Clement A. Price, a member of the Obama transition team's committee on the arts, spent several days in December walking the halls of the National Endowment for the Humanities, interviewing program officers and generally taking the temperature of the place. It was an interesting moment to visit: not only was a new president preparing to take office, but the endowment was about to lose the longest-serving chairman in its history. Bruce Cole, who had served in that role since 2001, announced in November that he would leave in January to take a position with a museum in Pennsylvania. As scholars await the appointment of a new chairman, old questions about the basic mission of the agency are being asked with new urgency. Mr. Price and other NEH watchers offered differing opinions on wish list items for the agency under the Obama administration, including: (1) a stronger pipeline to the White House; (2) greater openness; (3) a stronger peer-review system; (4) less emphasis on splashy public projects; and (5) more money.