Arts Groups Fighting NEA Anti-Obscenity Pledge

The Washington Project for the Arts, which last year hung the Robert Mapplethorpe photography show over which a Cincinnati museum was recently indicted, said Tuesday it would strike a key phrase from an anti-obscenity pledge required to qualify for a $50,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant.

James Fitzpatrick, president of the WPA board, said he would delete a phrase in which grantees must acknowledge restrictions on work “including but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the sexual exploitation of children or individuals engaged in sex acts.” Fitzpatrick, a lawyer, said that he believes the deletion would not jeopardize the WPA’s grant because, he said, the restriction was not legally viable.

WPA thus joined the growing ranks of arts groups intent on defying conservatives who forced inclusion of the wording in the NEA’s 1990 funding bill. “Those terms have been misleading and mischievous,” Fitzpatrick said. “They are superfluous.”

Meanwhile, New York theater producer Joseph Papp--responding to questions about an exchange of letters with NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer over Papp’s objections to the obscenity pledge as a whole--said he was still unsure whether his New York Shakespeare Festival would accept a $50,000 NEA grant. After Papp objected to the anti-obscenity oath, Frohnmayer urged him to accept, noting that “I deeply regret that this language causes such concern.”

In a telephone interview, Papp said: “I haven’t decided. I’m still waiting it out and maybe playing it out. I’ll see how (financially) desperate I am in two weeks.”