Little Ado in O.C. Over NEA Furor : Regulation: The response to the national debate has been minimal, especially in contrast with the reaction in Los Angeles, where 27 artists were arrested last month.

Yaakov Dvir-Djerassi is galled by efforts of Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) and others to restrict federal funding of the arts and likens a government that controls the content of artwork it supports to pre- glasnost Communism.

“Art in a Communist government is used as a tool to express government propaganda,” said Dvir-Djerassi, general manager of the Garden Grove Symphony. “It’s not the business of the government to tell the arts how to conduct business.”

Rohrabacher, a leading congressional foe of the National Endowment for the Arts, wants to abolish the federal arts agency entirely. Yet Dvir-Djerassi has taken no action on behalf of the symphony over attacks on NEA funding of art exhibits considered by conservatives to be obscene and sacrilegious.

Garden Grove is part of the district of Rep. Robert K. Dornan, not Rohrabacher, but Dvir-Djerassi said he is worried about going against the grain of the county’s conservative political climate and wishes to “depoliticize” the orchestra. Thus, the symphony has remained officially silent and ignored pleas from the American Symphony Orchestra League, a national service organization with more than 850 members, to petition Congress.

The symphony is not alone. The county arts community’s response to the national debate has been minimal, certainly in any organized or public fashion and especially in contrast with the response in Los Angeles, where 27 artists were arrested last month during a demonstration.

Even Robert Garfias, a UC Irvine anthropology professor and one of 26 members of the National Council on the Arts--which advises the NEA on grant recipients and policies--has not tried to rally local NEA support. Other than his board membership with the Orange County Philharmonic Society, Garfias said, he is “not really involved” with the local arts community any more. Garfias was once on the board of the defunct Orange County Arts Alliance, a countywide arts agency.

Some local arts administrators have taken such actions as writing legislators to support the NEA, and several said they urged their trustees or general membership to express their views. But no public protests or organized events have taken place here since the controversy erupted last year, and none are planned in the near future, according to several artists and administrators interviewed--even though hundreds of thousands of NEA grant dollars have been awarded here, nearly $450,000 in 1989 alone.

Nonetheless, county artists and arts administrators interviewed recently expressed unanimous support for reauthorization of the NEA without restrictions on the content of artworks. Congress is holding hearings for reauthorization of the NEA, whose current budget is $171 million.

“I haven’t done anything; I’m completely embarrassed to tell you that,” said one local artist, who requested anonymity.

The NEA controversy erupted over two photography exhibits that received NEA support. One, by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, contained sadomasochistic and homoerotic images. The other, by Andres Serrano, depicted a crucifix in a jar of urine.

Outraged by the exhibits, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the agency’s chief Senate foe, pushed through legislation that bars for one year NEA funding of what he called obscene artworks that do not meet certain standards of artistic excellence.

Dornan supports the Helms restrictions, an aide said, and throughout the protracted debate, Rohrabacher has attacked the NEA repeatedly for funding exhibits he considers obscene. Others urge a ban on federal funding of projects that they consider obscene or blasphemous.

In response to these attacks, Los Angeles artists and arts administrators formed the Coalition for Freedom of Expression. Working to oppose censorship and NEA funding restrictions, the ad hoc group staged several public protests. In one, 250 people marched into downtown Los Angeles; 27 were arrested. In another action, computers were set up in several Los Angeles restaurants for a letter-writing campaign that resulted in 3,000 letters to Congress, coalition co-chairwoman Joy Silverman said.

Similar coalitions have been active in Washington, San Francisco and New York, Silverman said.

Some county residents have been working with the Los Angeles coalition, Silverman said. Orange County artists or others may have also taken part in protests in Los Angeles, where the arts community is older, larger, more cohesive and better organized than Orange County’s.

Also, some arts officials have spoken out. Among those who have written various legislators personally or on behalf of their organizations are David Emmes, producing artistic director of South Coast Repertory, an NEA grant recipient annually since the early 1970s.

NEA funding, which totaled $95,000 to SCR last year, “has been a tremendous catalyst in stimulating local support,” said Emmes, adding that the organization’s trustees were also urged to write legislators.

Officials at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, whose NEA grants totaled $111,000 in 1989, have sent several letters to lawmakers while also suggesting that trustees do so.

The Laguna Art Museum, which won $27,500 in NEA grants last year, has a policy for “freedom of artistic expression,” director Charles Desmarais said. The museum’s 1989 newsletter suggested that the museum’s 3,000 members contact their congressmen.

Still, many in the arts community have done nothing. Explanations ranged from busy schedules to a focus on local affairs.

Huntington Beach is within Rohrabacher’s district, but the Huntington Beach Allied Arts Board has taken no official action, said board chairman Steve Schwartz, who added that the uproar “hasn’t affected anything we’re concerned with now in Huntington Beach.”

The board, which advises the City Council on arts issues, is concentrating on such matters as creating a new arts center, scheduled to open next spring, and “other more pressing things on which we feel we can make an impact,” Schwartz said.

Among leaders of larger local arts organizations who said their groups have taken no official action on the issue are Louis G. Spisto, director of the Pacific Symphony, and Bonnie McClain, executive director of the Pacific Chorale--both 1989 NEA grant recipients.

“I simply have not brought it up at a board level,” McClain said.

The Orange County Philharmonic Society has applied for a 1990 NEA grant but has not officially supported the agency, Executive Director Erich Vollmer said. Though Vollmer recently met in Washington with NEA chairman John E. Frohnmayer, the focus was not on the NEA’s troubles but on efforts to form a new countywide arts agency. (Frohnmayer “was very supportive and encouraging and hopes we get something going,” Vollmer said.)

Several artists and arts officials said they believe that such an agency, if formed, would organize, focus and carry out advocacy efforts. Orange County is one of just five counties statewide without a “state-local partner,” a countywide agency that is its official arts representative to the state.

Maxine Gaiber, spokeswoman for the Newport Harbor Art Museum, said museum officials recently decided that their most effective efforts toward supporting the NEA “would be to focus on development” of a county arts council.