Mary Anne Carter, who oversaw the National Endowment of the Arts during President Trump’s first term, was nominated Tuesday to lead the embattled agency once again, according to Senate records.
Her nomination came just days after Mr. Trump proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the agency began withdrawing current grants from arts organizations across the country. The endowment was thrown into further turmoil earlier this week when a group of senior officials there announced their resignations.
Ms. Carter was seen as a stabilizing leader of the endowment by many in the arts world during Mr. Trump’s first term. Although Mr. Trump also proposed eliminating the agency back then, it survived thanks to bipartisan support in Congress, and its budget even grew.
“Mary Anne Carter will play a pivotal role in ushering in the Golden Age of American art and culture,” Elizabeth Huston, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
“It was a privilege to hold this position under President Trump’s previous administration and I am honored to be nominated again to lead the National Endowment for the Arts,” Ms. Carter said in a statement.
Before joining the federal government, Ms. Carter worked as chief policy adviser in the Florida governor’s office when Senator Rick Scott, a Republican, was the state’s governor. She was also the founder and president of MAC Research, a consulting firm that specializes in political and public affairs. She has been serving as a senior adviser at the endowment during the current Trump administration.
During a February event with Americans for the Arts, an advocacy organization, she discussed how finding arts education for her daughter with learning differences illustrated to her the importance of children being involved with programs like dance and theater. (She has described herself as a proud “dance mom.”) She said that returning to the N.E.A. was like coming home.
“It seemed natural to go back there this time around,” she said, noting that she loved her time there. She added, “I believe — and everyone in the agency believes — that every American in every corner of the nation should have access to arts programming.”
The agency began withdrawing and terminating grants last week. While the full range of cancellations is unclear, a crowdsourced spreadsheet has found that more than $10 million has been terminated.
Americans for the Arts denounced the agency’s decision to rescind funding as “the next step in a deeply troubling pattern of government disinvestment in the arts.”
Established in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that distributes grants to arts organizations and state arts agencies across the country. Its budget was $207 million last year, when the organization provided more than $163 million in grants, according to its financial reports.
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
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