Music Dean Tapped to Lead NEA

President Bush has taken one of our deans. While that may not be good news for Rice, it certainly is wonderful news for the country. On September 19, the president announced his intention to nominate Michael Hammond, dean of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music, to chair the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and Hammond’s nomination was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 20.

Dean Michael Hammond

“America will gain an eloquent, dedicated spokesman for the arts in the appointment of Michael Hammond as the eighth chair of the National Endowment for the Arts,” said Rice president Malcolm Gillis. “For 15 years, Michael Hammond has been to the Shepherd School of Music what Edgar Odell Lovett was to Rice as a whole. Both are examples of leaders of great vision and integrity.”

Hammond succeeds Bill Ivey, a folklorist and musician. “I am honored by the Senate’s confirmation of President Bush’s nomination of me as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts,” Hammond said. “As Americans, we are all heirs to an incredibly rich and diverse artistic and cultural heritage. It is essential, particularly at this difficult period in our history, to draw support and inspiration from that heritage and to encourage and support the finest work of our own time. The Endowment for the Arts is committed to these tasks. I shall work to increase its role in making the arts an ever-more valuable part of our lives, connecting us to the past, illuminating the present, and inspiring our future. I will advocate especially for policies and practices that enhance the experience of our young people by giving them the insights and skills that lead to understanding and participation in the arts.”

The NEA was created in 1965 and, with a budget of almost $105 million, is the largest single funder of the nonprofit arts sector. The NEA offers educational programs, preservation, and fellowships and has awarded 115,000 grants in all 50 states. Examples include grants to winners of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and poetry, funding for the Public Broadcasting series Great Performances, and the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Hammond has served as dean of the music school at Rice since 1986, leading it to its standing as one of the finest university-based music schools in the nation. He wrote the architectural program for Rice’s new music building, Alice Pratt Brown Hall, and has served on the university’s strategic planning committee, library planning committee, and numerous search committees. In 1999, the Rice alumni association awarded him its Gold Medal for distinguished service to the university.

“Over a decade and a half, Michael Hammond guided the Shepherd School of Music to international prominence,” said Bill Barnett, chair of Rice’s Board of Trustees. “In Michael, we had someone who fit Rice in ways that those outside might find difficult to understand. President Bush has chosen very well; Rice’s great loss is the nation’s great gain.”

It is easy to understand why Hammond was nominated. Before coming to Rice, he was the founding dean of music for the new arts campus of the State University of New York at Purchase and later served as president of the college. Before going to New York, he had been director of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee. He also has served as the founding rector of the Prague Mozart Academy in the Czech Republic, now the European Mozart Academy.

Hammond grew up in Wisconsin and attended Lawrence University and Delhi University (India) and studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he was president of the Junior Common Room at Oriel College. He earned his degrees at Oxford in philosophy, psychology, and physiology and has taught neuroanatomy and physiology at Marquette Medical College and the University of Wisconsin.

As a composer and conductor, Hammond has written numerous scores for theater in the United States and abroad. His special interests include the music of Southeast Asia, Western medieval and Renaissance music, and the relationships between music and the brain. Hammond gave the keynote address at the In-ternational Sym-posium on the Neuroscience of Music in Niigata, Japan, in 1999.

Hammond has held positions as associate conductor of the American Symphony with Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic, and musical director and conductor of the Dessoff Choirs in New York City, and he was composer in residence for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. He worked with Donald Kendall of PepsiCo and Brooks Jones at the Purchase Center for the Performing Arts in founding PepsiCo Summerfare. He currently is director of Canticum, an ensemble for the performance of medieval and Renaissance vocal music, and is a vice chairman of the board of Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.

—Margot Dimond