Council Asks Congress to Drop Threats of Sanctions Against Art

The National Council on the Arts has appealed to Congress to scuttle a series of threatened sanctions, saying the political crisis that the agency faces endangers basic concepts of freedom of artistic expression.

The resolution was adopted unanimously Saturday, after debate in which the council sometimes appeared uncertain how to defend itself. But the council, a presidentially appointed advisory body to the National Endowment for the Arts, stopped short of joining battle directly with congressional conservatives.

In a move that divided members, the council also voted 18 to 2 to table a motion that would have specifically protested provisions in a pending funding bill that impose a five-year ban on federal arts grants to two private agencies. The organizations roused the ire of some congressmen by sponsoring shows that included allegedly offensive photographs.

Affected would be the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C., which organized a show last year that included a photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, which sponsored an exhibit of work by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

The Mapplethorpe show, which includes a handful of sexually explicit images within a diverse array of work, is on view now at the Washington Project for the Arts. The WPA took it after the Corcoran Gallery of Art here canceled it because of the political tempest.

And though Congress left on its traditional summer recess over the weekend, parting salvoes of rhetoric in the controversy, which arts observers agree has become a battle over censorship, were fired by both sides. Observers here agree the situation is the worst crisis for the arts endowment since it was set up in 1965.

Friday night, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who has led a conservative assault on the arts endowment, circulated copies of seven Mapplethorpe images to members of a House-Senate conference committee that will meet after Labor Day to try to reach a compromise on the NEA funding bill.

Helms sponsored an amendment to the pending NEA legislation that would prohibit federal support for any work found “obscene or indecent” or that “denigrates, debases or reviles a person, group or class of citizens.” Endowment supporters contend the amendment is so broad and vague that it would render the agency powerless to make grants for any art.

In his mailing to the conference committee members, Helms included an annotated description of the images, with entries such as “one man holding another man’s genitals.” The letter concluded, “It’s your call as to whether the taxpayers’ money should be used to fund this sort of thing.”

Helms’ move was countered by a statement by Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), a leading liberal supporter of the arts endowment. But Pell also issued a challenge to the council, saying many Americans who support artistic freedom also find the Mapplethorpe images and the Andres Serrano photograph “Piss Christ” objectionable.

“I find (the artwork involved) deeply offensive, so it comes as no surprise to me that large numbers of people are similarly offended,” Pell said. “The result is a situation that has the very real potential to seriously undermine an agency that is so vital to the continued cultural development of our country.

“It is my hope that the arts council will reaffirm the endowment’s congressional mandate to support artistic excellence.”

The Pell statement was generally construed as a challenge requiring a response acknowledging the reasons for the controversy but reasserting the need for a politically neutral arts endowment.

Phyllis Berney, a Wisconsin art patron who viewed the Mapplethorpe images at a private showing for council members Friday night, said viewing the work established that one “can’t help but understand that this is the work of a truly great artist. Those that have opposed this exhibit will be sorry.”

But from the beginning of the council meeting Friday until Saturday morning, the panel seemed paralyzed by an inability to act forcefully. Later Saturday, however, on a day most observers expected to be dominated by comparatively innocuous discussion of national endowment grant making, two Republican state senators, named to the council by former President Ronald Reagan, argued successfully for a more aggressive posture.

“There has been an attempt to ‘zero out’ the entire NEA,” asserted Roy M. Goodman, who represents a district in Manhattan and is assistant majority leader of the New York state Senate. The attempt to cripple the NEA, Goodman contended, “goes to the very guts, fiber and heart of the republic.

“What constitutes art versus outrage is not a fixed point on the compass. There can be no chalk line that is drawn across the pavement,” separating the obscene and objectionable from legitimate art.

Overcoming clear reluctance and confusion within the council over how to respond, Goodman and Florida State Sen. Bob Johnson, another Republican Reagan appointee, insisted on a broad statement responding to Pell’s challenge to the council to reassert the need to find a balance between artistic freedom and political reality.

Eventually, the arts council adopted a statement. It noted that the legislation that set up the endowment included a series of strictures intended to guarantee that politicians and federal officials would be unable to interfere with artistic content of works.

“On occasion, the national endowment has made grants which were deemed in certain quarters to be controversial and which evoked expressions of public concern,” the statement said. “It was widely agreed that any federal control would stifle the arts and defeat the purpose of the entire endeavor, which was to encourage the reawakening and growth of America’s cultural vitality.”

The current political crisis, the statement contended, raises fears over “the contemplated alteration of the landmark objectives of artistic quality coupled with artistic freedom.”

But while the statement was adopted unanimously, the arts council balked at another resolution that would have protested the blacklisting of the two arts agencies involved in the “Piss Christ” and Mapplethorpe controversies.

Harvey Lichtenstein, a council member who is president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, proposed language saying the council “deplores the exclusion of any organizations or individuals to access the competition process” for grants.

The proposal was tabled, however, after Johnson, Goodman and other council members voiced fears that the measure would upset the delicate political balance the council is attempting to strike. The decision, Lichtenstein protested, “is cowardly. It is a mistake. It’s a retreat.”

In successfully arguing against the more specific measure, Goodman contended that the statement the council did adopt establishes that “we have shown we’re not a bunch of arrogant, self-important twerps.”

The Mapplethorpe show at the Washington Project for the Arts, which had drawn more than 25,000 visitors by the weekend, was overwhelmed Saturday by crowds that lined up around the block at WPA’s gallery six blocks from the arts council meeting. Visitors waited more than an hour to view the photographs. Jocelyn Levi Straus a council member and close friend of President Bush, said she hadn’t viewed the Mapplethorpe material Friday night but looked forward to doing so before returning home to San Antonio. “I’m very anxious to see it,” she said.

Straus attended a private White House breakfast with Bush on Friday, but said the NEA controversy was not discussed. “The man has hostages on his mind,” Straus said, referring to the situation in the Middle East.

She said she had not discussed pending NEA legislation with Bush. But, reflecting the political connections of many of the arts council’s members, Straus said she would not hesitate to call Bush directly to urge a veto if a House-Senate conference fails to remove restrictions in pending endowment legislation. “I don’t know what the president would do,” Straus said of the veto prospect. “If it got to that point, I would (call him), without hesitation. He’s very interested in seeing the arts healthy.”