Clark, who is also Harvard’s Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music, expects Biden and Harris to reinstate the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH). The group, created in 1982 to advise the White House on cultural issues, was disbanded in 2017 when its members quit in protest when Trump would not condemn white supremacists who took part in violent demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va.
“The full range of what the PCAH will offer will be critical in addressing social justice and equality, prison reform, health, voting rights, climate change, and COVID-19 and its aftermath — all of which will be urgent issues for the Biden-Harris administration,” she said.
As they plan for the future, Biden and Harris also have an important point of reference: President Obama’s 2008 arts platform supported arts in education and cultural diplomacy, increased NEA funding, and endorsed health care options and tax fairness for artists. While Biden and Harris have yet to announce a similar agenda, the president-elect told “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda during a campaign interview, “The future, who we are, lies in the arts. It’s the expression of our soul.”
Harvard’s Michael Sy Uy, author of “Ask the Experts: How Ford, Rockefeller, and the NEA Changed American Music,” said that the government’s support of an agency such as the NEA carries a symbolic weight that “can’t be underestimated.”
“It means that this is a matter of public concern, with a public agency that is specifically funding the arts,” said Uy, assistant dean of Harvard College, associate director of undergraduate studies, and lecturer in Harvard’s Music Department. “It’s saying that this is not a matter of private or market decision-making only, but one that has national resonance and importance.”
Approaching the arts in a way that both celebrates culture and creativity and recognizes the “deep loss that the past year, and the past four years” have brought will be a difficult task, said Best.