Rocco Landesman Confirmed as Chairman of National Endowment for the Arts

Broadway producer Rocco Landesman has been confirmed by the Senate as the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Landesman is the 10th leader of the 44-year-old independent federal agency, which has a current budget of $155 million and provides funding and support for arts groups around the country. He and newly appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities Jim Leach are expected to be sworn in within the next several days.

Landesman currently serves as the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five Broadway houses: the St. James, the Al Hirschfeld, the August Wilson, the Eugene O’Neill and the Walter Kerr. As a producer, he put his weight behind The Producers, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Jelly’s Last Jam, six August Wilson premieres (every Pittsburgh Play from The Piano Lesson through Radio Golf) and the current hit Broadway revival of Hair. He got his start as one of the original members of the producing team known as the Dodgers (along with Des McAnuff, Michael David, Doug Johnson, Ed Strong and Sherman Warner), which debuted on Broadway in 1982 with Pump Boys and Dinettes and won the Best Musical Tony Award three years later for Big River. He also spent a few years as an assistant professor at Yale School of Drama, where he earned his doctorate in dramatic literature.  

“This historically has not been a great job—or not for a long time—and the challenge will be to make it one and to really accomplish something,” Landesman told The New York Times about taking the top post at an organization already suffering from a lack of funding and budget cuts. “There’s a crisis among arts institutions because so many of them are going out of business or about it—it’s an emergency. Even the pathetic N.E.A. levels of funding will matter to a lot of these institutions and that funding needs to increase.”