IF I RAN THE NEA

The slogan of the National Endowment for the Arts is “a great nation deserves great art.”

Were it only that simple.

When Congress voted on President Obama’s $787-billion stimulus package, fiscal conservatives slammed the NEA’s $50-million allocation.

It wasn’t the first time the agency, whose 2008 budget was about $144 million, had been thrust under the microscope.

Since awarding its first grant in 1965, the NEA most famously riled opponents in 1996 with its plan to award grants to a quartet of controversial artists.

As Obama prepares to name a new NEA chief, we asked people from the arts and other fields to share what their priorities would be if they ran the cultural agency. Page 4

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KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR

EDWARD ALBEE

DEBBIE ALLEN

KURT ANDERSEN

JON ROBIN BAITZ

JOHN BALDESSARI

KATE BURTON

ANN COULTER

RACHEL DRATCH

EVE ENSLER

JUDY FISKIN

FRANK GEHRY

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

TOM HAYDEN

BILL T. JONES

NEIL LaBUTE

SANDRA TSING LOH

RACHEL MADDOW

BILL MAHER

TIM MILLER

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

BILL PULLMAN

PHYLICIA RASHAD

TIM ROBBINS

DAVID ROBERTSON

JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY

JOEL STEIN

JOEL WACHS

HARVEY WEINSTEIN

NOAH WYLE