Conservatives Ready 1990 NEA Offensive : Culture: Right-wing groups and politicians make common cause in latest wave of criticism against the National Endowment for the Arts.

Conservative groups and politicians have begun a long-awaited 1990 offensive against the National Endowment for the Arts, giving evidence of a unified assault on the federal government’s most visible cultural agency.

Among the elements in the newest wave of criticism:

* The right-wing American Family Assn., based in Tupelo, Miss., has distributed thousands of letters and pre-printed postcards since last Friday to be mailed to senators and congressmen. The cards and letters denounce the NEA for supporting “obscene, pornographic or anti-Christian ‘art’ exhibits.”

* Earlier this week, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) released the third in a series of broadsides focusing on specific NEA grants for alleged indecent or sacrilegious subject matter. The newest letter by the Los Angeles area congressman denounced “Modern Primitives,” an art and performance show organized by a Seattle artist organization and featured at Southern Exposure, a gallery affiliated with San Francisco’s Project Artaud, late last year.

* Separately, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, head of the Orange County-based Traditional Values Coalition, is scheduled to meet in Washington today with Rohrabacher and other conservatives. Sheldon reportedly told supporters earlier this week he plans to go to the White House today to insist that President Bush direct NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer to purge grant programs of funding to any arts project that could be objectionable to fundamentalists.

The White House said Sheldon did not have an appointment with Bush, but aides were uncertain if Sheldon was scheduled to meet with other Administration officials. Sheldon’s son, Steve, who functions as his press spokesman, insisted a White House meeting was scheduled, but declined to provide details.

Later Thursday, the White House said Louis Sheldon had appeared unannounced at a meeting conducted by Bush to discuss legislation for the disabled. A spokesman said Sheldon introduced himself to Bush but that art issues were not discussed.

The first wave of mail from the American Family Assn. campaign has begun to hit offices of senators on a subcommittee that will consider legislation to renew the arts endowment’s legislative mandate for five more years. The group was the first conservative organization to take on the NEA last year when its director, Donald E. Wildmon, initiated a protest over an endowment-supported national show that included a photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine.

Senate sources said the pattern of the new campaign is similar to tactics employed last year by the American Family Assn. The controversy touched off by the 1989 letter-writing campaign ballooned into one of the most serious crisis ever faced by the arts endowment. Pre-printed cards supplied by Wildmon’s group for mailing to congressmen read: “I urge you to vote to cut out all funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. The only way to safeguard my tax dollars is to remove all government funding of NEA.”

Rohrabacher’s newest target, “Modern Primitives,” includes work by Los Angeles area visual and performance artists. It focuses on body piercing--including piercing of the genital organs--as elements in the worldwide practice of body decoration.

“It is utter madness that your constituents and mine are forced to pay for such things through their taxes,” Rohrabacher said in a letter to his House colleagues. NEA records indicate that Project Artaud received $5,000 last year for general support of exhibits by “emerging and established artists,” though the “Modern Primitives” show was not given a specific grant. The Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, the show’s organizer, got $17,500 under the same program of general support.

At the same time, however, arts supporters may be better prepared for this year’s conservative campaign against the NEA than they were in 1989, when even major arts organizations waited weeks--even months--before they joined in political combat over attempts to cut the NEA budget in retaliation for allegedly offensive grants.

In Sacramento on Tuesday, for instance, Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), received a standing ovation at a meeting sponsored by the California Confederation of the Arts when she lashed out at “right wing Neanderthals who will dare to tell us what is beautiful and what is not beautiful or what is right or what is wrong.” Waters, who is running for the House seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Augustus Hawkins, warned state arts advocates that a successful conservative assault on the NEA would lead to other restrictive social legislation.

“You can be sure that they (Helms, Rohrabacher and their conservatives colleagues) are going to be there messing with us on some other issue” if the NEA is effectively destroyed, Waters said. “That which protects us is that right to the freedom of expression. Don’t be afraid to be strong and to be loud and to be determined. What you see now is no mistake (It is conservative) leadership that is dangerous; leadership that would try to dictate what is good and what is bad.”

