Panel Debates Government’s Arts Funding

Should the federal government fund such artworks as an opera featuring porpoises for sopranos, a painting consisting only of 15 shades of gray or taxidermy doubling as sculpture?

Absolutely not, said Richard Dykema, an aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita), after he described some of the unusual art projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1975.

Absolutely, says Judith F. Krug, director of the American Library Assn.’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Dykema and Krug voiced their divergent opinions Friday during a panel titled “Intellectual Freedom and Federal Funding for the Arts.” The discussion, presented by the Librarians Assn. of UC Irvine and held on campus, was meant to address the nationwide controversy over the NEA, a federal agency that uses tax dollars to fund art.

Rohrabacher has been the NEA’s leading congressional foe, and Dykema said Friday that the federal government should not be involved in supporting art at all. But if it must be, he said, limits must be set on the content of artworks.

Last year, Congress passed legislation barring NEA funding of art that could be considered obscene and without significant artistic merit. Rohrabacher and others have called for tighter restrictions.

“The federal government should not fund obscenity, indecency, child pornography and things that attack religion,” Dykema said, rejecting the notion that such restrictions constitute censorship.

“Censorship is the government telling you what you can do, read, write or paint on your own time with your own money,” he said. “It is not the government saying we won’t pay for your megaphone or provide you with a printing press.”

Krug argued that the issue is indeed one of censorship. She said governmental restrictions on the content of artworks threaten freedom of speech and can eliminate individuals’ freedom to choose what they see, read or hear. Restrictions also limit diversity in a society that takes pride in allowing a variety of opinions, even if they offend some.