MeTube from the Mayors’ Institute: Rocco Speaks His Mind, Patti Harris Speaks for Bloomberg CORRECTED

Rocco Landesman, the NEA’s chairman, addressing U.S. mayors and New York’s cultural and governmental officials yesterday

The Rocco Show, fresh from its Congressional gig and its Idaho run, arrived at New York’s Five Angels Theater yesterday for the 46th national session of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD). The National Endowment for the Arts’ chairman addressed the mayors about his Our Town intiative and the just announced appointment of Jason Schupbach as director of the NEA’s design program.

As Jacqueline Trescott reports in today’s Washington Post, Rocco and the other arts luminaries (including the National Gallery’s director, Earl Powell III) who appeared this week before a House Appropriation Subcommittee were well received by the inquiring Congressmen. Everyone, in Trescott’s words, told the legisators “what they wanted to hear,” which in Landesman’s case included his agency’s continued support for The Big Read.

But in less formal circumstances, speaking to me yesterday right before he addressed the MICD, Landesman demonstrated that despite his much vaunted efforts to be more careful about what he says, he remains refreshingly (if imprudently) outspoken.

“You attacked me again today!” was how he greeted me, referring to this post in which I criticized the urban-development purpose (rather than arts-centered emphasis) of Our Town. It appears to me that this planned new initiative has the same economic-engine focus as does a separate set of grants discussed at yesterdays meeting, which the NEA plans to dole out to up to 15 communities participating in the MICD. Jamie Bennett, the NEA’s director of communications, later told me that the MICD grants are expected to total some $440,000, in addition to the $5 million for Our Town. [CORRECTED—See bottom of post.]

I dodged Rocco’s preliminary punch by observing that I agreed with him on some things; disagreed on others.

“You disagree on the important ones!” he jabbed. Having me on the ropes, he then asked whether I favored The Big Read. I assured him I didn’t, which pacified him a bit. “It’s PR. It doesn’t belong here [in the NEA],” he commented. (So much for the lip service he gave to this politically popular program in his Congressional testimony.)

I’m as self-sabotagingly blunt as Rocco is, so I shot back that I didn’t think Our Town belonged there either. He said we should talk further. (Fine. Bring it on!)