Lady Gaga, George Clooney and Jennifer Garner named by Joe Biden as new members of his Arts Committee | People

Lady Gaga (New York, USA, 37 years old) makes the leap —partially— to the world of politics. The White House has announced that the artist has been appointed to co-chair the Arts and Humanities Committee launched by President Joe Biden. Gaga’s role from now on will be to advise presidents and heads of US cultural agencies on cultural policy, philanthropic and private sector engagement, and other efforts to improve federal support for the arts and the arts. humanities. She has not been her only appointment: she will share the presidency with the Hollywood producer and Oscar winner for american beauty (1999) Bruce Cohen; In addition, the advisory board also includes actors Kerry Washington, George Clooney, Jennifer Garner and the producer and creator of Grey’s Anatomy and The Bridgertons Shonda Rimes.

The announcement was made Thursday via the Committee’s Twitter account: “Welcome to the newly appointed members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, led by Bruce Cohen and Lady Gaga! We look forward to partnering to positively impact the work of the arts, libraries, museums and humanities across the country.” Cohen and Gaga must be added to 21 other professionals who will accompany them in this political-cultural project.

The committee, established in 1982 during the Ronald Reagan administration, was created with the intention of engaging artists, scholars, and heritage professionals in promoting excellence in the world of arts. In the 40 years it has been in business, it has helped write federal programs and has even played an essential role in improving cultural education. But he lived through a dark time during the years of the Donald Trump administration (2017-2021). In the first year of the Republican president’s term, the remaining members of the committee after Barack Obama’s march resigned in protest of Trump’s response to the riots that took place in August of that year in Charlottesville, Virginia: in a confluence of two demonstrations , one of white supremacists and the other anti-fascist and contrary to that ideology, one of those supremacists, James Alex Fields, rammed his vehicle into a crowd of the opposing march. An attack that ended with one death and 19 injured and with the president of the United States equating white supremacists and anti-fascist protesters (who gathered peacefully) during the clashes in the city.

The committee members then denounced that comparison and left the institution. In response, the White House issued a statement saying that Trump had already planned to dissolve the group, which he described as “a waste of American tax dollars.” Five years after the dissolution, at the end of 2022, Biden announced that his intention was to revive the committee, which from now on will meet twice a year to advise the president on issues related to the arts and humanities.

Gaga’s presence on the committee is not uncommon, since for years she has been very close to the president and his political party. So much so that she performed the national anthem at the inauguration of Joe Biden, in January 2021, as the 46th president of the United States on Capitol Hill. In 2020, the year in which the presidential elections were held in the American country, the pop diva accompanied the then Democratic candidate at the last rally before the vote. “This goes beyond politics, it is a matter of people. It’s a matter of the heart,” defended Gaga, who was immediately criticized by still President Trump. Three years earlier, the then former vice president of the United States and the singer joined forces to support victims of sexual abuse by creating centers for men and women victims of any type of assault.

The list of personalities of this new committee —who have a year and a half to take action on the matter, since in November 2024 there will be elections in the US again— makes sense, since most of them have supported, in public or privately, to the president and the Democratic party. Biden revealed in a book that Clooney offered him help for the 2016 presidential race, for example; and the actor himself has commented that Biden is trying to get the country to recover “from the damage caused by Trump.” Nor was the appointment of Jennifer Garner as a member of the cultural committee surprising, since in December the actress attended the first state dinner of the Biden presidency held on the occasion of the visit of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte Macron. Garner attended the appointment accompanied by her 17-year-old daughter, Violet Affleck.