This Prodigious Adventure: How the Missouri Arts Council Began

Inauguration of Warren E. Hearnes as governor of Missouri on January 11, 1965 outside the Capitol in Jefferson City. Left to right:
John M. Dalton, governor of Missouri 1961-65; First Lady Geraldine Dalton; Warren E. Hearnes, governor of Missouri 1965-73;
First Lady Betty Hearnes. – photo from Gerald Massie Collection, #P16, photo #074, The State Historical Society of Missouri
MISSOURI ARTS COUNCIL ▪ OCTOBER 2015
This Prodigious Adventure:
How the Missouri Arts Council Began
by Barbara MacRobie
On June 30, 1965, the 46th governor of the state of Missouri, Warren Eastman Hearnes, signed House Bill
No. 42 of the 73rd General Assembly, and thereby established a statutory, funded agency of the state to
support the arts.
Now in 2015 as the Missouri Arts Council celebrates 50 years, we have been fortunate to catch up with two
people without whom that golden anniversary would never have happened: William Howard Adams and
Betty Hearnes.
William Howard Adams led the resolute band of Missourians charged by Governor John M. Dalton,
Governor Hearnes’ predecessor, to break the ground on how a state arts council could work. Betty Hearnes
made it her personal goal when she became First Lady of Missouri to get the Council's legislation passed.
Mr. Adams and Mrs. Hearnes recently shared memories of what it took to get Missouri’s arts agency off the
ground and running strong.
First step: Governor’s Committee on the Arts
In the early 1960s, William Howard Adams was a lawyer working with his family’s dairy business near
Kansas City in Blue Springs, where his family had lived for five generations.
“The idea that government should support the arts was in the air,” he remembered. “I myself was very
much inspired by John F. Kennedy’s atmosphere coming from Washington, particularly by what he said in
a speech on November 29, 1962: ‘The encouragement of art is political in the most profound sense, not as
a weapon in the struggle, but as an instrument of
understanding of the futility of struggle between those
who share man's faith.’
“Here we were in a state with major symphonies, major art
museums, ballet companies and more, and the heads of
these institutions did not even know each other. Yet they
were struggling with the same problems. There had to be
some way of collaboration. I had the idea to form a
committee.”
Mr. Adams brainstormed his idea with like-minded friends
such as Henry Haskell, editor of the Kansas City Star, and
Homer Wadsworth, head of Kansas City’s Association of
Trusts and Foundations. Then he went to someone who
had been “a family friend for a long, long time”: Governor
John Dalton. The governor appointed Mr. Adams and 25
other leaders from around the state to be the Governor’s
Committee on the Arts.
The Committee members met together for the first time in
Jefferson City on February 23, 1963. In Mr. Adams’ introductory remarks as chair, he hailed Governor Dalton’s
“important step toward bringing about a new day in the
cultural life of this state….this prodigious adventure.”
William Howard Adams, chair of the Governor’s
Committee on the Arts and first chair of the Missouri
Arts Council, in 1979 – photo from the
Jackson County Historical Society
Governor Dalton tasked the Committee with establishing a continuing conversation among the state’s
cultural leaders, assessing the scope of Missouri’s cultural strength, exploring ideas for expanding the
effectiveness of the state’s cultural institutions, and investigating programs in other states. In an essay
Mr. Adams wrote for the New York Times 18 years later, he recalled the challenges they faced:
“While our educational institutions were generously training
outstanding young artists, most had to go outside the state
and even the country to pursue their professional careers.
Secondly, the private support for the arts in Missouri was
fragmented between two urban centers, St. Louis and Kansas
City, with no means of collaboration to reach larger audiences
beyond the major cities….
“There was a feeling that, professionally speaking, the arts in
the Midwest were being polarized between the blandishments
of California and New York….Quixotic or not, we believed that
alternative sources of support for the arts in many different
parts of the country and at different levels could help preserve
the richly diverse cultural soil in which our complex national
cultural life had grown up.”
Governor John Montgomery Dalton
– portrait from Missouri Life
The members worked entirely on their own time and at their
own expense. “We informally called ourselves ‘the Committee
of Correspondence’ after the groups in New England at the
start of the Revolution,” Mr. Adams told us. “Because we
considered what we were doing somewhat subversive!”
