Newport Harbor Trustees Reject Anti-Obscenity Contract : Arts funding: Museum officials vote to receive NEA grants but not at the price of signing forms that dictate standards.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum would accept grants from the National Endowment for the Arts but its officials will strike a controversial anti-obscenity pledge from grant forms before signing them, according to a vote taken Thursday by museum trustees. The stance appears to be unprecedented in Orange County.

An NEA spokesman reached Friday said the agency has yet to formulate a response to such a position.

The NEA is requiring anyone accepting one of its grants to sign a form acknowledging that he or she will not produce artworks that could be judged obscene and that do not meet undefined standards of artistic excellence. Conservative congressmen including Orange County Republican Dana Rohrabacher have been attacking the NEA for 14 months in the wake of grants for a handful of allegedly obscene artworks.

The Newport Harbor trustees feel they “can’t afford not to accept the grants, but we can’t afford in any good conscience to accept the anti-obscenity language” and therefore would strike the language before signing the forms, museum spokeswoman Maxine Gaiber said after the Thursday vote. Artists and arts officials objecting to the language have argued that it puts limits on artistic expression.

Gaiber said she does not know whether such action would result in forfeiture of the museum’s three pending grants, which total more than $100,000. An NEA spokesman said the agency’s legal counsel would not rule on the question until it actually receives a form in which the obscenity provision has been stricken.

Although other arts organizations around the country have announced a similar position, no such forms actually have been returned, the spokesman said. Still other organizations have rejected their grants entirely. In Orange County, however, most groups receiving NEA grants have said they would sign the forms without questioning them.

Officials of the Pacific Symphony and the Orange County Philharmonic Society have said they feel they can sign the forms because anti-obscenity provisions would not apply to musical works.

Action on the Newport Harbor grant applications is expected in the next few weeks.

Museum trustees also said they will urge museum members and supporters to write to legislators expressing support for the NEA, and that the museum supports President Bush’s proposal that Congress endorse full five-year reauthorization of the NEA without any restrictions on the content of agency-funded works.

Meanwhile, trustees of the Fullerton Museum Center have reiterated their support for the NEA, voting this week to draft a letter to Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Sens. Pete Wilson and Alan Cranston.

The letter urges the lawmakers “to support a fully funded, fully authorized National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, unencumbered by restrictive language.”

The Fullerton center was one of the first arts organizations in Orange County to take an official stance in support of the NEA, back in September. Several local organizations and government agencies have come out in support of the NEA in recent weeks.

Times staff writer Rick VanderKnyff contributed to this story.