FIRST OFF . . .

John E. Frohnmayer, new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, vowed Wednesday to calm a congressional uproar over obscenity and to seek greater financial support for the arts. Frohnmayer told reporters he had met twice recently with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the endowment’s harshest critic, and was assured that Helms had no intention of trying to abolish the grant-making federal agency. Frohnmayer also said he would seek a significant increase in the endowment’s $171.3 million budget to help bolster arts education in public schools, expand access to cultural events by minority groups and underwrite the mounting expenses of high-quality arts institutions. He also will seek greater private support for the arts, including a possible appeal to rock stars and other big-name performers to donate part of their multimillion-dollar profits to support arts education. The endowment, an independent federal agency, spent $156 million in tax-paid matching grants last year to underwrite about 800 artists and 3,800 arts institutions, from opera and theater companies to poets and folk artists. The endowment’s budget has grown by less than 8% since 1981, when President Reagan took office and tried unsuccessfully to slash its $158.8 million budget in half.