Allies in the wings
Unbeknownst to these “conspirators of hope,” they had staunch allies not only in the current governor but
in the man and woman who were going to become Governor and First Lady of Missouri two years later.
Betty Sue Cooper and Warren Hearnes had grown up in Charleston, Missouri—“the flower of the
Bootheel”—and were living there when they married in 1948. Warren had sung in the choir at West Point
while earning his degree. Betty was a singer, pianist, and music teacher with a music degree from the
University of Missouri. She was an enthusiastic and expert partner in her husband’s political career.
In 1951, when he was 27, Warren Hearnes became Missouri’s youngest House member, representing the
Bootheel’s Mississippi County. In 1961, he became Missouri’s secretary of state.
“When the Governor’s Committee on the Arts
got started in 1963,” Betty told us, “even
though Warren was secretary of state he still
stayed upstairs a lot where the House
members worked, because those were his
friends. He told me whenever the men talked
about the arts bill, they’d sing Home on the
Range. It was a joke to them! I’d say to him,
‘We’re going to surprise them next year,
aren’t we, Warren!’”
Broad-based enthusiasm
As 1963 progressed, the Committee decided
their next step should be a statewide
conference on the arts. “This had never been
done in Missouri before,” said Mr. Adams.
“But we knew we had to have a statewide
base of representation.
Governor Warren and First Lady Betty Hearnes at home in the Governor’s
Mansion – photo from the Missouri State Archives
“We wanted to involve the University of
Missouri, but the university was a little
suspicious of a state-authorized government
agency on the arts that wasn’t under the
university itself. So we roped in Elmer Ellis,
the university president, and specifically
involved him in hosting the conference.”
The conference took place in Columbia on November 17 and 18, 1963. The Committee brought in
Alexander Dunbar of the Scottish Arts Council “because Scotland is close in population to Missouri, and the
experience in the United Kingdom was a precedent for what we thought would happen in the development
of arts councils in this country.” Arthur M. Schlesinger, historian and special assistant to President Kennedy,
gave the keynote address.
Anyone was welcome to attend the conference. ““Three hundred people turned up. It was sold out.”
The university published the results as a 55-page booklet, The Community and the Arts. “Those papers,”
said Mr. Adams, “became the blueprint for the intellectual and political architecture of the Council.”
The Committee continued to meet, network, and amass information. Then, on January 11, 1965, Governor
Dalton’s term came to an end when Warren E. Hearnes was inaugurated governor.
The Hearneses take the lead
“No one on the committee knew Warren Hearnes,” said Mr. Adams. “We did not know where he would
stand. The committee could just have been abandoned.”
However, the new Governor made his position clear just two days after his inauguration when he made this
recommendation to the General Assembly:
“It is axiomatic that the culture of a state cannot be created by statute. However, it is just as true that
legislation can help to develop a culture, just as legislation helps to promote industrial prosperity. Both are
in the public interest and are matters of public health and welfare.
“Few today will deny that economic growth depends to a great degree on cultural progress. Many other
Missourians and I believe the arts are too important to leave to charity.
“Therefore, I recommend that you enact the
necessary legislation and appropriate the
necessary funds to carry out the recommendations of the Missouri State Council on the Arts.”
“Governor Hearnes took the initiative to transform
the Committee into a legislatively approved
Council,” said Mr. Adams. “Betty Hearnes
enabled us to make the essential, critical
transition from one administration to the next.
She was a very active, outgoing, wonderful
spokesman.”
“There were many other people doing different
things,” said Mrs. Hearnes. “I was in the right
place at the right time. And Warren had the same
interest I did. When the governor’s got something
in his book and says he wants it passed, there’s
some back behind it.”
It was fortunate for the arts in Missouri that the
Hearneses were throwing their weight behind the
legislation, because, as Mrs. Hearnes
remembers, “It was not easy.
“A lot of those men in the legislature didn’t like
the arts bill. They were doing it because they
knew the old Governor wanted it, and Warren
was behind it, and naturally so was I. There were some times when we didn’t know which way to turn.
