Charity Makes Up $30,000 Fest Lost in NEA Funds

A charitable foundation that works with homeless people in Los Angeles County has donated $30,000 to the Los Angeles Festival that will help replace a National Endowment for the Arts grant that festival officials turned down last month because of anti-obscenity restrictions.

Festival organizers announced the grant from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation Tuesday. The donation will be added to about $23,000 in other private donations that were received after organizers turned down the $30,000 NEA grant Aug. 23.

“It is gratifying that the festival is receiving this kind of support from the community,” said festival board chairwoman Maureen A. Kindel. “We challenge others to do the same.”

“I respect the festival for turning down the NEA grant,” Audrey Irmas said, “and I really wanted to help them. The NEA has such strict regulations, and the festival really had guts to turn it down.”

The 17-day festival, which officially opened last weekend in San Pedro, has been under continual financial strain, and organizers said they were still raising funds to finance artists and activities. The rejection of the NEA grant was heavily debated by the festival board.

“Fund-raising has been nip and tuck all the way,” Kindel said.

The NEA grant from the endowment’s Inter-Arts program, which specializes in supporting innovative, multidisciplinary work, would have applied to festival events featuring about 100 of the more than 500 foreign artists scheduled to participate.

Kindel said the festival hoped to match the Irmas grant with another $30,000 in donations. “It is sorely needed money that would go toward strengthening our program,” she said. “I hope others will stand up to the challenge. It’s not too late to do other things in the festival.”

She said additional performances by the more popular festival artists might be added if the Irmas grant is matched. “We felt really bad when we had to turn away 100 people over the weekend at the Bread and Puppet Theater show at UCLA,” Kindel said.

The festival rejected the NEA grant after endowment chairman John E. Frohnmayer spurned a recommendation from the NEA’s advisory National Council on the Arts to rescind the controversial anti-obscenity clause.

The Irmas Foundation supports the homeless in Los Angeles County through its Los Angeles Family Housing organization, which provides beds for more than 400 homeless people nightly.