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Mary Anne Carter led the National Endowment for the Arts during Trump’s first presidency.
Mary Anne Carter will serve as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. (photo courtesy NEA)
Political consultant Mary Anne Carter, who served as the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) during the first Trump administration, will lead the agency again following Senate approval this week.
Carter’s appointment comes almost a year after Maria Rosario Jackson, a former Biden-appointed chair of the agency, stepped down from the post one day after Trump was inaugurated for a second term. Jackson was the first African American and the first Mexican-American person to lead the federal arts agency.
In the 11 months since Jackson stepped down, the NEA rescinded arts grants en masse, notifying awardees that their projects were cancelled as the agency refocused on promoting “skilled trade jobs,” “AI competency,” “support [for] the military and veterans.” The NEA also terminated a longstanding grant program, Challenge America, that was geared toward “underserved communities.” Senior officials within the NEA resigned in May amid the cuts. Trump had also threatened to eliminate the agency entirely in a budget proposal earlier this year.
In September, the American Civil Liberties Union won a lawsuit it filed against the NEA for asking applicants to abstain from funding anything that could be considered to be “gender ideology,” as defined by the Trump administration.
After Carter’s first appointment in 2018, reporters pointed out that she had served on Trump’s presidential inaugural committee. A public LinkedIn account also notes that she served as director for Republican Rick Scott’s transition to governor in 2011, later becoming his office’s chief policy advisor. Her LinkedIn also includes experiences as a radio talk show host and campaign strategist. Notably, in the 1990s, she worked for the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, which helped shape Trump’s Project 2025 far-right policy agenda.
“The arts are essential to creating, innovating, healing, and recovery, and they provide vital economic stability to communities across the nation,” Carter said in a press release. “I look forward to the many celebrations that will take place in 2026 in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, as well as to the agency’s continued research into the powerful role the arts play in healing—from illness to trauma to natural disasters.”
There is no indication that Carter has any specific experience working in fields related to arts and culture, aside from her previous tenure at the NEA. When Jackson was appointed in 2021, she served as a tenured professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
Carter was first nominated to lead the NEA in May, but was not officially approved by the Senate until yesterday, December 18. Her approval comes as the board of the Kennedy Center for the Arts, which is chaired by Trump, voted to rename the Washington, DC, organization the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” Trump’s name was affixed to the center’s facade this morning.
