The Laguna Art Museum has been awarded--and...

The Laguna Art Museum has been awarded--and has accepted--two grants totaling $9,000 for collection, maintenance and conservation from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grants are being accepted, despite what amounts to a mandatory oath not to promote obscene artworks with the federal funds, said museum director Charles Desmarais. A letter of protest will be sent with the grant acceptance forms, however. The letter will not state non-compliance with the oath, but will note the museum’s objection to it, Desmarais said. The NEA has said that grantees are not free to select from among 29 conditions of funding which they will or will not obey. The two NEA grants bring to three the museum has accepted this year. About 10 NEA grant recipients around the country, none of them in Orange County, have rejected their awards to protest the obscenity clause.