Word this morning that Los Angeles architect Thom Mayne has been appointed to Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. After twenty years or so of small scale but formally and materially inventive work, Mayne caught on to federal funding for new architecture and became the darling of the GSA’s design program in the last ten years. Not all of those buildings drew rapturous applause (his courthouse for Eugene, Oregon basically got him run out of town on a rail), but this is a provocative, interesting choice.  He’ll be serving with Sarah Jessica Parker, among others…