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News Release

Last modified: Monday, September 15, 2008

Former NEA chairman Bill Ivey to speak at Indiana University

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 15, 2008

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Arts advocate, author and Indiana University alumnus Bill Ivey, who chaired the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 to 2001, will speak on Friday, Sept. 19, at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU Bloomington.

Ivey will discuss his recent book, Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights. His talk, sponsored by the Arts Administration Program at SPEA, will take place from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in SPEA room PV276. The talk is open to the public.

Ivey's book, published in May 2008 by University of California Press, "brings an informed perspective to a growing chorus of alarm over 'big media, abetted by government, running roughshod over public interest,'" says Publishers Weekly. "Ivey demonstrates how the promise of early 20th century mass media -- when film, radio and TV produced an unprecedented mass audience and 'enabled America to discover its cultural mainstream' -- is being stifled in the era of digital technology."

Ivey also will be a featured speaker for the Arts Administration Alumni Symposium on Saturday, Sept. 20, at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center and the Indiana Memorial Union on the IU Bloomington campus. The symposium brings together alumni, current students and others with an interest in arts management and policy, said Michael Rushton, associate professor of public and environmental affairs and director of the Arts Administration Program.

Other keynote speakers at the symposium will include Karen Gahl-Mills, president of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, and Mark Kesling, chief operating officer and development director of the American Cabaret Theater. For more information, contact Megan Flynn at merflynn@indiana.edu.

Ivey is director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, an arts policy research center with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C. He also directs the center's program for senior government, the Arts Industries Policy Forum. He chairs the board of the National Recording Preservation Foundation, a federally chartered foundation affiliated with the Library of Congress, and is board chairman of WPLN, Nashville Public Radio. He is the co-editor, with Steven J. Tepper, of Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural Life.

Appointed by President Clinton to serve as the seventh chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Ivey was credited with restoring Congressional confidence in the NEA after years of controversy and budget cuts. Prior to government service, he was director of the Country Music Foundation.

He earned a master's degree in folklore from IU in 1970 and was the keynote speaker in 2000 for the rededication of the IU Auditorium, receiving an honorary doctor of humane letters.

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