The new chairwoman of the country’s preeminent arts funding organization was in Rhode Island on Monday for a daylong look at how some arts organizations play a role in the state economy.
The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts estimates that more than 25,000 Rhode Islanders are employed in the state’s creative sector.
Jane Chu, chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts, visited organizations in Pawtucket, East Providence and Providence, accompanied by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed. Reed, the senior member of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation, oversees federal arts funding as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on the interior.
Chu served as the president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Mo.
The Senate confirmed Chu in June. Her visit to Rhode Island was her first official tour as NEA chairwoman.
The NEA’s budget of $146 million is down from $167.5 million in 2010. It was about $170 million in the 1990s. Some of that money makes its way to Rhode Island in the form of grants for arts projects.
For instance, the NEA recently granted $75,000 to the City of Pawtucket to pay for public art installations on road overpasses. Among the sites under consideration is the Exchange Street Bridge, where Reed and Chu started the tour.
They also visited the Design Exchange Mill and the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, before moving on to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School in East Providence.
“This is the fabric of Rhode Island,” said U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) about Block Island. “I often tell people to come to the island. It’s a wonderful place to live and visit. I think it’s one of the loveliest places in the country.”
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