Head of National Endowment for the Arts gets mostly rave reviews as he exits the stage

Rocco Landesman began his tenure in 2009 as head of the National Endowment for the Arts with money on his mind. After a successful career as a theater owner and Broadway producer, he made increased funding for the nation’s largest arts grantmaking organization a top priority — along with restoring individual artist awards. That program was killed in the mid-1990s after a barrage of conservative criticism halved the agency’s budget, and was nearly its undoing. It had been a s...