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Book Reviews of Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior

Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior
Leaving Town Alive Confessions of an Arts Warrior
Author: John Frohnmayer
ISBN-13: 9780395655719
ISBN-10: 0395655714
Publication Date: 4/1993
Pages: 360
Rating:
  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
 1

5 stars, based on 1 rating
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (T)
Book Type: Hardcover
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

2 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

shirljo avatar reviewed Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior on + 45 more book reviews
Frohnmayer's lively and startlingly candid account of his trial by fire in the brutal world of power politics.
reviewed Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior on + 625 more book reviews
With candor and wit, Frohmayer recalls the events of his stormy two and a half years as the fifth chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). A former head of the Oregon Arts Commission, seasoned trial lawyer and accomplished singer Frohnmayer sought the chairmanship because he believed in the arts in America. Here he reveals his own errors in judgment, painting a disturbing picture of the politics of art during the Bush administration. Forced into the impossible position of dodging criticisms "from the right for his permissiveness and from the left for seeming to espouse conservative prohibitions," he saw his attempts at the NEA finally fail. Reminding us that "contemporary art deals with contemporary issues, and therein lies the rub," he has become a free-speech radical at the hands of these modern cultural terrorists.