Arts Advocates Call for ‘a War Footing’ at Washington Rally : Arts: In an Advocacy Day letter, Czech President Vaclav Havel urges support of ‘the independent, creative artistic spirit.’

Politicians, artists and movie stars rallied to support the National Endowment for the Arts here Tuesday, transforming what had previously been an annual civics lesson for the nation’s arts community into a series of events dominated by urgings for creative enterprises to adopt a “war footing.”

The annual National Cultural Advocacy Day was a series of diverse public events and private meetings of arts supporters and members of Congress. Organized by a coalition of five of the nation’s largest arts organizations, Advocacy Day brought about 500 people from across the country to meet with their representatives and hear speeches by a mix of people from actors Ron Silver and Christopher Reeve to U.S. Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.).

Tuesday’s arts events seemed at times to be dominated by a man who wasn’t even there--President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia, a formerly imprisoned playwright who assumed the leadership of his country at about the same time last year that the existence of the NEA was seriously threatened.

References to Havel and the perceived contrast between political reform in Eastern Europe and threats against artistic expression in the United States dominated addresses by many of the more than two dozen speakers at morning Advocacy Day events at a downtown hotel and an afternoon rally staged by artists on the steps of the Capitol.

There was even a letter from the Czech president himself, in which Havel told American artistic freedom advocates that “we know first hand how essential is a fierce, independent, creative artistic spirit to the attainment of freedom. Through a long night of repression and control, the artistic community in our land helped keep alive the unquenchable flame of freedom.

“There are those around the world, indeed even in those democracies with the longest tradition of free speech and expression, who would attempt to limit the artist to what is acceptable, conventional and comfortable. We sent our warm greetings and support to American artists . . . in Washington to reaffirm their commitment to free artistic expression.”

Mary Schmidt Campbell, New York City’s commissioner of cultural affairs, brought a letter from Mayor David Dinkins recounting a recent visit by Havel to New York during which “I was struck by the irony of greeting this brave man, a courageous symbol of freedom, at a time when some Americans are seeking to impose increased government regulation on artistic expression.”

The Eastern Europe analogy was further strengthened at the afternoon rally, whose theme was “reauthorize without compromise,” a reference to a congressional process that is just beginning under which the arts endowment will undergo renewal of its legal mandate later this year.

Williams is chairman of the House subcommittee where the legislation will originate. His subcommittee is scheduled to hold its second reauthorization hearing of the year here today.

At the rally, as several speakers alluded to the contrast between the disappearance of censorship in Eastern Europe, a dozen artists unrolled a 50-foot banner in front of the Capitol painted to resemble the now largely dismantled Berlin Wall. Large yellow letters proclaimed, “Demolish the wall of censorship.”

But at a press conference of their own, a coalition of conservative politicians and organizations--from the right wing Eagle Forum to U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) continued the drumbeat of opposition to the government arts agency.

“It’s not an issue of censorship,” Rohrabacher said. “No one has a right to a (federal) subsidy (in the form of an NEA grant). This is an issue of sponsorship, not censorship.”

“This is a cold and chilling time,” Williams told a morning mass meeting of about 500 arts advocates. “A very small minority (of conservative politicians and their supporters) are on a war footing. They intend to either killing or crippling the National Endowment for the Arts.

“We need help. We need for you to be on a war footing (too).”

Actor Alec Baldwin, arguing that “the NEA is an investment in creativity and any investment involves risks,” charged that conservative opponents of the endowment “are out to destroy the NEA and eliminate the NEA, period.”

If content control standards proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and narrowly defeated in debate over an NEA appropriation bill last year are revived, Baldwin argued, it might even be possible to characterize a famous Norman Rockwell painting of a police officer smiling at a little boy as “homoerotic,” a vague term included among artistic themes the NEA would have been prohibited from funding.

Silver told the morning advocacy day audience that “I don’t think we’re outraged enough” by threats to the arts endowment’s future existence. “They (conservative opponents of federal arts funding) are going to keep coming at us like piranhas. Art matters. We have not been angry enough or vocal enough, but we are going to be angry and vocal enough from now on.”

The threatened Helms amendment was offered after at the height of an intense controversy over NEA support of grants to two controversial art shows. The exhibits included a photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine by Andres Serrano and a group of sexually explicit images of men photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS a year ago.

Williams got a standing ovation when he told arts supporters “I intend that (the legislation to reauthorize the NEA) reach the floor (of the House) without the benefit of any censoring language.” But he emphasized that “a climate of unprecedented demagoguery” has transformed the making of federal policy for the arts into one of the most intensely controversial aspects of public life here today.

“In all the years I’ve been coming down here,” said Campbell, “I can’t remember an advocacy day when so much hung in the balance. This is no longer a fight over obscenity or pornography. (It is a war over) for the survival of the NEA.”

New York City comedienne Reno told the afternoon rally crowd that “the Bill of Rights is over at the Xerox store, being reduced.” And, tweaking Helms over one Mapplethorpe photograph of a man’s sex organs protruding from the fly of a polyester suit, Reno said, “This offended me, but it was the polyester suit that did it.”

An unexpected Spring storm that brought with it a blast of raw, chilly air cut down on the size of the rally crowd, which mustered only about 250 people to the Capitol steps.

Susan Wyatt, executive director of Artists Space, a New York gallery caught up in last year’s NEA fight over when NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer temporarily withdrew a grant for show focusing on AIDS, told the rally crowd that “We are here to fight the fear and passivity which leads to compromise.

“We are here to insist that our tax dollars be used to support free thought and expression . . . in short, our American values.”

Times Washington Bureau staff writer Don Shannon assisted in the research of this story.