A couple of New York based musicians (Jaime Austria and Peter Weitzner) inspired by a Quincy Jones interview, where he said “…next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a Secretary of Arts.” are spearheading a call to the Obama administration for the establishment of a Cabinet level Arts position.  Names that are being thrown around are A Secretary of the Arts, Arts Czar, and Minister of Culture.  The campaign is drawing a lot of attention and currently the signatures on the petition number at almost 124,000.  You can add your name here.

The position would not only create a direct voice for artists to the president, but would be able to look at the broad picture of the arts in this country.  Combining many disparate parts of government, the position could look at everything from arts education, the NEH, NEA, non-profit arts roles, cultural tourism, to arts copyright issues.

Seems like a good idea to me.  As we have learned from TPG8, there are more US citizens that are artists than there are in the US military.