"American artists have for three years looked to the White House with unaccustomed confidence and warmth," Bernstein said that day. Instead of performing a requiem Mass for a slain Roman Catholic president, Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic in Mahler's Second Symphony, known as the "Resurrection." The proposed Trump administration budget announced Wednesday would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, established by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 as part of his Great Society agenda. But it had its roots in the attention given to the arts by John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy. Despite an unprecedented explosion of the arts in America over the last half-century, artists have never again been afforded such national prominence.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 16, 2017 20:44 UTC