AMERICA’S first lady, Michelle Obama, has added a new string to her bow as “minister of culture” in her husband’s administration.

The heads of New York’s most prestigious cultural institutions are in no doubt that she intends to play an active policy-making role in the arts world after they were summoned to meet her last week.

“She was speaking in a way the minister of culture would speak, even though such a position doesn’t exist in America,” said Peter Gelb, the manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. “It was as if she was almost an arts policy-maker on behalf of the White House and the president. It was highly unusual.”

Obama dazzled arts leaders when she attended the opening of the renovated American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last Monday in a purple V-neck dress designed by Isaac Mizrahi.

In traditional first lady mode, she cut a giant ribbon and toured the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, which her predecessor Jacqueline Kennedy secured for the museum in the 1960s. Tom Campbell, the British director of the Met, America’s foremost art gallery, was not only reminded of Kennedy but also of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

“She is so close to the centre of power, so smart and so striking that she could play an enormously influential role in directing attention to the arts,” Campbell said. “As with Diana, the combination of a reasoned message, delivered by someone of such grace and integrity, can achieve great things.”

From fashion icon and mom-in-chief to walker of Bo the dog and grower of organic vegetables in the White House garden, Obama has stayed in the limelight but out of controversy, to the surprise of critics who portrayed her as a radical black activist during last year’s election campaign.

However, she is carving out a highly activist role. In the opening ceremony at the Met, she called on the arts world to share in the White House’s attempt to reach out to local communities.

“We’ve been trying to break down barriers that too often exist between major cultural establishments and the people in their immediate communities, to invite kids who are living inches away from the power and prestige and fortune and fame, we want to let those kids know they belong here too,” she said.

Afterwards, she privately met about 40 top arts administrators, including Gelb and Campbell, in the Hatshepsut gallery, named after the female pharaoh who ruled Egypt from 1479BC-1458BC.

“The first lady made it very clear that the White House plans to use its position and prestige to shine a spotlight on the arts in a way that has not occurred recently,” said Gelb.

During the build-up to the election Obama rarely talked about the arts, mindful of her husband’s elitist image compared with the street-fighting Hillary Clinton, his opponent in a hard-fought Democratic primary campaign.

But her first date with Barack Obama was in a museum, as Emily Rafferty, the president of the Met, reminded her. “You know, after 20-some-odd years of knowing a guy, you forget that your first date was at a museum,” the first lady replied. “But it was, and it was obviously wonderful; it worked.”

In Washington, she has hosted a “poetry jam” at the White House, and has attended the ballet and theatre. Marian Robinson, her mother, who has moved into the White House to look after her daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, is an arts enthusiast who often sits in the president’s box at the Kennedy Center.

Obama talked privately to the arts leaders about growing up in Chicago, home to the Art Institute of Chicago, which houses one of the finest collections of impressionist paintings in the world.

“She told us she had the good fortune to go to the institute and be inspired, but so many thousands of children didn’t even know it existed because they lacked parents with the knowledge to take them,” Campbell said.

The arts world is thrilled to have such an influential advocate. “Art and culture has not really been well served for some years by Washington,” said Campbell. “It’s not been top of the agenda and cultural institutions have all too often been the butt of right-wing stereotypes.”

When the National Endowment for the Arts was awarded an extra $50m (£31.4m) of public money in President Obama’s fiscal stimulus package, it was denounced as wasteful spending that would do nothing to lift the economy.

Arts leaders hope that championing by Michelle Obama will help raise more private funds. In return, they believe they have proved to the White House how important the arts are to the economy. The Metropolitan Museum of Art alone employs 2,000 people and is one of America’s top tourist attractions.

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