Arts Advocates Get New Script, Bigger Role

Backstage: "Before President Obama was inaugurated, leaders of 21 arts service organizations sent his transition team a list of recommendations, which included increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts from $155 million to $319 million. That the idea wasn't rejected immediately was seen as a welcome signal -- among the first of several that the nonprofit-arts community has received from Washington recently, despite the ever-deepening fiscal gloom."