{"id":3677,"date":"2024-12-12T05:43:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T13:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=3677"},"modified":"2024-12-12T05:43:43","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T13:43:43","slug":"even-richard-nixon-has-got-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2024\/12\/even-richard-nixon-has-got-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Richard Nixon has got Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(January 24, 1970, Richard Nixon in Philadelphia to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Eugene Ormandy: AP photo).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days ago I wrote about a post by Thomas Wolf <\/a>on public arts support in the US – I focused on<\/a> what he said about the income tax deduction for charitable donations as an \u201cindirect\u201d arts policy. Not to get all obsessive about his post (most of which is unobjectionable!) there was one more thing that struck me. He wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 1977, the U.S. Congress\u2019s appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reached $99.9 million. The growth in federal dollars had been extraordinary since the earliest days of the NEA when, in 1966, the appropriation stood at $2.9 million. Every President\u2014Democrat and Republican\u2014since 1966 had proposed funding increases to the agency, with some of those increases, including those of President Richard Nixon (hardly an arts enthusiast), being quite dramatic.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is not about to be a defense of the presidency of Richard Nixon. His political methods haunt us to this day – I cannot recommend Rick Perlstein highly enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nixonland<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But \u2026 he actually was<\/em> an arts enthusiast. He played piano and violin, enjoyed playing for others, and is one of the few modern presidents (I\u2019m guessing here) to have composed a piano concerto – he performs it here, as a bit of a lark, in 1962 on the Jack Paar show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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