Walter Anderson, 88; Professor, Pianist Led NEA Music Programs

Walter F. Anderson, 88, a music professor, concert pianist and composer who was director of music programs at the National Endowment for the Arts for a decade, died of cancer Nov. 24 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md.

A native of Zanesville, Ohio, Anderson attended Oberlin College and then studied music at the Berkshire Music Center and the Cleveland Institute of Music. He received the equivalent of a doctoral degree in 1952 as a fellow of the American Guild of Organists.

Anderson’s appointment as head of the music department at Antioch College in 1946 was heralded as pioneering in the academic world because he was said to be the first African American named to chair a department outside the nation’s historically black colleges.

Anderson left Antioch College in 1968 to join the NEA. At the then-new agency, he was credited with creating grant guidelines that became a model for other programs and for establishing a challenge-grant concept used to leverage private-sector support for the arts.