Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy

The Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy is a leading national forum for arts policy intended to stimulate dialogue on policy and social issues affecting the arts. It is held each year in mid-March on the evening before Arts Advocacy Day at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. The annual lecture is named for Nancy Hanks, former president of Americans for the Arts and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who devoted 15 years of her professional life to bringing the arts to prominent national consciousness.

Past lecturers include:
2007	Robert MacNeil, broadcast journalist and author  Help?
2006	William Safire, columnist and author
2005	Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
2004	Doris Kearns Goodwin, journalist and author
2003	Robert Redford, actor, director, and activist
2002	Zelda Fichandler, Founding Director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and Chair of the Graduate Acting Program and Master Teacher of Acting and Directing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts
2001	Frank Rich, op-ed columnist for The New York Times
2000	Terry Semel, immediate past Chairman and Co-CEO of Warner Bros. and Warner Music Group
1999	Wendy Wasserstein, playwright
1998	Dr. Billy Taylor, jazz musician and educator
1997	Alan K. Simpson, former U.S. Senator
1996	Carlos Fuentes, author
1995	Winton Malcolm Blount, Chairman of Blount, Inc., philanthropist, former U.S. Postmaster General
1994	David McCullough, historian
1993	Barbara Jordan, former U.S. Congresswoman
1992	Franklin D. Murphy, former Chief Executive Officer of the Times Mirror Company
1991	John Brademas, former Congressman, President Emeritus of New York University
1990	Maya Angelou, poet
1989	Leonard Garment, Special Counsel to Presidents Nixon and Ford
1988	Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian