Executive Director
With thoughts of spending more time at his family’s 1888 homestead in the Texas Panhandle, Tony Chauveaux advised the National Endowment for the Arts in September 2020, of his intention to step down as Deputy Chairman for Programs and Partnerships at the end of the year. Little did he know that five months later he would find himself as Executive Director of the McFaddin-Ward House Museum in Beaumont, TX, some 620 miles from his boyhood home. Nationally recognized as an authority on not-for-profit funding, Mr. Chauveaux brings years of hands-on experience as the Deputy Chairman for Programs & Partnerships at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2017 through 2020, Executive Director of Longue Vue House & Gardens in New Orleans, LA from 2013 to 2017, Deputy Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA from 2008 to 2013, and his first “tour of duty” at the National Endowment for the Arts as Deputy Chairman for Grants & Awards from 2003 through 2007. Over those years, he acquired an extensive array of experience developing policy and executing strategic initiatives achieving impressive results, coupled with the ability to gain timely credibility with professional staff, governing boards and related constituency groups.
Prior to entering public service in 2003, Mr. Chauveaux practiced law in Beaumont TX and was civically active, serving in leadership roles on the boards of most of that city’s cultural organizations, ultimately allowing him to experience “both sides” of the educational, cultural, and not-for-profit equation – as someone seeking financial and other resource support on behalf of local and regional not-for-profit groups, and more recently, as someone extending financial support to such organizations. Mr. Chauveaux’s 1998 appointment by then-Texas Governor George W. Bush as a Commissioner on the Texas Commission on the Arts, and later as its Chairman, led to his board service at Mid-America Arts Alliance in Kansas City, MO and the National Assembly of Arts Agencies in Washington, D.C. As a result, since 1998, Chauveaux has enjoyed the exceptional experience of working with the professional staffs of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the six U.S. Regional Arts Organizations, as well as arenas of higher learning throughout the nation.
Mr. Chauveaux holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism/Communication from The University of Texas at Austin, and a Juris Doctor degree from St. Mary’s University School of Law.