Dana Gioia

Michael Dana Gioia (born December 24, 1950) is an American poet who quit his successful career as a corporate executive to write. Since January 29, 2003, he has been chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States government's arts agency, and has worked to revitalize an organization that had become gun-shy after the bitter controversies that surrounded it in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gioia has sought to encourage what he calls the only uniquely American form of art, jazz, as well as promoting William Shakespeare and trying to increase the number of Americans reading literature. Before taking the NEA post, Gioia was a resident of Santa Rosa, California.

NEA chairman

Gioia was President George W. Bush's second choice to lead the NEA, the first, composer Michael P. Hammond, having died only a week after taking office in January 2002. "I found an agency that was demoralized, defensive, and unconfident. It had been under constant assault for about fifteen years and it was suffering from the institutional version of battered child syndrome," said Gioia. "I don't think the NEA has done a very good job of serving America," he declared.

Related Topics:
George W. Bush - Michael P. Hammond

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Gioia brought a new visibility to the agency and wooed Congressional Republicans, actually getting a sizable increase in his agency's budget. "Dana is a superb politician. He knows how to talk to Congress and to the arts community, and to state and federal agencies and to the complex, gigantic, fire-breathing beast called the White House," said David Gelernter of Yale University.

Related Topics:
David Gelernter - Yale University

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At the NEA, Gioia created new programs such as Shakespeare in Communities, bringing the Bard to small towns, and NEA Jazz Masters, promoting jazz music. The NEA presents an annual award for jazz that Gioia would like to see become the jazz equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize. "We have a generation of Americans growing up who have never been to the theatre, the symphony, opera, dance, who have never heard fine jazz, and who increasingly don't read," said Gioia in justifying his new efforts.

Related Topics:
Shakespeare in Communities - NEA Jazz Masters - Jazz music - Pulitzer Prize

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Gioia is not without critics, however. Some Republicans in Congress, such as Colorado's Tom Tancredo believe the government has no business funding the arts and wants the NEA abolished. In the arts community, some fault the NEA for abandoning its grants to individual artists that were terminated after controversy over Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and others. And Gioia's new programs, for which the NEA has sought corporate and foundation support, worry other arts organizations because the NEA is now competing with them for funding.

Related Topics:
Colorado - Tom Tancredo - Robert Mapplethorpe - Andres Serrano

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Gioia has also sought to promote reading among Americans. In July 2004, the NEA released a study showing how little time Americans were dedicating to literature. In 2005, he began what he called the "Big Read" program, seeking to get Americans to reading serious literature, akin to the city-wide reading programs undertaken by several American cities such as Seattle, Cincinnati, and Chicago.

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But Gioia is keen to do anything that can make the arts more available to the public. "Arts are not a luxury," he says.

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