Pacific Symphony Plans to Accept Funding From NEA

While some artists and arts groups across the country are rejecting or threatening to reject grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, objecting to Congressional attempts to control artistic content, Orange County’s Pacific Symphony plans to accept pending endowment funding of $45,000 for 1990-91.

Most of the objections have focused on a form, mandated by Congress, that grant recipients must sign this year. The form states that they will not use grant money to produce obscene artworks that do not meet standards of artistic excellence, which are not defined.

Pacific Symphony executive director Louis G. Spisto said Monday, “Our art form is not under fire. Pacific Symphony will sign our grant form.”

Spisto said the pending NEA grant would underwrite conductors’ fees, not the creation of music, therefore eliminating the possibility that the orchestra would be producing “obscene” artworks with the money.

Asked whether the orchestra had considered rejecting the grant anyway, to show solidarity with other artists whose work is “under fire,” Spisto said: “We need the (NEA) support. Our organization is not at the state in its development where it can afford to turn down a $45,000 grant.

“Speaking personally, I feel the NEA should be funded without obscenity-tied language. But it is more important that the NEA continue. That is the major battle.”

The Orange County Philharmonic Society also has received preliminary notice of an NEA grant but has made no decision whether to accept it, according to executive director Erich Vollmer. The $3,500 grant would support a series of American artists at the new Irvine Theatre, expected to open this fall.

The society’s trustees will discuss the matter this weekend, Vollmer said.

At South Coast Repertory, a longtime NEA recipient in Costa Mesa, artistic director Martin Benson said: “We will have to consider (the question of accepting future NEA funding) very carefully. But I think we need to accept NEA funds, while fighting to have the strictures removed in the granting process.”

SCR has received $1 million from the NEA since 1980, more than any other Orange County arts organization. About $650,000 went to operating funds, $350,000 to capital funds. Last year, the theater received $95,000 from the NEA; this year, it applied for $180,000. The NEA’s response to the current grant request is expected in June or July.

“At this point,” said Benson, “we are choosing plays exactly as we have for 26 years, and we will continue to do so. If the strictures reached a point where it affected our artistic choices, we would disassociate ourselves from the NEA or any contributors--public or private--who would restrict our freedom to choose.”

At the Newport Harbor Art Museum, spokeswoman Maxine Gaiber said, “We haven’t dealt with (the NEA issue) yet because we don’t hear till the middle of June” whether the museum will receive three grants, totaling $156,000, for which it has applied, primarily for exhibitions.

“We haven’t seen any document with that language (barring support of allegedly obscene art) yet, and we haven’t come up with a policy to address it,” Gaiber said.

A decision has been made by the museum trustees to include a statement about the NEA issue in the July/August calendar it will send to members, but the statement itself has not been determined, Gaiber said.

Newport Harbor received $111,000 from the NEA in 1989.

Times staff writers Jan Herman and Cathy Curtis contributed to this story.