John and Jackie Kennedy were famously supportive of the arts. Kennedy laid the groundwork for the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts, and in October 1963, in a speech that was a tribute to the poet Robert Frost, Kennedy said there was “little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

Is Senator Obama set to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps as the arts president? The writers and artists who are hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama in a Chelsea gallery on Saturday night certainly hope so.

The event came about after a group of writers, spearheaded by the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, approached the art dealer Paula Cooper about hosting an Obama fund-raiser in her gallery. (Ms. Cooper and her husband, Jack Macrae, also own 192 Books, which hosts many author readings.)

Other hosts signed on, including the artists Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Mark di Suvero, and Dana Schutz (who painted Mr. Obama for the cover of the New Republic); the writers Toni Morrison, Tony Kushner, Junot Diaz, and Azar Nafisi, and the arts patron Agnes Gund. Ms. Morrison, who famously called President Clinton “our first black president,” endorsed Mr. Obama in January.

The fund-raiser is the second art-world event for Mr. Obama in three weeks. On February 2, the gallery Mitchell-Innes & Nash hosted an informational meeting at which artists, curators, and critics spoke about their support for Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

Although it is likely that artists would support Mr. Obama no matter his position on such insider issues as whether they should be able to take fair-market-value deductions on art that they donate, the campaign has not left matters such as these to chance. The Obama for America National Arts Policy Committee, co-chaired by the novelist Michael Chabon, the Broadway producer Margo Lion, and the founder of the American Film Institute, George Stevens Jr., advised Mr. Obama on an arts platform, which includes support for arts education, increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as support for Senator Patrick Leahy’s Artist-Museum Partnership Act, which would amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow artists to take full deductions on works that they donate to a museum or another nonprofit. Lucy Mitchell-Innes, who said she is planning to attend the event on Saturday night, said: “If you think about it, it’s absolutely absurd” that artists can’t take fair-market-value deductions. “It’s not in the national interest.”

The president of PaceWildenstein, Marc Glimcher, said that Mr. Obama’s position on issues pertinent to the art world was not a factor in his decision to support him. “He could have absolutely no opinion whatsoever, and I would still be supporting him completely,” he said.

Acknowledging that many people in the art world have had good relationships with Senator Clinton, Mr. Glimcher added: “It’s nothing against Hillary, but the level of enlightenment that Obama is demonstrating, that’s the friend the arts need. More than a policy or funding or anything else, it’s that the leader of the country has that level of sensitivity and intelligence. Nothing could nurture the arts more than that.”

The fact that Mr. Obama’s complex, “non-dumbed-down” perspective is connecting with people makes him hopeful, Mr. Glimcher said. “The last eight years of the art world [were] this dumbed-down, commercialized, money-oriented investment game,” he said. “Is this a coincidence? Could a different approach [by the government] have an impact on how hopeful artists and the art collectors could be?”

Ms. Cooper also said that she “would never just be interested in someone’s position on the arts,” but that she is impressed by a candidate who is “culturally broad and is aware of many things and believes that we should all be as evolved and as broad and humane as possible.”