A local arts activist threw his hat in the ring for the job of head honcho at the National Endowment for the Arts last week. Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Barbara Gaines, perhaps? Jazz trumpeter Orbert Davis? No—the candidate is Michael Dorf, an attorney with degrees from the University of Chicago and Columbia University’s law school who got his start on the staff of Representative Sidney Yates 30 years ago, when Yates chaired the House appropriations subcommittee.
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Dorf has picked up endorsements from Senator Dick Durbin, the Illinois Arts Alliance, the American Federation of Musicians, and all the performing arts unions of the AFL-CIO—including SAG, AFTRA, and Actors Equity. Poet Dana Gioia is due to step down as NEA head on inauguration day; if Obama’s not looking to put another celebrity artist in charge—and there’s buzz about Wynton Marsalis—the local guy might have a chance.
Think It’s Bad Now? Wait Till 2010.
Illinois Arts Alliance executive director Ra (as in rah!) Joy says the optimist in him is excited about what the arts can expect from the Obama administration. But the realist in him warns that in this environment of crisis advocates will have to work hard to keep arts on the table. “We were concerned before the economic downturn, because of [Governor Blagojevich’s] draconian $4.5 million cut to the Illinois arts budget in 2008,” Joy says. According to an IAA study, that reduction resulted in programming cutbacks by 73 percent of state arts organizations. And that was before the economy tanked.
The main issue, according to Sampson, is the city’s refusal to reopen two Mag Mile carriage parking and pickup locations, closed in the aftermath of 9/11—one on Pearson east of Michigan and the other on the southwest corner of Michigan and Superior. Without them or comparable new spots, five carriage companies’ rigs have to crowd into the three remaining locations, reducing revenues for everybody.
Though the New Yorker recently reported that Circa, a Manhattan-based jewelry resale business, dispatched a Brinks truck to Chicago to pick up jewelry ostensibly being sold off by Bernie Madoff’s victims, there’s been little evidence of direct local hits in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
