Page 57 - APAP - Inside Arts - Conference 2020

When did you know you wanted to pursue a career
in the creative field?
I think I always understood that there was creativity in any occupation.
I found a way to be creative while working a cookie-cutter job inspecting cigarette wrappers in a printing plant – coming up with a new way to collate and organize them. You know, not that satisfying, but I can’t help wonder what’s possible and what could be improved, stated or imagined. As I’ve said in my book, I think my unique upbringing, with all its challenges, was a great training ground.
What still inspires you? I’m inspired to meet so many artists who do not “art” for a living. It makes me hopeful we can integrate creativity and all parts of our
lives, since currently we seem to compartmentalize. By that I mean that creativity has been viewed as its own corner for artists. That’s why we don’t value arts education in primary school like we should. In truth, the “arts” are the early training ground for creativity and ideas: the very two superpowers that humans certainly employed to move us up from the middle of the food chain to the top.
Collaboration with your audiences is clearly
important to you. Why? I’m not really a collaborator by nature. I prefer to have control over my ideas. But I also love to do things that I would have liked to have seen when I was a kid – like to have a favorite rock artist pull back the curtain some, the way Leonard Bernstein did for classical musicians. Collaborating with audiences is a way to do that, and to show that ideas naturally flow, can be followed and are probably endless.
Mary Anne
Mary Anne
Carter
Carter
n
M ary Anne Carter was confirmed as the 12th
chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in August
2019, after serving as acting chairman and as the agency’s senior deputy chairman. Carter, whose background is in public affairs, is pushing to
make the NEA more accessible to the American people through a number of initiatives that will likely be at
the heart of her remarks during the
APAP|NYC 2020 Awards Luncheon on Monday, January 13. Inside Arts caught up with the chairman for a sneak peek at her appearance at the conference. An edited and condensed version of the exchange follows.
What do you want arts professionals to know
about the NEA right now?
I want all arts professionals and everyone in the industry to know that
the National Endowment for the Arts believes all Americans should have access to the arts, and we work very to make that happen. We’re in all 435 congressional districts, a third of our grant funding goes to organizations with budgets under $500,000. I think there’s a myth out there that we fund only the big organizations, and it’s important that they know that
is not true. It’s also really important they know that rural communities
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