Jane Chu, president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, was nominated in February as the next chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts.
According to Kauffman officials, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Wednesday moved Chu's nomination forward to the full Senate.
The timing of the vote has not yet been released. Chu isn't expected to comment until the confirmation process is complete.
"All I can say, happily, is that there seems to be bipartisan support and no controversies on the nomination process," Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, told a reporter with the McClatchy Washington Bureau after the hearing.
The NEA has not had a chair for more than a year, since Rocco Landesman stepped down at the end of 2012.