Nearly 220,000 sign petition for US arts secretary

WASHINGTON, (AFP)

Nearly 220,000 people have signed an online petition asking President Barack Obama to appoint the first ever US secretary of the arts, and hundreds of new names were being added hourly Friday.

The online plea, posted in November by New York musician Jaime Austria, is addressed to Obama and reads: "Your good friend Quincy Jones said, 'Next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a secretary of arts.'

"We the undersigned support Quincy Jones' plea."

When the petition was first put online after Jones made his plea for a US arts minister in a November radio interview, Austria and a group of art-militants were hoping for 10,000 signatures.

"When we reached that, we were going to print out the petition, which the host site would allow us to do for one cent per signature," Austria told AFP.

The 10,000 signature mark was reached in the first week of January and quickly surpassed as interest snowballed. The peak day for signatures was January 12, when nearly 20,000 people added their names. Among names seen on the petition by AFP was Vanessa Paradis. David Amram, composer-in-residence at the 2008 Democratic Party convention, signed it and left a comment. "We need this for the future of our country, to give young people the picture that the arts are crucial for everyone to advance their lives by pursuing excellence and developing creativity," Amram wrote. Gordon Gottlieb wrote: "Look at this as a potential bailout for our collective soul", and Lauren Belski said: "Art is the secret ingredient to a successful society ... and economy." A study last year by the oragnization Americans for the Arts showed the non-profit arts and culture industry in the United States generates 166.2 billion dollars in economic activity annually, 12.6 billion dollars in federal tax revenues, and created 5.7 million full-time jobs.

The economic stimulus package approved by Congress this week includes 50 million dollars for the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest annual funder of US arts.