But Warren knew what he was doing—he knew how to talk to the men and to lobby.”
Betty Hearnes as First Lady – photo from Friends of the Missouri
Governor’s Mansion
Steering through the process
“We all knew we had to go out and persuade the legislature,” said Mr. Adams. “We had to have hearings.
We decided we would have only one witness: painter Thomas Hart Benton.”
A native of Neosho in southwest Missouri and a star of the American Regionalist art movement, Benton
appeared before the Licenses and Miscellany Committee on February 2, 1965 to appeal for passage of the
bill that would established the arts council as a funded state agency.
“He used his characteristically colorful language to persuade the committee in about five minutes,” said Mr.
Adams. “They moved the arts bill from the legislative committee to the floor.”
The House of Representatives passed the bill. Then it had to clear the Senate.
“When it went over to the Senate, it had a little more trouble,” said Mrs. Hearnes. “Some of the men said to
me, ‘What are we supposed to do, have naked ladies jumping around?’ I said, ‘Are you crazy, you know
better than that! We’re going to do what the arts are supposed to do.’
“There was one senator who voted against it in committee. Afterwards other senators told him, ‘Do you
realize you voted against Betty’s bill?’ ‘I didn’t know this was Betty’s bill!’ So the next day he rescinded his
vote and said he was going to support the bill.”
House Bill No. 42 came before the full Senate on June 17.
“It was about five minutes before adjournment, and the legislation was still hung up,” Mr. Adams said. “The
lieutenant governor, Tom Eagleton, stepped in as presiding officer of the legislature and held up the clock
until the arts council’s legislation moved through.”
Off in Washington, D.C. that day, Betty Hearnes was also anxiously eyeing the clock. She was scheduled to
make a speech to the National Council on the Arts, the arts commission appointed just the previous year by
President Lyndon B. Johnson. Her topic: how to establish a state arts council.
“I’m backstage, and Warren phones me. ‘The bill’s not through yet.’ ‘You have got to be kidding me! I’m
sitting here with a whole place full!’ ‘Just sit tight,’ he says. About 15 minutes before I’m supposed to walk
on stage, he calls again. ‘The bill’s through! Make your speech!’”
The Missouri Arts Council was a go.
Governor Warren E. Hearnes signs the Missouri Arts Council into existence on June 30, 1965.
Following through
For the Council’s first full year of 1965-66, Governor Hearnes named 15 volunteer board members,
a 17-member advisory commission, and several advisory committees for the various arts disciplines.
He also worked to ensure that the fledgling Council had money to operate.
“Warren told me a story,” said Mrs. Hearnes, “that after the bill had passed, the budget director, John
Vaughn, came to his office and said, ‘Governor, we don’t have the money for the arts council.’ Warren told
him, ‘Johnny, we have got to find the money for the arts. I have to go home every night to that woman, and
there is no way we’re going to have that bill go through without money!”
The board members, with
Executive Director Clark H.
Mitze and Charles
Hennemeyer of the State
Office of the Budget, met for
the first time on September
14, 1965. Operations began
on October 13 with an eightmonth budget of $170,000
that included support for
300 arts programs in
100 communities.
During the rest of Warren
Hearnes’ two terms, he and
Betty kept a close eye on the
Council’s fortunes. “We
always had to watch to make
sure it got money from the
legislature,” she said.
“Once Warren watched
for anything, he didn’t forget.
After our eight years, the
Council was on solid ground.
By then, people had seen the
needs coming from everywhere.”
Warren E. Hearnes; Matt Blunt, governor of Missouri 2005-09; and Betty Hearnes at the
2005 Missouri Arts Awards ceremony at the Capitol on February 9, 2005. The Missouri Arts
Council presented the Hearnes with a special Ruby MAC Award to honor them for their
crucial service. The award itself was a bowl hand-blown by Sam Stang of Augusta.
– photo by Lloyd Grotjan
Even after the Hearneses left Jefferson City, Betty’s networking chops were irreplaceable. “I remember in
1973 after Warren’s term was over, I got a call from Peter Pastreich, the executive director of the St. Louis
Symphony. ‘Betty, I need your help.’
