Add Paderewski (Polish President--frontman for Pilsudski) and Havel (Czech President--frontman for Klaus). Mao and Stalin fancied themselves poets.
> I can't think of any artists who were
>progressive heads of state...
The conductor Kurt Eisner was the President of the (alas, so short-lived) Bavarian Soviet Republic, which he inaugurated with a performance of the Beethoven Ninth in the Heldenplatz. Solon of Athens was a renowned poet.
I don't know whether Enlightened Despots count as "progressive," but Friedrich der Grosse was a flautist and a not-bad minor composer, and the emperor Nero always thought his true vocation was as poet, dramatist, actor, composer, and inventor of musical instruments (his last words-- "What an artist dies with me").
Much supremely great poetry is attributed to David and Solomon, Kings of Jerusalem.
Shane Mage
"Mortals immortals, immortals mortals,
living their deaths, dying their lives"
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62