[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 7656]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING ANNE G. MURPHY

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I pay tribute to Ms. Anne G. Murphy.
  Ms. Murphy, a Rhode Islander by birth and a strong advocate for the 
arts, passed away in April at the age of 74.
  Throughout her distinguished lifetime and career, Ms. Murphy worked 
to defend Federal investments in the arts. After graduating from Rhode 
Island College in 1959, she volunteered on the presidential campaign of 
Senator John F. Kennedy and taught elementary school in Rhode Island 
before relocating to Washington, DC to work on the staffs of two 
Representatives from Rhode Island, Congressmen John Fogarty and Robert 
Tiernan. While in Congressman Fogarty's office, she helped contribute 
to legislation that led to the creation of the National Endowment for 
the Arts, NEA.
  After leaving Capitol Hill, Ms. Murphy continued serving in the arts 
arena. She worked at both the NEA and the Public Broadcasting Service, 
and then joined the American Arts Alliance, where she served as 
executive director in the 1980s and early 1990s. As the leader of this 
major arts advocacy group, now known as the Performing Arts Alliance, 
Ms. Murphy defended arts programs from budget cuts and other attacks.
  Ms. Murphy also served on the board of the Corcoran Gallery of Art 
and was a co-chair of the annual Washington Project for the Arts Gala. 
During the 2000s, she served as the director and co-chair of the 
nonprofit digital technologies research organization, Digital Promise.
  I know how proud Congressman Tiernan remains of the important work 
that Anne did while working in his office and in her endeavors that 
followed in the arts community, and I want to share and echo his 
sentiments. We remember and thank Anne for her tireless efforts to 
support and protect federal investment in the arts. We are all 
beneficiaries of her advocacy.

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