Tom Grooms: Advocate for Design Excellence and the Arts

Tom Grooms Director of Design Excellence and the Arts Office of the Chief Architect Public Buildings Service Washington, DC. GSA's Design Excellence Program embodies the nation’s highest ideals and aspirations in our federal buildings.
  • - As the director of Design Excellence and the Arts in the Office of the Chief Architect, Tom Grooms is responsible for managing GSA’s Design Excellence, Art in Architecture, and Fine Arts programs. Grooms says he considers the Design Excellence Program to be the most rewarding project he has been involved in while working at GSA.

  • - “It has been incredibly fulfilling personally and professionally to have played a role in helping GSA initiate the Design Excellence Program, to nurture it, to see it succeed and change the course of federal architecture — and to see it become a model for other government agencies, both federal and local,” he says.

    George McBrien plays his own horn .

    Tom at the Taj Mahal during a recent trip to India, where he lived for two years.
  • -In 1994, while serving as the program manager of the Federal Design Improvement Program at the National Endowment for the Arts, Grooms helped initiate the Design Excellence Program, which led to Director Marilyn Farley asking him to join GSA full time in 1996 to help strengthen and expand the program.

  • -One of his most interesting activities at GSA was making films with his colleague Taylor Lednum, Grooms says. Particularly exciting was snagging Tim Russert, the longtime moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” to narrate “Architecture and Democracy.”  The 15-minute film honored New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the 40th anniversary of his writing the “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture,” the cornerstone of the Design Excellence Program.

  • - When away from the office, Grooms enjoys spending time with his life partner of 26 years and their twin grandsons, who live in France. “For me, this is Nirvana — adorable grandsons to visit, along with the chance to see some of the greatest art and architecture in the world.”

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Last Reviewed 3/18/2009