Ask the Experts How Ford, Rockefeller, and the NEA Changed American Music

From the end of the Second World War through the U.S. Bicentennial, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation granted close to $300 million in the field of music alone (approximately $2.3 billion today). In deciding what to fund, these three grantmaking institutions sought to "ask the experts," adopting seemingly objective, scientific models of peer review and specialist evaluation. They recruited music composers at elite institutions, professors from prestigious universities, and leaders of performing arts organizations. Among the most influential expert-consultants were Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Milton Babbitt.

Ask the Experts: How Ford, Rockefeller, and the NEA Changed American Music investigates patterns of public and private grant-making from the 1950s to the 1970s, a period during which the United States witnessed a remarkable expansion in arts patronage. Through archival documents, oral history, and ethnographic material, Michael Sy Uy offers an in-depth analysis of grant-making practices, and highlights important and instructive issues concerning philanthropy, arts patronage, and musical production and consumption.

Michael Sy Uy (BA, University of California, Berkeley; MPhil, Oxford University; PhD, Harvard University) is the Allston Burr Resident Dean of Dunster House, Assistant Dean of Harvard College, and a Lecturer in the Music Department.