Frohnmayer Puts Out Another Fire at NEA : Arts: He regrets his remarks about questioning federal support of museum exhibits that include Holocaust photographs. Major Jewish groups accept his apologies.

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, already beset by protests among artists over his handling of the agency’s political troubles, has stirred a new controversy--this one over a remark Jewish groups have interpreted as questioning the legitimacy of federal support of museum exhibits that include Holocaust photographs.

NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer has already apologized--at least three times--for the remark, which was delivered more than three weeks ago in prepared, written testimony before an independent study commission created by Congress to inquire into arts endowment operating procedures.

Two major Jewish organizations have said within the last few days that they do not intend to pursue the issue in the face of Frohnmayer’s apologies--first at a meeting of the NEA’s advisory National Council on the Arts earlier this month and, more recently, in letters to an official of Hebrew Union College and to the director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith.

B’nai Brith said earlier this week it had accepted Frohnmayer’s apology. On Thursday, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, said that while the original Frohnmayer remark appeared to defy justification, “we’re not prepared to say a apology is not acceptable. I don’t think he had the deliberate intention to denigrate the significance of the Holocaust.”

The NEA chairman also apologized in an Aug. 13 letter to Andrew Wolf, executive director of the Skirball Cultural Center at Hebrew Union College. Writing as an individual and not as a Hebrew Union official, Wolf had sent a highly critical letter to Frohnmayer on Aug. 2. “My meaning was entirely lost,” Frohnmayer wrote to Wolf, “and any offense which was caused by the remark is something I deeply regret.”

At issue is a decision by Frohnmayer to include the Holocaust observation in prepared testimony delivered July 30 to the Independent Commission, a 12-member board appointed by the leadership of the House, the Senate and President Bush. The panel is attempting to fashion recommendations for procedural and structural change in the NEA that may resolve the arts agency’s political turmoil.

“There are . . . standards which govern the time, place and presentation of both private and public art,” Frohnmayer testified. “For example, art which was confrontational and excited its viewer to potential civil disobedience might be inappropriate for display in a public courthouse but might be fine for a museum.

“Likewise, a photograph, for example, of Holocaust victims might be inappropriate for display in the entrance of a museum where all would have to confront it, whether they chose to or not, but it would be appropriate in a show which was properly labeled and hung so that only those who chose to confront the photographs would be required to do so.”

As word of Frohnmayer’s testimony spread, the comment began to gather momentum as yet another issue of controversy to mar Frohnmayer’s stewardship of the NEA. Since taking office in October, Frohnmayer’s administration has been mired in conflicts with artists and Congress. Among about 250 protesters who marched outside an Aug. 4 meeting of the National Council on the Arts, a few of them carried signs deriding the NEA chairman’s Holocaust comments. At the meeting, Frohnmayer publicly acknowledged for the first time that he had inappropriately questioned the propriety of public support for museum exhibits pertaining to the World War II era Nazi genocide.

“I sincerely apologize,” Frohnmayer said shortly after federal police officers had carried 13 chanting arts protesters from the national council meeting.

On Aug. 6, Abraham H. Foxman, B’nai Brith’s national director, wrote Frohnmayer castigating him and objecting to the implication that a Holocaust photographic exhibit could be construed as falling under the umbrella definition of obscenity--which the NEA is specifically precluded from funding under terms of a congressional mandate last year.

“Your concern appears to be the shocking effect such a display would have on its viewers when it’s out in the open,” Foxman said in his letter. “Here, we’re in agreement. Such a display would be shocking. In fact, the Holocaust itself defies belief. But it happened and, however disquieting, we cannot nor should not will it away.

“If anything is obscene about its subject, it is the story of the ideological belligerence behind it, and that demands scrutiny and vigilance. Public financing of such a project is crucial because the American people want to know about the Holocaust.”

In his letter to Foxman, Frohnmayer conceded: “The point I was trying to make, and which was apparently lost entirely, had to do with appropriateness of time and place, not appropriateness of federal funding. I was thinking of a friend--now deceased--who was a Holocaust survivor and who would break down upon unexpectedly confronting that situation.”