In favor of a White House arts adviser

When it comes to the coordination of scientific research between the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department, or the impact of stem cell research on American policy and state and federal budgeting, there's an obvious home office: The White House science adviser. When it comes to coordinating, say, state-level arts education goals with federal education mandates, there isn't. That should change: The White House needs an arts adviser.

Some background: The White House science adviser advises the President and executive agencies on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. Its portfolio and activities reflect the cross-agency manner in which science touches American policy, including education, climate change, energy, diplomacy and more. The American science community has embraced the adviser's office, officially known as the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and has generally found it to be an important advocate.

Similarly, the arts are not one thing, they are a part of many things. Furthermore, the arts have long suffered at the federal level because of a lack of prioritization and coordination. The nation would benefit if Congress and the White House created a new office for a White House arts adviser, a humanities-driven sister-office to the White House science adviser. Increasingly policy is made in the White House and not at cabinet-level agencies, which generally administer policy. Putting a federal arts adviser in the West Wing would ensure that the arts is a part of many White House policy, not a frivolous, forgettable island unto itself.

Federal engagement with the arts and the integration of national arts policy is not just a fuzzy, feel-good issue. Our government's failure to understand the importance of the arts and the symbolism of cultural heritage has hurt America in the eyes of the world. For example, Muslims recoiled when the U.S. allowed Baghdad's National Museum of Iraq to be looted in the wake of the U.S. invasion. And there's broad bipartisan agreement that America's ineptitude at engaging in cultural diplomacy that reaches beyond despotic governments to communicate directly with the citizenry of nations such as Syria, Iran or China has restrained American priorities in important parts of the world.

When it comes to domestic policy, the way in which the federal government approaches the arts is incoherent, a reflection of the lack of any central responsibility for arts-related issues. Just as science has an impact on most Cabinet-level departments and other agencies, many executive branch entities have cultural issues within their purview. (This is a reason why an arts-specific cabinet department is the wrong solution.)

For example, in the wake of the No Child Left Behind law, arts education in America's public schools has become a federal issue. There are internationally important arts treasures on government land, including Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in Utah and Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota. Both face conservation issues. American museum directors increasingly run into thorny diplomatic issues while negotiating the potential return of antiquities to their countries of origin, but they have no place in the federal government with which to consult even though there are diplomatic implications to their decisions.

How can philanthropists and artists best be incentivized under our tax code to support cultural organizations? Given that the federal government spreads arts-related monies amongst at least a dozen entities, how can those funds best be coordinated? What about issues that seem simple but haven't been: Ever since 9/11 artists of all kinds have had difficulties procuring visas to enter the United States. It's deleterious to the cultural life of both source and host countries when artists are kept out.

In the space of four paragraphs I've covered at least five Cabinet departments - and I haven't even touched on agency-level issues. Consider the unfortunate increasing development of the National Mall in Washington, the role of the humanities in the Peace Corps, the way in which the Corporation for National & Community Service impacts cultural volunteerism, and the importance of encouraging progressive architecture in federal buildings. Think architecture isn't an important factor in housing policy? Consider the disastrous housing projects the federal government built in the 1960s and 1970s.

And those are just issues at extant programs or agencies. The lack of a White House arts adviser makes it especially difficult for developing or emerging arts-related issues to gain traction in Washington.

This is a particularly critical issue now, when a prolonged economic downturn may have a significant impact on cultural institutions. At a time when the federal government is spending around $1 trillion to prop up the economy and to bail out failed businesses (with more dollars apparently on the way), it's shameful that there is yet no federal effort to ensure that financially troubled but nationally important, programmatically successful cultural institutions (many of which are also economically important to their regions) receive economic assistance too.

In fact, this is another example of a domestic issue with repercussions that can impact our standing in the world: One museum-on-the-brink, the Detroit Institute of Arts, has one of America's half-dozen-greatest art collections. Its solution to its budget problems may be to rent out its collection abroad. The failure of so great a cultural institution would be a national embarrassment.

Traditionally, the National Endowment for the Arts has been seen as our government's point agency on the arts. That paradigm is outdated: Already the combined federal appropriations of just two Washington arts facilities, the National Gallery of Art and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, are larger than the NEA's measly $147 million outlay. The NEA runs nice little programs and its leader has a nice bully pulpit. But over the last 10 or 15 years it has actively shied away from having a transformative effect on the nation's cultural life.

The institution of a White House arts adviser could - and should - have just that impact.