Venice Choreographer Refuses $15,000 NEA Fellowship Over Obscenity Limits

A 34-year-old Venice choreographer has turned down a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship because she refused to acknowledge anti-obscenity restrictions in the arts agency’s 1990 funding bill, NEA officials disclosed Friday.

Arts endowment sources confirmed that Ferne Ackerman, who was approved for a $15,000 dance fellowship this year after several years of unsuccessful applications, had informed NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer that she could not accept the grant.

As an emerging artist, rejection of the NEA fellowship deprives Ackerman of significant financial support, as well as recognition within the arts community associated with selection for the prestigious NEA program.

The endowment had said two weeks ago that a choreography fellowship had been rejected--by a recipient it refused to identify--in the growing artists’ protest over obscenity language the NEA is requiring grantees to formally acknowledge this year.

NEA sources said that Ackerman told Frohnmayer that she was rejecting the money because of requirements added to the NEA’s appropriation bill at the behest of conservatives in Congress who demanded protections against federal support of obscene work. Ackerman could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles television producer Mark Goodson said Friday that he had offered to make up a $50,000 budget shortfall sustained by theater producer Joseph Papp, who announced Thursday that he was turning down an NEA grant for his New York Shakespeare Festival’s Festival Latino program this summer.

“This thing went right to the heart of something I feel very strongly about, which is censorship of plays,” Goodson said. “Half the things that have been done on Broadway--David Mamet’s work, for instance--could be blocked out in an attempt to skirt someone’s definition of what is or is not obscene.”