Republican’s Bill Would Kill the NEA : Legislation: Rep. Phil Crane seeks to abolish the arts-funding agency. The writers’ group PEN backs National Endowment.

The National Endowment for the Arts, whose advisory board meets here starting today, is feeling the heat from Congress where an Illinois Republican has introduced a bill to immediately abolish the federal arts agency.

The action by Rep. Phil Crane is one of two conflicting Republican legislative approaches that have surfaced in the last several days that would either eliminate or radically alter the NEA, which faces a battle for its legislative life over the next few weeks.

Counting options floated earlier by the White House and other House and Senate Republicans, the Crane plan brings to four the number of GOP proposals for the NEA--which range from leaving it entirely intact to total destruction.

The new conflict within the ranks of Republicans came as an international writers’ conference unanimously endorsed a statement supporting the NEA. The action, taken at a meeting of the PEN organization in Portugal on Thursday, appeared to indicate a building international awareness of the debate over the NEA’s freedom to make artistic decisions.

The PEN congress “calls upon the Congress to strengthen the endowment’s provisions so as to recognize the primacy of freedom of expression,” said the statement, released in Los Angeles by PEN Center USA West, which sponsored the resolution.

But in Washington, the situation appeared to be developing into a contest over ways to limit or redirect the arts endowment. Crane characterized his bill to abolish the NEA as a legislative initiative with probably slight chance of success. But the move focused new attention on fragmentation within the Republican Party over support for the arts endowment--as well as an apparent split within the arts community itself.

Crane’s “Privatization of Art Act” was significantly different from yet another initiative, led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita), that would gut the endowment by leaving its authorizing act on the books but eliminate all money for the NEA in the federal budget.

“Dana probably has the better shot,” said Crane. “And I don’t think if Dana gets his shot (and prevails in stripping the arts agency of all funding)--I cannot envision (President Bush) vetoing it.”

Separately, three other House Republicans said they are studying a proposal that the endowment be transformed into an agency that channels most of its money to state and local arts councils, minimizing the amount and variety of art that receives support directly from the federal government.

That legislative tack, in turn, is at the heart of a developing controversy within the arts community that pits an organization representing state arts agencies against most of the rest of the arts Establishment.

One respected arts figure, Peter Zeisler, executive director of the New York-based Theater Communications Group, branded the proposal as a “double-cross” that amounts to an attempt to use the confused situation in Congress over the NEA’s future as a way to pursue a narrow objective.

Rep. Steven Gunderson (R-Wis.), the leader of the movement to study transformation of the arts endowment into a primarily block-grant agency, characterized his plan as the equivalent of “supply-side art” that would “allow us to be pro-art but anti-censorship and anti-pornography.”

Gunderson, a member of the House subcommittee that is drafting legislation to reauthorize the NEA for five more years, said he and Reps. Tom Coleman (R-Mo.) and Ralph Regula (R-Ohio) are involved in studying ways to shift the NEA from an agency that parcels only about 20% of its money out directly to state and local agencies to one disposing of more than 50% in such fashion.

In a telephone interview, Gunderson contended that his plan would resolve the intense political controversy that has broken out over the alleged indecent, obscene or sacrilegious content of a small number of NEA grants. He said it would achieve the goal by guaranteeing that state and local agencies would make the vast majority of decisions about what art should receive public funding--in a sense guaranteeing that community standards, a key to the U.S. Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, would hold sway in making artistic choices.

“Our goal is to see if there is a way to deal with some of what many of us feel is pornographic art, without getting into Big Brother censorship,” Gunderson said. “I think there is a legitimate government role in the funding of art,” he said, “but in the absence of doing something , the endowment is in big trouble” in terms of its prospects for emerging from the congressional arts debate this year as a living, functioning federal agency.

Arts groups immediately condemned the proposal. The National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, a newly formed activist group, charged that the Gunderson plan would effectively terminate most programs funding artists creating new work, substituting subsidies for museum entry fees and other programs with minimal potential for controversy.

“This is a direct attack on artists,” said Charlotte Murphy, executive director of the National Assn. of Artist Organizations. “His proposal, in fact, hurts every American because it would cripple the endowment beyond repair.”

Gunderson’s plan, however, appeared to coincide with proposals by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, which has participated in discussions with congressional leaders over plans to shift more federal arts money to the states. Just as the Gunderson plan directly conflicted with Crane’s proposal to kill the NEA outright and President Bush’s public support for continuation of the NEA in its present form, the national assembly plan was seen by arts observers gathering here for the NEA meeting to be at cross purposes with the united front that most arts groups--from the American Arts Alliance to the Assn. of Art Museum Directors--have tried to maintain.

Jonathan Katz, the state art agency group’s director, asserted in an interview here Thursday that state arts councils are often in a better position to identify promising artists and art projects than the NEA. He said his group’s willingness to work with congressional Republicans in fashioning what could become a substantial reorientation of the NEA is certain to rouse intense controversy during the next few days.

“This is Congress’ idea. My leadership is talking with Congress about there being good reasons to put more support into state arts agencies,” Katz said. “It’s very clear that the states have certain strengths. Were Congress looking for a means to achieve more local decision-making, it would not be a bad start to draw upon the resources of state agencies.”