New NEA chairman Dana Gioia is out talking about how he intends to strengthen the National Endowment for the Arts. “I go back to the original vision, which was to foster excellence in the arts and to bring art to all Americans. This doesn’t seem to me a controversial mission. The average American wants art in their communities and their schools. It’s not a program of the left or the right. It’s mainstream American opinion. One of the major needs is to build a public consensus for the support of art and arts education, and we’re going to do that by building a kind of inclusive coalition, by refusing to polarize.”