Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, says: "If the president had wanted a timid NEA, he would have made a different choice."

The Washington Post / Marcus YAM

WASHINGTON — In the mid-1990s, Rocco Landesman made it a point to carry $10,000 in cash on him at all times, just in case a betting opportunity presented itself. Cell phones and ATMs have eliminated the need for what even Landesman would admit was a dangerous practice, but don’t get the idea he has stopped betting.

In fact, on Aug. 7 the legendary Broadway producer made what might be the biggest bet of his career, becoming the 10th chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. But Landesman, somewhat uncharacteristically, is proceeding cautiously.

“I think the worst thing in the world would be going around with the message, ‘I’m going to shake things up.’ That would be a huge mistake,” he said Tuesday in the NEA conference room as his office was being spruced up for a new era, one that arts supporters have eagerly anticipated for years.

Landesman’s talking points are firm: the arts are central to the American identity; they define the pulse of many cities, towns and individuals; they are indispensable. He sneers at the goals of No Child Left Behind, which seem to have little use for arts education.

“All the tests don’t take into account personal creativity. There is something very American about individualism,” he said.

Landesman, 62, has carved a sharply individual path himself, having made his name in the highly visible crucible of live theater. His producing credits include several Tony Award winners — Angels in America, The Producers, Big River” — although he seems just as passionate about country music, horse racing and baseball. (The St. Louis native, a big Cardinals fan, has owned three minor-league baseball teams.)

The NEA must increase its funding if it intends once more to lead the country’s sprawling network of artists and arts organizations, he said. He wants to reinstate grants for individual artists, a program that ended when the NEA was hounded almost to extinction by conservative critics in the 1990s.

“One of my close friends is Michael Eastman, the photographer,” Landesman said. “One of his pictures is hanging in (White House social secretary) Desiree Rogers’s office. He got an early grant from the NEA, which was critical in his career.”

The White House has proposed a budget of $170 million for fiscal year 2010, and Landesman says he’ll push for more in the next appropriations round.

“It is not up to me; it is up to Congress. But people will keep hearing hawkish comments from me about this, and sometimes intemperate comments,” he said. The NEA, which received $176 million at its height in 1992, has since slowly climbed back to its current $155 million level. Landesman knows part of the job is to be a salesman. “If the president had wanted a timid NEA, he would have made a different choice,” he said.

On the Hill, his words and moves are being watched closely. “You have to show the rest of the country that the arts are a benefit to them,” says Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, the ranking Republican on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the NEA. The last chairman, Dana Gioia, pushed for financial support to every single congressional district during the George W. Bush years, he said; as a result, support for the NEA has increased steadily.

Big numbers seem to follow Landesman, who in 2005 paid a reported $30 million for his share of Jujamcyn Theaters, his production company. He is credited, and lambasted, for introducing the $100 Broadway ticket, as well as the $450 premium theater ticket, during the run of The Producers. Landesman, who has a doctorate in dramatic literature from Yale, where he once taught drama school, ended up controlling one of the big three Broadway businesses that own theaters and produce works.

Friends describe him as imaginative, energetic and colorful.

“He is a man of great vision. He is very persuasive, without being a bully, very engaging, very smart, a big thinker and passionate,” theater producer Margo Lion said. “He is a risk taker in the best way — he is not reckless. He is going to energize the profile of the arts in America.”

Many view the past few years at the NEA, following a dark period when the budget was slashed by 50 percent in the mid-1990s, as quiet ones of rebuilding. New programs were created to reach every corner of the country, including the critics’ districts. Then the recession hit.

“There is a crisis in the not-for-profit organizations, but the NEA can’t do this alone,” Landesman said.

Karen Brooks Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, said the NEA’s role as catalyst and energizer had diminished over the years. “When I was a young arts administrator and went down to the NEA, you met arts administrators from all over the country. Then the criticism of the agency was just a distraction for everyone. It was sad to lose the endowment as a hub for those creative ideas and the country’s creative life,” Hopkins said.

Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner agreed. “After the culture wars, the Republicans had been openly hostile to the arts,” Kushner said. “Clinton was tepid and didn’t extend political capital to the arts. I thought Obama would make a decent choice. Then he picked Rocco and I was stunned. He is not neutral, he is not fading into the background.”

Enter Landesman’s new audience: Capitol Hill. In July, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., fired off a letter, co-signed by dozens of colleagues, to the NEA’s interim chairwoman criticizing some of the groups that received stimulus funds from the agency, whose works he termed “objectionable and obscene movies, plays and exhibitions.” Landesman, requesting a meeting with Stearns, mentioned his familiarity with the thriving thoroughbred centers in Ocala, part of Stearns’s district.

“A lot can be accomplished by friendliness,” said Landesman, who has reminded Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., that they share a love of country music and that Oklahoma is home to Roger Miller, Jimmy Webb and Garth Brooks.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kinshasha Holman Conwill, a member of the Municipal Arts Society of New York board with Landesman, went to see The Producers.

“One of the notions after 9/11 was that Broadway, nonprofit and profit, wanted to stand up and offer comfort,” said Conwill, now deputy director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. “Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane were ad-libbing. The evening was very moving. Then after the standing ovations, Rocco came out and made a short speech about New York and led us in singing ‘God Bless America.’ The moment captured Rocco.”

Looking back, the evening was a starting point for what has become Landesman’s new slogan for the endowment: “Art Works.”

“It was very emotional. We came into the theater and became a community,” he said. “Artists are part of the real economy, the same as the people who work in the hospital.”