‘Peter, I’m at home in Charleston!’ ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘We’re asking for a million dollars for the
Philharmonic in Kansas City and the Symphony in St. Louis, and we’ve got to have you. Because you’ve
got to work the committee. And the chairman of appropriations is dead set against it.’
“So I called the committee and I called the chair. I told him, ‘We’ve come a long way and now we’re going to
go some more.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to do this! I didn’t like that bill in the first place. I did it for you!’
“I said to him, ‘Let me say this…if when it was time to call the vote you had to go to your office to take a
telephone call and let the vice chairman take the vote, could you do that?’ Because that’s the way they do it
in the legislature. If there’s a bill you just can’t stand, you can always go to your office especially if you’re
the chairman. He said he would. And we got the bill through.”
National movement
Missouri’s arts advocates had few models to follow in the early 1960s when they started figuring out how to
establish a state arts agency through legislative action. But according to the National Endowment for the
Arts, 1965 was a banner year for the creation of governmental mechanisms for arts support. In that year
alone, 20 states authorized their own arts agencies either through their legislatures or by executive order.
“The states took the lead. That’s important to be remembered,” said Mr. Adams. “Historically, that’s how
things develop in this country—they happen someplace else first and eventually Washington moves.”
On September 29, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation enabling the NEA itself as well as
the National Endowment for the Humanities. By 1967, all 50 states and most of the territories had created
arts agencies.
Lives spent in the arts and public service
In mid-1965, William Howard Adams moved his advocacy of the arts to the national scene and his family to
the East Coast when he was named associate director of the Associated Councils of the Arts, a precursor
of today’s Americans for the Arts. “I was asked because I was now an instant expert on state arts councils!”
he said. (He was succeeded as Missouri Arts Council chair
by Kansas City attorney Lyman Fields, who served for the
next eight years.)
The year after the Missouri Arts Council was born, Mr.
Adams wrote a short book about his experience: The
Politics of Art: Forming a State Arts Council. Two years
after that, he founded the National Assembly of State
Arts Agencies.
In 1971, the Adams family bought the house in which
Mr. Adams at age 88 still lives, an 1815 farmhouse called
Hazelfield in rural Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia.
Mr. Adams’ career as a historian, art curator, and public
servant has ranged from the National Gallery of Art to
Harvard University. He has written several books
especially about Thomas Jefferson and the history of
garden design. His Nature Perfected was turned into a
12-part documentary by the BBC. His most recent work is
On Luxury, published in 2012.
Betty Hearnes was elected in 1979 to the Missouri House
William Howard Adams at Hazelfield – photo from
of Representatives for the Bootheel’s Scott and Mississippi
williamhowardadams.com
Counties. She served in the House through 1989. She
continued to pay special attention to funding for the Missouri Arts Council, and made top priorities of
education, historic preservation, and prison reform. In 1988, she was the first woman in Missouri to run for
governor, tilting as the Democratic nominee against Senator John Ashcroft.
She still lives in Charleston. And she is still active in the arts.
“I’m 88 years old, but I don’t think I’ll be sitting down soon! I’m the director of music at my church, First
Baptist,” she said. “People who’ve sung with us have gone on to become directors themselves. That’s what
I like—how the arts open doors for people.
“I remember how one time a brass quintet went with me down to the boondocks in southwest Missouri. One
little boy was watching the musicians play and looking at the instruments. He said to me, ‘I would like to ask
you a question. How come when that man started to blow that horn, why did he smile?’ Now that tells you,
that’s what he understood—how to make music!
“The arts enhance people’s lives. That’s all there is to it.”
This Prodigious Adventure: How the Missouri Arts Council Began was created in October 2015 for the Missouri Arts Council,
a state agency and division of the Department of Economic Development. The Missouri Arts Council provides grants to
nonprofit organizations that meet our strategic goals of increasing participation in the arts in Missouri, growing Missouri’s
economy using the arts, and strengthening Missouri education through the arts. Contact [email protected].
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Please feel free to share and distribute. Attribution: Courtesy of the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.
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