Chloe Aaron's importance to the development of the vital PBS that we know today has been celebrated by several leading obituaries. Less well known is her critical advancement of the fields of American independent film and video.
I worked for Chloe in the early mid-70s as her assistant director in the Public Media Program at the National Endowment for the Arts, the predecessor to the Media Arts Program. She was a visionary leader who implemented NEA director, Nancy Hanks's, mission to use media, specifically documentary film and television, to expand access to the traditional arts. But Chloe's most impressive and visionary contribution to that mission was to gradually transform the NEA's commitment to film as a mere pipeline for the other arts into a mission that included the support of documentary film as itself an art form. At the same time, she strategically and diplomatically expanded the NEA's direct support of all independent film, including experimental avant-garde, animation, and narrative filmmaking.  She appointed a standing panel of independent experts that included George Stoney, Ricky Leacock, Donn Pennebaker, Fred Wiseman, Stan VanDerBeek, Shirley Clarke, and educators and scholars like Gerald O'Grady,  and Sheldon Renan. Eventually, virtually the whole of the eventual pantheon of film and video artists scholars, pioneers, administrators, and educators in the independent cinema of the '70s in America passed through her program on panels and as grant recipients. She hired me specifically because I was working for O'Grady's legendary programs in independent film at Buffalo, and Chloe felt she needed more staff who were already connected to the independent film and regional media-center movement. 
Her leadership and friendship were a major positive influence on my life. I am proud of her easy, light-spirited, far-sighted and effective leadership all her life, and I wish her family well.


Joseph Gawler's Sons, LLC

Chloe Aaron

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Chloe Wellingham Aaron

October 9, 1938 – February 29, 2020

Joseph Gawler’s Sons, LLC

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