The threat to the NEA is expected to be the main focus of National Cultural Advocacy Day in Washington on Tuesday. A newly formed national group, the Arts Coalition for Cultural Freedom, will hold a separate rally on the steps of the Capitol later Tuesday afternoon.

In a recent Los Angeles interview, Rohrabacher he was “just starting” this year’s offensive against the NEA. “I think what I have done in the last year or so and so far this year has been a very big success,” Rohrabacher said, “because we’ve got the whole country debating whether the federal government should be involved in funding of the arts.”

In this week’s letter to his House colleagues, Rohrabacher ridiculed “Modern Primitives” as an exercise in sadomasochism. “Congress is struggling to come up with funds for prenatal care for poor women and Head Start programs for our children,” he said, “yet we are using tax dollars to fund S&M; shows. Congress must either get the federal government out of the arts or establish basic standards.”

Jon Winet, director of the Southern Exposure gallery, said “Modern Primitives” reflects a process under which “artists, writers and scholars are increasingly investigating issues concerning the human body.

“Art of importance can be, and often is, challenging as well as inspiring. The important issue raised by the current controversy over arts funding is freedom of expression.”

Charlotte Murphy, executive director of the National Assn. of Artist Organizations, a national group, said “arts organizations like Southern Exposure provide artists with a place to experiment. Today’s risk-takers are tomorrow’s creative leaders.

Arts groups have moved with various degrees of resolve to meet the conservative challenge, raising questions about fragmentation and paralysis within the arts community. Thursday, Murphy said her organization and a half-dozen other artist groups expect to form a new activist coalition, the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, sometime this month to perk up the debate and persuade artists they must prepare for political hand-to-hand combat.

“Rohrabacher and Helms want to divorce freedom of speech from federal support of the arts. The truth is Americans want both. Over the next few months, the arts community and its supporters will make it clear that the far right’s agenda to kill free speech endangers us all.”

Rohrabacher’s broadside on “Modern Primitives” had been expected for more than a week. Staffers first said the letter would be distributed last week, then abruptly changed plans. But, like a earlier communication that complained about NEA support of an art show in Illinois that included an image of Jesus Christ with a syringe protruding from his arm, this week’s Rohrabacher letter attracted little media attention.

Though release of the communication was not a surprise, the background of how Rohrabacher came to make a particular issue of the show appeared to confirm that conservative congressmen have joined forces under the overall command of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). The strategy has designated Rohrabacher as the point man taking the most visible public role.

The release also appeared to verify existence of a coordinated campaign against artists targeted in a series of letters sent by Helms to the arts endowment late last year. The Helms letters, obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act in January, included specific inquiries about four arts groups and seven individual artists involved in “Modern Primitives.”

Greg Waddell, Rohrabacher’s press spokesman, said staff members became aware of “Modern Primitives” from Helms aides shortly after Helms received responses to his correspondence with the NEA last November.

Congressional observers said conservatives apparently intend for Rohrabacher to generate as much publicity over allegedly offensive grants as he can, then to give way to Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.), who will attempt--probably without success, these observers say--to attach amendments requiring strict controls on the content of federally-supported art to the bill renewing the NEA.

When the legislation gets to the Senate, these observers say, Helms is expected to resurface as the commander of conservative forces, attempting to cripple the arts agency with a series of regressive amendments to the bill. Helms’s office did not return calls seeking the senator’s comments on the issue.

Ed Gillespie, Armey’s press spokesman, said Armey did not plan to joint directly in Rohrabacher’s campaign to vilify specific grants, but “quite honestly, we get a pretty big kick out of it.” Armey, Gillespie said, “has a pretty good sense of what he can get on the floor” and what Armey attempts to do to the legislation in the House “depends on how successful Rohrabacher is.”