Board members of major US museums and a visual artist on the cusp of a major solo show are among the 14 people US president Joe Biden intends to appoint to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts (PACA). The list of appointees, released on 11 March, includes a co-founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the first director of cultural affairs for New York City, a trustee of the Menil Collection in Houston and the producer of a forthcoming musical about Andy Warhol.
Philanthropist and preservationist Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, who in 1966 was appointed to be New York City’s first director of cultural affairs, also previously served as a member (and, in 2002-03, as vice chair) of the US Commission of Fine Arts. Through the foundation she established with her late husband, the advertising executive and diplomat Carl Spielvogel, she has supported organisations including the Metropolitan Museum, the elevated High Line park and the New-York Historical Society.
The philanthropist, photographer and artist Bonnie Lautenberg, who has a solo show opening at the Boca Raton Museum of Art next month, also serves on the international directors council at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She is also a co-producer on an upcoming musical based on Warhol’s life.
Texan Barbara Goot Gamson is a trustee of Houston’s two most revered art institutions, the Menil Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado. She also serves on the national committee of the Whitney Museum.
Charlie Pohlad, whose family company Pohlad Companies operates more than 30 businesses in Minneapolis, serves on the boards of the Walker Art Center and the Dia Art Foundation, and was previously a board co-chair at Los Angeles nonprofit LAXART. Rounding out the art world power players among Biden’s appointees is Los Angeles real estate developer Thomas Safran, who was a founder of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
The PACA was established by president Dwight Eisenhower in 1958. Its aim is to advise the executive branch on developments, legislation and policies that have the potential to affect the arts, and ways federal, state and local governments and organisations can support creative industries. More broadly, the committee is expected to promote appreciation and understanding of the arts. It is also charged with supporting and guiding the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.
The ACA is not the only presidential committee expected to advise on cultural matters. The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), for instance, was established by Ronald Regan in 1982 and advised agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities on coordinating support for the US cultural sector. In August 2017 the 16 members of the PCAH resigned in protest of then-president Donald Trump’s response to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Shortly thereafter, Trump let the PCAH expire.
In November 2021, 15 members of the House of Representatives (all Democrats) sent Biden a letter calling on him to issue an executive order re-establishing the PCAH.
