THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS has a new leader. Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, a professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, at Arizona State University, was confirmed for the role on Saturday by the U.S. Senate. The Washington Post called her “a national leader in integrating arts and culture into community development.” 

President Biden had nominated Dr. Jackson, who’ll be the endowment’s first African American and Mexican American leader, in October. She replaces Mary Anne Carter, who had been appointed by President Trump and handed in her resignation on Jan. 19, the day before Biden was sworn in as president. Ann Eilers had been serving as acting chair since January.

“I will lead the NEA with dedication to inclusivity, collaboration, and with the recognition that art, culture, and creativity are core to us reaching our full potential as a nation,” Jackson, 56, said in a statement released by the endowment. She also noted the agency’s role in helping the nation’s cultural organizations weather the financial strains of the Covid epidemic: “The NEA plays a crucial role in helping to provide funds and other resources needed for the sector to recover, retool, and reopen. The agency also has the opportunity and responsibility to deepen and expand its already purposeful efforts to reach communities who have been traditionally underserved.”

The NEA was established in 1965, during the Johnson administration, and has had a stormy history since. It survived an attempt by the Reagan administration to kill it off in 1981, and has been a frequent target of both budgetary and cultural conservatives since. Its budget was slashed almost in half in the 1990s as congressional punishment for some controversial grants, but has gradually built back up to $165.5 million in fiscal year 2021, still below its peak in the mid-1990s but well above its steep drop to the $97 million to $99 million range in the late ’90s.

Even at its current level the endowment has a vey modest budget, but it manages to do a lot with it, disbursing money to every state as the top of a chain that includes state agencies such as the Oregon Arts Commission and various county, city, and regional agencies. It’s long been a mission of the NEA to reach rural and isolated areas of the nation in addition to bigger cities. And its grants often serve as multipliers, leveraging more donations from other sources: Even a small NEA grant serves as a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.