Bill Ivey, a guitar-playing folklorist who founded and was the first director of the at Vanderbilt, as well as former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts and longtime director of the Country Music Foundation, died Nov. 7, 2025, at his home in Nashville. He was 81.
Born Sept. 6, 1944, in Detroit, Ivey grew up mostly in Calumet, on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After studying American history at the University of Michigan and earning a master鈥檚 in folklore and ethnomusicology from Indiana University, he became the first full-time director of the Country Music Foundation and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, positions he held from 1971 to 1998.
He transformed the institution from a small tourist attraction to the premier center for the study and preservation of country music. Throughout his career, Ivey shaped national conversations about art, culture and public policy. He twice served as chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to chair the NEA from 1998 to 2001, where he changed the agency鈥檚 image by, among other things, distributing grants to projects in 20 states where federal arts money was rarely spent and by running Challenge America, which supported arts education and other programs. He founded and led the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt from 2002 to 2012.
An author and public thinker, Ivey wrote Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights (University of California Press, 2008) and Handmaking America: A Back-to-Basics Pathway to a Revitalized American Democracy (Counterpoint, 2012), among other works. His books and writing pushed arts leaders to look beyond the nonprofit arts to consider the full spectrum of human creative expression. He also challenged leaders in Washington and the creative industries to get beyond narrow economic measures of well-being and take expressive life seriously as an arena for policy.
Survivors include his partner of 18 years, Susan Keffer; her children, Kelly Keffer and Ben (Whitney) Keffer; their children, Finn and Kendrick; his sister, Mary Del Signore; and his nephew, Gabe Del Signore.
