Thanks for your article.

The main goal of the petition is to raise awareness that the USA is the only first world country without either a ministry or department of arts/culture.

As far as details, we'll leave it up to President Obama, and all the best minds he can gather, to flesh it out if and when he decides to create an office.

Richard Holloway, chair of the Scottish Arts Council and former Episcopalian Bishop of Edinburgh is a major source of continuing inspiration and motivation that fuels several projects.

Here are some excerpts from his essay "Creative Disloyalty:"
........
[...]
"Greene feared that the State's embrace of the artist would erode his creative
disloyalty, that ability to experiment, to say things for the first time. At the root of his
fear lay an entirely appropriate mistrust of power, which has an invariably corrupting
effect on the frail human psyche. Lord Acton observed that all power corrupts and
absolute power corrupts absolutely, but it was the philosopher Alasdair McIntyre who
pointed to a more subtle danger. 'All power co-opts, and absolute power co-opts
absolutely'. These are cautionary words, especially for those who are enrolled by the
State to do the very thing Graham Greene opposed so passionately: to mediate its
support for the arts. The only warning I want to register at this point is that we should
bring to our thinking about the State's engagement with the arts a cleansing suspicion
of the whole enterprise, and a sense that we are involved in something that is far from
being morally straightforward. If we take that as an ethical prophylactic, we may be
able to protect ourselves against the cruder forms of co-option by the State."
[...]
"
Research has shown that if you re-connect disconnected children to their creative instincts their skills improve right across the board. One of the most dramatic and effective example of this is Venezuela's Sistema for children's orchestras.
[...]
We need to unleash it [creativity] in every aspect of our national lives. When we do, when we connect with it, everything gets better – from school-room to board-room, from picture house to concert hall, from art gallery to the streets we walk to work on.
[...]
There is...something that good government can do: it can recognise
the fundamental importance of art, play, human well-being, and create
the space and resources in which it can fluorish."
http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/resources/artforms/creative%20horizons/cr...
.............

And on page 9, he writes about "creative industries."

Imagine having somebody like Richard Holloway as USA's Secretary of The Creative Industries....or something like that....

Here's something relevant too:
http://adoimagazine.com/newhome/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl...

Enjoy.

I understand your concern about censorship but in the US where we define nudity as something dirty I am afraid a certain type of censorship in art will continue here. I lived in Paris for 11 years and worked as a fine artist. I was there under both the right and left. Of course politics as always were played out... Certain artists were in and then certain artists were out. But honestly who cares.... The Arts were constantly being promoted. In France because of education everyone enjoyed art and because of this education the average citizen was an art collector. It was not a pastime reserved for the elite.
If the lack of education continues in public schools for the arts I am afraid our next Broadway plays will be with reality TV stars. The next art exhibitions will be done by computer game programmers
and the next Lincoln Center Opera will star Britney.

So please everyone sign the petition and pass it on.

Right-brained, socially-liberal, dreamy, idealistic artists are the biggest champions of individual expression and personal freedom I know. Yet somehow, they think it's okay to create a cabinet position to impose your values on the rest of the country.

Why should YOU get special treatment? Oh, is this everyone rush to the government and see who can cry loudest? I thought we had a constitution to protect us from that, my bad.

If (and heaven forbid) you do get this position made, be prepared so see the relative importance of it dwarfed by the hundreds of other cabin positions created for the various other "interest" groups.

If you still think you're doing the right thing, consider this: As a result of federal funding for the arts, private donations to organizations have gone DOWN. If the funding were to cease, private donations would more than compensate for what government once provided.

If you need an analogy, consider this: If everyone got their little 2 cents in with the government, it would bring this country to its knees. How do you think special interest groups operate? The benefits are concentrated but the costs are dispersed. It's unfair to the 99.9 % rest of the population who does NOT benefit.

I don't care how much faith you have in Obama; what we need is LESS government.

I am a pianist, organist and composer, and I attended PGSA in 2006. I am an advocate of the arts, yet I would NEVER, support something like this - a petition to put control of something so precious as music, art, dance, poetry, and drama in the hands of bureaucrats. I sincerely hope the US Constitution is alive and well somewhere because it is certainly not noticed here.