Saw this in today's TIMES:

NY TIMES ARTS, BRIEFLY
More Aid for the Arts Is Sought

By ROBIN POGREBIN; Compiled by FELICIA R. LEE
Published: March 30, 2009
Americans for the Arts, a lobbying group, plans to ask Congress on Tuesday to
increase
the annual appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts to $200 million
from
the $155 million that was provided for the agency in the recent omnibus bill.
The
request will come on the group's 22nd annual Arts Advocacy Day. In the past
the organization has requested $176 million for the agency, the amount the
Endowment
was given at its highest financing, in 1992. But this year the need of arts
institutions
is greater, the group has said, and President Obama said during the presidential
campaign that he would request an increase. About 500 arts advocates are
expected to
meet with about one-third of Congress on Tuesday. Among those scheduled to
testify
before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and
Related Agencies are the singers Linda Ronstadt and Josh Groban, and the jazz
trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.