The NEA Opts for Closed Doors : Arts: The advisory board will consider potentially controversial grant requests in closed session.

The advisory board to the National Endowment for the Arts will hold the bulk of an upcoming meeting in closed session, at which action is expected on a number of potentially controversial grants, according to documents obtained by The Times.

The decision--taken by NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer on behalf of the 24-member National Council on the Arts--indicates that the council will hold an even larger proportion of its deliberations in private than normal.

The confidential discussions at the August meeting are significant, according to sources close to the situation, since the council is expected to debate a decision by Frohnmayer last month to deny fellowship grants to four performance artists, after he reportedly polled the advisory group.

The performers--who have been dubbed “the NEA Four” by one national artists’ group--have all demanded formal appeals in the grant rejections. It was learned that at least one member of the National Council on the Arts intends to attempt a formal reopening of the issue.

The meeting is scheduled for Aug. 3-5 at NEA headquarters in Washington. Documents obtained Monday and information from sources familiar with the agenda indicate the council will hold more than half of its announced meetings in private. Members will also attend two closed social events--including a confidential dinner preceding the meeting at which significant amounts of NEA business have traditionally been discussed.

It also was learned that at least three other potentially controversial issues are to come before the council in its closed sessions--as the House and Senate near crucial votes on legislation governing the endowment’s future. The House may conduct the first vote on the legislation as early as Friday--a week before the arts council session.

The other potentially troublesome issues are:

* An initiative to reconsider a controversial vote taken by the national council in May that denied two of three grants to the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Contemporary Art. The institute was the original organizer of a controversial endowment-supported show of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

* A possible move to reconsider a council vote in May to open grant review meetings to the public. The disputed vote--eight in favor, three opposed and four abstaining--was taken at a council meeting in Winston-Salem, N.C., where the Institute for Contemporary Art grants were subsequently denied and at which the council voted to delay a vote on fellowships recommended by a peer review panel to 18 performance arts, including the four subsequently rejected by Frohnmayer.

* A recommendation that two of the so-called “NEA Four” receive grants this year from an NEA program that fosters the work of artists working in especially progressive art forms and media. One of the recommended grantees, it was learned, is New York performance artist Holly Hughes, who was denied a fellowship by Frohnmayer.

The identity of the other artist was not certain, but sources familiar with the situation said it is one of the other three rejected artists--New York performer Karen Finley, Los Angeles artist John Fleck or Santa Monica artist Tim Miller.

Meanwhile, it was learned that Julie Davis, the NEA’s general counsel, sent members of the national council a sternly worded memorandum admonishing them not to discuss pending grants or share written materials describing them with anyone outside of the council. Citing the federal Freedom of Information Act, the Davis memo stresses that the council’s discussions are part of “the deliberative process” of a federal agency and that it would be illegal to disclose details of the grant deliberations “at any point in the review process.”

The memo comes in the wake of steps taken earlier by Frohnmayer to tighten confidentiality practices within the NEA and the national council after apparent leaks concerning several potentially controversial grants. Details of one of the rejected performance fellowships appeared in a newspaper column in May and other information has appeared regularly in the Washington Times and the New York City Tribune, newspapers affiliated with the conservative Unification Church headed by Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

An attempt to force reconsideration of the four grant rejections could lead to a confrontation between Frohnmayer and two factions on the arts council. The advisory body includes members who support denial of the grants and opponents who have argued against the action, which critics have condemned as a political move aimed at appeasing the NEA’s critics in Congress.

Laws governing the NEA prohibit Frohnmayer from acting on a grant unless the national council has conducted its formal advisory vote. Once the vote is taken, Frohnmayer is free to make an independent decision. To justify rejection of the four grants, Frohnmayer has said he conducted a telephone poll of council members.

While the arts council has historically held many of its deliberations in private--including the pre-meeting dinner and sessions in which it votes to recommend approval or rejection of NEA grants--the schedule for the upcoming meeting appeared to reflect a greatly increased reliance on closed sessions than in the past.

The closed grant-review sessions have generally been held at the end of the council’s weekend agenda. Instead, they will dominate the first two days of the upcoming meeting, according to a schedule circulated late last week to the council.