NEA Reverses Course, Decides to Fund Controversial AIDS-Related Art Show

The National Endowment for the Arts, in a clear bid to defuse a risky censorship controversy over an AIDS-related art show in New York City, reversed course Thursday and agreed to release $10,000 in grant money for the exhibit.

The announcement of the decision to rescind an order impounding the grant to Artists Space, a Manhattan gallery, was made by NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer, who had previewed the show Wednesday. Four members of the National Council on the Arts, the NEA’s advisory board, visited the show Thursday and urged Frohnmayer to reconsider.

The decision was announced here hours before the show, “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing,” opened Thursday night for a scheduled run through Jan. 6. It received strongly positive reviews on Thursday--including one in The Times--from critics who saw it before Frohnmayer flew here from Washington to see for himself.

The action revoking the grant had precipitated a firestorm of criticism among artists and arts advocates, who accused the NEA of succumbing to pressure to withhold federal support from controversial art and roused fears among arts supporters in Congress that the tempest could seriously damage the endowment.

“I was glad to hear Mr. Frohnmayer’s statement that our grant is restored,” said Susan Wyatt, executive director of Artists Space. “Today is a joyous occasion because it is the opening of a moving and beautiful exhibition.”

Wyatt said that the chairman of the NEA, who had met with a group of artists and gallery officials here, had been willing to engage in a hard dialogue.

“Reversing a decision is never easy, and we hope this suggests an openness to future dialogue,” she said.

Wyatt originally called Frohnmayer’s attention to the potential for political controversy over the show because the catalogue includes emotionally charged references to Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), a leader of congressional opponents of federal funding of the arts, and New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor.

The exhibit also includes some sexually explicit photographs and other visual images, and it deals with the interrelationship between sexuality and AIDS.

Nan Goldin, the show’s organizer, said: “I believe that this battle is won, but we’ll keep on fighting the war against homophobia, AIDS phobia and restrictions on our freedom to speak . . . . We must now fight to abolish the Helms Amendment in any version.”

The gallery in lower Manhattan near the courts and City Hall was packed for the opening. Crowds five and six deep sought admittance, and the gallery staff was hard-pressed to let in groups of 10 to 20. They were greeted by photographs and paintings of loved ones lost to AIDS--many of the items on exhibit bore the emotional scars of premature death.

Outside the gallery’s big front door, about 30 AIDS and arts activists picketed, while across the street, a big blue and white banner proclaiming “Fight Censorship” was hung.

The pickets carried signs demanding “No taxation without artistic representation” and chanted “Gay artists here to stay, NEA--KKK,” and “We decide what art is great, not the church, not the state.” As the evening wore on, about 700 people waited outside the gallery to get in.

Broad hints of Frohnmayer’s decision came earlier in the day when prominent artists and art administrators gathered at a news conference in the gallery before the show officially opened.

Minutes before the press conference began, New York State Sen. Roy Goodman and three other members of the National Council on the Arts viewed the exhibit and spoke with Frohnmayer by phone. Wendy Luers, another council member, urged the art community to support the NEA’s chairman.

“This is a man who deserves our support. He is an intelligent man. He has walked into a maelstrom in . . . his first few weeks and he cares deeply about the arts community,” Luers said. “I think we have to give him a chance.”

Among the organizations at the news conference expressing opposition to Frohnmayer’s initial decision were the PEN American Center, the Art Dealers’ Assn. of America and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

In a terse, two-paragraph statement, the NEA said that Frohnmayer had agreed to accept a recommendation by Wyatt, the Artists Space executive director, to change the terms of the federal grant for the show so that the endowment money is applied only to the exhibit and not to the supporting catalogue.

Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), a key arts supporter, said: “It takes a big man to realize he’s made an error and reverse himself.” Pell, who helped draft the original NEA enabling legislation in 1965, echoed earlier criticisms by Frohnmayer that press attention to the controversy had significantly worsened it.

“It’s as if there’s a little conflagration and the press and different groups are blowing on the conflagration and trying to make it bigger,” Pell said. “The efforts of those of us who have done work in this field for a long time is to try to cool it at this time, give Frohnmayer a chance and move down the road.”

The controversy reached a new dimension late Wednesday after conductor Leonard Bernstein announced he was declining to accept a National Medal of Arts award, apparently to protest the action against the Artists Space grant.

Medal winners were honored Thursday night at a dinner hosted by Frohnmayer here and will be received today at the White House by President Bush. They include arts patron Leopold Adler, the Dayton Hudson Corp. dancer/choreographer Katherine Dunham, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, arts patron Leigh Gerdine, museum director Martin Friedman, jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, sculptor Walter Kirkland Hancock, writers Czeslaw Milosz and John Updike and painter Robert Motherwell. A posthumous award was also given in honor of pianist Vladimir Horowitz.