Livingston Biddle Remembered
By Laurence Jarvik

Livingston Biddle in period dress (Library of Congress photo)

Livingston Biddle passed away on the 3rd of May, aged 83, in Washington, DC.

He had lived a long and full life. On his passing, respectful obituaries noted that Biddle came from a prominent Philadelphia family, and had been a best-selling novelist -- Main Line, Sam Bentley's Island, and The Village Beyond -- who authored legislation establishing the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, chaired the Arts Endowment, and taught at Fordham University.

What was missing in newspaper accounts were the distinguishing humane qualities that Biddle posessed, especially the gentle mien and fundamental decency, in short supply amid public debate surrounding culture in America. He was a writer himself, married to an artist, and so understood what was at stake in debates over the future of arts raging during the 1990s.

Two incidents stand out.

The first memory is of meeting Biddle, at Senate hearings on the National Endowment for the Arts in the Fall of 1993. At the time, the hearing room was packed, more than standing room only. It was filled, predictably, with paid staffers from the National Endowment for the Arts who seemed to take up every seat. So full was the hearing room, that the Capitol policeman guarding the line of spectators was in the process of turning Biddle away because there were no seats.

He clearly had asked for no special treatment, and was getting none.

Incredulous that one of the founders of the NEA might be kept out of a hearing about the future of his agency, I asked Biddle to join me at the press table (I covered the NEA at the time). I told him I'd be happy to vouch for him with the officer.

To my surprise, Biddle agreed and came to sit down next to me. We had a nice chat. He promised to send me a copy of his history of the NEA. Then we listened to the hearing.

A few days later, I received a copy of his excellent Our Government and the Arts: A Perpective from the Inside. It was personally inscribed, "With best regards and special BEST wishes -- from your Arts (and Press!) colleague -- Liv Biddle." I was touched that he had remembered.

In November of the same year, I helped organize a symposium at New York University about the future of the National Endowments, then under scrutiny from conservative critics. Despite a great deal of effort, no one from the NEA or NEH would participate, from Jane Alexander and Sheldon Hackney on down.

So I contacted Livingston Biddle.

He immediately agreed to give a paper, and even brought his wife Catharina to the conference -- which was in the end boycotted by the art world and cultural establishment, even those on the faculty of NYU (John Brademas was then head of both NYU and President Clinton's Arts and Humanities advisory board). Despite sending out dozens of invitations, not one New York publication sent a single reporter, columnist, or cultural critic to cover what was indisputably a newsworthy event .(It was after this symposium that Congress cut the NEA and NEH budgets by almost 50%, in legislation signed by President Clinton.) And despite New York's reputation as a cultural capital, the only reporter present was Jacqueline Trescott -- who had travelled to Manhattan to cover the symposium for The Washington Post.

However, Mr. and Mrs. Biddle were not afraid to attend all the panels as well as the luncheon, breaking bread and discussing matters with a variety of conservative cultural figures, including former NEA acting chair Anne Radice, whom Biddle gallantly praised in his talk as having done "a thoroughly good job." (This was at a time when her name was greeted by hisses and boos in art world circles.)

When permission was needed to publish his essay, under the title "To Develop Excellence in the Arts," in our edited volume, Biddle agreed immediately, and without hesitation.

That was the Livingston Biddle I will  always remember. He was not afraid to disagree, without being disagreeable. A man entirely unafraid, courageous, honest, and straightforward. He did what he thought was right, and he said what he thought.

As Biddle recalled: "...When I came to Washington 30 years ago and started working in the Senate for my old friend Claiborne Pell, I told him that I was not an economist; I was not a sociologist; I was not, in those days, an educator. The only thing that I really new about, and perhaps could help him with, was the area of the arts. And I said, 'Claiborne, how would you like to be the founder of the first program of its kind for developing the arts? We're the only major free country in the world that doesn't have such a program; some other countries have had this kind of help for centuries.'

"And he looked at me in a very quizzical way and said, 'Livvy, I'm afraid this is never going to win me a single vote, but if you say I should do it, let's do it.'"

Biddle knew that the fate of the arts in America was dependent upon recognition that fundamental change is necessary.

At our NYU conference, while defending the arts agency, Biddle added:"...I am also a scholar of John Milton. And, as you know, in his statements and his poetry, freedom depends on responsibility. If you have freedom and no responsibility, you have license. And sometimes that is the case today in the arts. License has taken the place of true freedom of expression, in my view."

His words still ring true, some eight years later. For Livingston Biddle, in his life and his works, was a true friend of free speech and excellence in the arts.