Artists’ Groups to Protest Helms Amendment

Declaring Aug. 26 as “Art Emergency Day,” artists’ coalitions nationwide have scheduled rallies to protest pending legislation in Congress that they contend threatens artistic expression and risks censorship.

In Los Angeles, an ad hoc group calling itself the Coalition for Freedom of Expression announced Wednesday night that it would stage two rallies next week in front of the Federal Building in Westwood.

At 8 p.m. Wednesday, the coalition said, it will stage a media event at which images, ranging from a gagged “Mona Lisa” and Michelangelo’s “David” with his genitals covered by a red symbol marked “obscene,” will be projected on the exterior of the Wilshire Boulevard building.

The coalition plans a four-hour demonstration there Aug. 26, starting at 10 a.m. and leading up to a 2 p.m. rally.

In New York, a group called Art Positive said Thursday that it plans to distribute information in the Broadway Theater District, at Lincoln Center and other areas of the city identified with the arts to encourage patrons to participate in a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress.

Arts organizations in New York also plan a march through Manhattan on Aug. 29, said Aldo Hernandez, an official of Art Positive.

Joy Silverman, director of the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Gallery and an organizer of the local coalition, said that other demonstrations are being planned in San Francisco and Chicago. In Washington, the National Assn. of Artists Organizations said that demonstrations may not materialize in other cities until after Congress concludes its traditional summer recess Sept. 11.

In addition to San Francisco and Chicago, artists groups are organizing protests in San Antonio, Houston and Detroit, the association said Thursday.

Also in Washington, still another ad hoc organization, the Arts Working Group, whose members include five of the largest mainstream arts advocacy organizations in the country, has begun circulating a white paper contending that a bill before a House-Senate conference committee represents a “thinly disguised attempt to kill” the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.

The white paper criticizes the pending legislation, which would bar federal funding for any art work in any medium that is “offensive” or “indecent” or that “denigrates” any specific religion or class of people. The language was included in an amendment offered by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to the 1990 Interior Department budget bill funding the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute of Museum Services and the Smithsonian Institution.

The Senate also passed a provision imposing a five-year ban on federal grants to two private arts agencies that organized shows including allegedly offensive photographs.

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, N.C., was targeted for sponsoring a show that included “Piss Christ,” an image of a crucifix immersed in a container of the photographer’s urine. The Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania faces a grant ban for organizing a show of work by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, a few of whose images explore homoerotic subject matter.

The National Endowment for the Arts has said that both of the private groups followed existing federal guidelines and directives and that it issued the grants completely in accord with applicable regulations.

The Senate language would also transfer $400,000 from this year’s budget of the National Endowment for the Arts visual arts program to other activities--a move some say would cripple the visual arts division and that has been interpreted by arts advocates as an attempt by political conservatives to punish the endowment for funding controversial work.

“When one combines the Draconian punishment inflicted on ICA and SECCA with the harsh standards of the Helms Amendment,” the white paper concluded, “the actions of the Senate constitute a most severe challenge to the rights of our citizens to speak forthrightly, creatively and critically of our society and their institutions.”

In a related move, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a motion offered by Councilman Joel Wachs to instruct lobbyists representing the city in Washington to oppose the Helms amendment and its five-year blacklisting of ICA and SECCA. The Wachs motion, which Washington observers characterized as highly unusual for a city government, concluded that the pending restrictions “would have the effect of cutting the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts or censoring the endowment’s activities.”

Earlier this month, the 225-member U.S. branch of the Music Critics Assn. issued a statement protesting the Helms amendment, calling the diversity of artistic viewpoints “essential” in a democratic society. “The association has never taken a stand on anything of this sort before,” said executive director Richard Freed, but its members thought it warranted in this instance because the amendment is “a spectacle of politicians meddling in the arts.”

In a statement in Los Angeles, the Coalition for Freedom of Expression asserted that a strict reading of the language in the bill to be addressed by the conference committee would mean that many of the classical art images to be projected onto the Federal Building Wednesday “would not be eligible for federal funding if the pending legislation is imposed.”

The Washington white paper was drafted by James Fitzpatrick, a prominent attorney who is chairman of the Washington Project for the Arts, which accepted the NEA-supported Mapplethorpe show after the Corcoran gallery of art canceled it to avoid being drawn into the political tempest.

The Arts Working Group represents the American Arts Alliance, American Assn. of Museums, American Council for the Arts, National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies and National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

The white paper contended that, under the terms of legislation scheduled for conference-committee debate, Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” could not be performed by any theater that receives federal support because Jews might find it offensive.

The Smithsonian Institution might be barred from organizing exhibits of American Indian artifacts because some Native Americans might object, the white paper charged, and libraries whose collection include work by authors ranging from Ernest Hemingway and Chaucer to Stephen Crane and Anne Frank could be similarly placed out of bounds for federal support.

“Common sense and history teaches that virtually every work of art is going to offend someone,” the white paper asserted. “Indeed, one simply cannot have a democratic system where the lowest common denominator of concern to any group is grounds for the government to refuse funding.”

Conference-committee action was made necessary because the House and Senate passed different versions of the same funding bill. The House version included a symbolic cut of $45,000 in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts--an amount equal to the total government money in the controversial ICA and SECCA shows. The endowment seeks $171.4 million for fiscal 1990.