Frohnmayer Backs Uncensored-Art Funding : Arts: NEA chairman claims that two fundamentalist Christian groups are sources of inaccurate information in the controversy.

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, declaring Thursday that accurate information on what his agency has--and has not--funded “has been in short supply lately,” reaffirmed the Bush Administration’s strong support for legislation extending the endowment’s life without restricting what art it would support.

John E. Frohnmayer made the remarks at a Senate subcommittee hearing and in a speech at the National Press Club at which he continued an attack on two fundamentalist religious groups that have been among the arts endowment’s most vocal critics.

Frohnmayer identified Donald Wildmon, director of the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Assn., and Pat Robertson, the television evangelist who heads the Christian Broadcasting Network and stars on its “700 Club” program, as sources of misleading information on the arts endowment.

Frohnmayer, who noted that he holds a degree in Christian ethics and is an elder in the Presbyterian Church, challenged both Wildmon and Robertson to debate the nature of the arts endowment’s grants “in any live forum.”

The criticism of the two organizations was similar to comments that Frohnmayer made last week at a hearing before a House subcommittee that is also considering a five-year extension of the NEA.

But Thursday’s remarks, which also focused on a full-page newspaper advertisement attacking the endowment, were significant because Frohnmayer continued to oppose the conservative religious groups despite some reported concern in the White House about damaging Bush’s relationships with fundamentalist Republicans.

Political observers who have watched the situation closely noted, however, that just as Frohnmayer apparently had White House approval when he initially opposed legislative restrictions on the kinds of art the NEA can fund, he presumably now has authorization to speak out against the two fundamentalist organizations. Bush entered the controversy last week, first by sanctioning Administration legislation that opposes controls on the NEA and later in anti-censorship remarks at a White House press briefing.

The newspaper ad, which ran Wednesday in USA Today, was sponsored by the American Family Assn. It characterized the arts endowment as “a federal agency which provides taxpayer funded grants, many of which support pornographic, anti-Christian ‘works of art.’ ” The ad, which accused the endowment of funding a variety of offensive artworks, including an image of Christ with a needle and syringe protruding from his arm, also offered for sale $15 subscriptions to a magazine published by the organization. The endowment has roused controversy for its direct or indirect roles in funding exhibits that included images of a crucifix in urine and naked men involved in a variety of homoerotic activities.

Frohnmayer noted that the $15 contributions solicited by the ad are “23 times what the endowment spends on the arts per capita.”

The ad, Frohnmayer told the National Press Club audience, “is wrong in almost every particular.” Specifically, Frohnmayer said, a review of NEA grants over the last 24 years found that only two arts projects in the history of the agency “could be considered anti-Christian. I believe we are responsible to the American people.”

In the Thursday-morning hearing, however, Frohnmayer was challenged by Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.) to deal with “questions regarding accountability” raised by controversial grants. Kassebaum noted that many of her constituents found the works in question highly offensive. Frohnmayer, restating “my absolute opposition to content-based restrictions” on federally supported art, countered that “truth comes out through the vigorous clash of ideas, not the suppression. We must allow them to come forward.

“The arts help us make sense out of chaos. The arts help teach discipline. The arts teach self-respect and empowerment. The arts teach family values. It is so curious that some of the greatest attackers of the national endowment are those who preach family values.”

Asked if the controversy so far--in which the NEA is implementing 1990 appropriation legislation prohibiting the funding of obscene art unless the art meets certain standards of artistic excellence--has chilled artistic freedom already, Frohnmayer said that he believes some artists in a variety of media may be reluctant to apply for NEA support for fear of “getting on some kind of hit list” but that there may also be a countervailing “heating effect” in which some artists attempt to be deliberately provocative.