing, we’re just many different things, the federal presence saying that the great process of accommodation and sharing and borrowing that has made our artistic life such a good reflection of our democratic experiment needs the federal presence to make sure that it’s strong, make sure that it’s healthy. I think that that message probably reso
