NEA Panel Opposes Obscenity Curb : Arts: It would repeal a rule forcing recipients of grants to certify that their works won’t be offensive. Advisers told agency faces trouble in Congress.

The advisory council to the National Endowment for the Arts voted overwhelmingly Friday to rescind a controversial requirement that artists certify that federally funded work they create will not be obscene--a stricture that has precipitated a bitter, growing protest among artists and arts groups.

The 17-2 vote calls for the reversal of a decision by NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer to require the certification, which had prompted lawsuits by two major arts institutions challenging the constitutionality of the requirement and had led at least 10 artists and arts groups to reject NEA grants.

The decision by the 24-member National Council on the Arts is non-binding.

Frohnmayer--visibly upset at the reversal by the council--refused to discuss the vote but said he would act on the recommendation “in due course.”

The vote was taken at the beginning of the stormy first day of a scheduled three-day meeting at which the council is also scheduled to vote on new grants for two of four artists who were denied fellowships by Frohnmayer in June in an apparent attempt to appease critics in Congress.

However, Frohnmayer ruled out of order a motion to hold debate over whether the fellowships should have been denied in the first place.

Frohnmayer disclosed that the arts endowment has opened formal appeal proceedings for the four rejected performance artists--Karen Finley and Holly Hughes of New York; Tim Miller of Santa Monica, Calif., and John Fleck, of Los Angeles. A petition, signed by 50 arts groups, demanding favorable action on the appeal was delivered to the NEA earlier this week.

The vote to recommend elimination of the obscenity certification appeared to open the way for possible new conflict with Congress, however. Two key legislators made a rare appearance before the NEA board to discuss the degree of difficulty the NEA faces as it approaches votes in the House and Senate, expected in early September, on bills to renew and fund the agency.

Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.), chairman of a House subcommittee that produced legislation to renew the NEA, warned there is “no chance” of passing a bill to renew the endowment without restrictions on the kinds of art it can fund.

Williams contended that continuing controversy over reining in the NEA’s ability to support controversial and experimental art forms may provoke corporate and foundation arts funding sources to “abandon” the arts because they are unwilling to match endowment grants for fear of becoming targets of congressional rage.

Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), the ranking member of the House NEA appropriations subcommittee, told the arts council he will support an amendment to an NEA bill that would require the council and the endowment to ensure that grants are made only to projects that do not “denigrate the cultural heritage of the United States, its religious traditions or racial or ethnic groups” or involve “obscenity or indecency.”

Williams said the prolonged national debate over whether to harshly regulate NEA-funded art has created a certain confrontation between competing political priorities: protecting artistic freedom and spending tax money on art projects some people find offensive or sacrilegious.

“These two consideration,” Williams said, “appear to be coming at each other, headlong, high speed, on the same track.”

While votes of the presidentially appointed National Council on the Arts are technically advisory, NEA chairmen have reversed council decisions on only 35 occasions in the history of the NEA, and arts endowment observers said they believed it was inconceivable that Frohnmayer would reverse Friday’s action.

The vote was taken at the first fully open session in the 25-year history of the NEA advisory board.

It occurred after the obscenity certification requirement was condemned by council member Roy Goodman, a Republican New York state senator and close friend of President Bush. Goodman called it “a loyalty oath reminiscent of the McCarthy era” and denounced the climate of political controversy that has gripped the arts endowment for the last 16 months. The NEA, Goodman declared, has been the victim of “one of the most vicious smear campaigns in the history of legislative business.”

Goodman said the national protest within the arts community had become so widespread that “it is not stretching one’s imagination to say there will be tens, possibly hundreds,” of additional grant rejections and individual artist protests.