Nancy Hanks (1927-1983) was called the "mother of a million artists" for her work in building federal financial support for the arts and artists. Her years as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts and of the National Council on the Arts saw great expansion of their programs and budgets.

Nancy Hanks, named for her distant cousin, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, was born on December 31, 1927, in Miami Beach, Florida. Her parents Bryan Cayce Hanks, a corporation lawyer, and Virginia (Wooding) Hanks moved to Montclair, New Jersey, when Nancy was in high school. She attended Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she majored in political science and served as president of the student body. During the summer of 1948 she studied at Oxford University in England. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, she received her B.A. magna cum laude from Duke in 1949.

In 1951 she went to Washington...