CalArts May Turn Down NEA Money : Grants: The Valencia arts college is considering a rejection of funds because of the no-obscenity pledge.

Deans and the trustees of CalArts ordered a series of what they called “emergency meetings” on Monday to decide whether the Valencia arts school should reject as much as $250,000 in anticipated grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In a statement released by CalArts President Steven Levine, the college said the meetings, which began Monday with a gathering of the college’s deans, were ordered to review the school’s posture in the growing protest over the NEA. The situation escalated significantly on Friday, when NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer rejected recommendations for fellowships to four performance artists in a move that was widely perceived as an attempt to appease the NEA’s political critics in Congress.

CalArts said the immediate reason for the review was the offer of a $5,500 grant from the endowment, but the college said it has pending or anticipated grant awards this year totalling $250,000. The arts endowment said Calarts received a total of $69,200 last year.

In making the announcement, the Valencia arts college with an enrollment of about 900 became the third major academic institution to publicly challenge the arts endowment in the growing controversy over restrictions on the kind of work the NEA will support.

Earlier, UCLA and the University of California system disclosed that they had begun active discussions of complete rejection of NEA funding this year--a decision that would affect $1.1 million in grants. Several weeks ago, the New School for Social Research in New York City filed a lawsuit to try to block NEA use of an anti-obscenity certification required of all grantees. The New School turned down $45,000 in NEA grants.

CalArts disclosed its action three days after Frohnmayer overturned grants to four politically controversial performance artists that a peer review panel had recommended. Levine said deans met for nearly three hours Monday afternoon afternoon to discuss possible options in the NEA grant controversy.

In the meantime, however, Levine said CalArts had “certainly not” signed any NEA grant documents that included the anti-obscenity pledge, which critics of the NEA and its conservative opponents in Congress have likened to an anti-pornography loyalty oath.

Meanwhile, three artists caught up in the controversy--including two whose grants were among those rescinded by Frohnmayer--held a press conference in Santa Monica to present an “artist’s Declaration of Independence.”

The news conference was organized by Tim Miller and John Fleck, who were denied grants. It was also attended by performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, who received an $11,250 fellowship and then turned the money down over the weekend.

The Miller declaration characterized Frohnmayer as a “sleazeball appointee” of “King George Bush.” It asserted that Bush “has conspired to make gay artists, artists who are people of color, feminist artists, artists who are dealing with AIDS, anyone who speaks their mind in an outraged and clear voice, to be considered unsuitable for the cultural support that any democracy should provide.”

Frohnmayer was said to be in Seattle on Monday to attend a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet. Arts groups in the Northwest said they planned to picket the performance to focus attention on Frohnmayer’s role in the controversy. The Bolshoi is performing as part of an arts festival tied to the opening of the Goodwill Games in Seattle.

In other developments in the arts protest Monday:

* A coalition of arts groups scheduled meetings in New York to discuss a proposal by one of the 14 artists who received fellowships on Friday. New York performance artist Richard Elovich, who received a $5,000 fellowship, suggested that artists who received funding transfer some of the grant money to a pool for the four who were rejected.

* A key Republican congressman in the NEA controversy said Frohnmayer’s action may have taken some of the momentum away from a drive by conservatives to write statutory language sharply restricting the NEA. Rep. Tom Coleman (R-Mo.), the ranking member of a House subcommittee charged with drafting a bill to extend the NEA’s legal lifetime, said Frohnmayer’s action “will probably soothe some of the criticism.”

“I think it probably says that those who have been very critical of the endowment are finally saying that the old song, ‘Anything Goes,’ is over at the NEA,” Coleman said. But he said he did not believe the Frohnmayer action would mean the demise of two proposals in Congress specifying restrictive language.

* The director of the New York-based Theater Communications Group, an alliance of stage organizations, charged that the NEA crisis had worsened to the point that artists’ reputations were being tarred en masse in a growing conservative campaign that could seriously injure the creative careers of artists in a variety of media. Peter Zeisler, the group’s director, condemned what he characterized as a return, in earnest, to the McCarthy era.

“It seems perfectly clear that, if we continue on this path, we’re setting up another blacklist,” Zeisler said.

The turmoil is a continuation of the NEA controversy that first surfaced in April, 1989, in a dispute over endowment support of two controversial photography exhibits. The 1989 controversy led to imposition of an anti-obscenity clause in the endowment’s appropriation bill for this year--the provision that the endowment claims led it to require an anti-obscenity certification for each individual grant.

The Santa Monica press conference included statements by Miller and John Fleck, a Los Angeles artist who was also among grantees rejected on Friday by Frohnmayer. Also attending was Rachel Rosenthal, an internationally acclaimed performance soloist who was among the 14 announced fellowship winners but who announced over the weekend that she was turning the $11,250 grant down.

The event was also attended by Kedric Wolfe, a performance artist also selected for a $6,500 fellowship but who said he is considering rejecting the money, as well. Wolfe spoke briefly at the press conference attired in a loincloth fashioned from two American flags, carrying a briefcase with a large red button on it and with a replica of an atomic bomb suspended from a metal bracket above his head.

He described his costume as “the flag, the button and the bomb” and made a short speech condemning as more relevant manifestations of obscenity American political incursions in Central America and scandals in the savings and loan industry and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.