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Biography of Nancy HanksName: Nancy HanksBirth Date: December 31, 1927 Death Date: 1983 Place of Birth: Miami Beach, Florida, United States Nationality: American Gender: Female Occupations: chairperson, bureaucrat Nancy Hanks Nancy Hanks (1927-1983) was called the "mother of a million artists" for her work in building federal financial support for the arts and artists. Her years as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts and of the National Council on the Arts saw great expansion of their programs and budgets.Nancy Hanks, named for her distant cousin, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, was born on December 31, 1927, in Miami Beach, Florida. Her parents Bryan Cayce Hanks, a corporation lawyer, and Virginia (Wooding) Hanks moved to Montclair, New Jersey, when Nancy was in high school. She attended Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she majored in political science and served as president of the student body. During the summer of 1948 she studied at Oxford University in England. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, she received her B.A. magna cum laude from Duke in 1949.In 1951 she went to Washington, D.C., where …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…dollar contributed by the agency generated about of private money.When she announced her resignation from the national endowment in 1977, she left as her legacy a much expanded network for the funding of the arts. Called "the mother of a million artists," Hanks died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 55. In 1986 the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., renovated into a community center, was re-named the Nancy Hanks Center. Associated Organizations Further Reading The Rockefeller Brothers Fund study Nancy Hanks helped to author provides a good starting place for understanding Hanks' later work: see The Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects (1965). Leonard Garment, special counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1974, wrote an informative tribute to Hanks in Art News, April 1983. See also The Annual Obituary 1983 (1984).Straight, Michael Whitney, Nancy Hanks: an intimate portrait: the creation of a national commitment to the arts, Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988. |