House Rejects Efforts to Curb, Kill Arts Agency

The House on Thursday easily defeated attempts to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts or to clamp tough restrictions on its funding, prompting a key NEA supporter to pronounce “the end of the right-wing fling.”

In quick succession, the House rejected an attempt by Rep. Phillip M. Crane (R-Ill.) to abolish the NEA outright, and one by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) that would have banned NEA support for, among other things, material that offended any religion, was indecent or could be interpreted as denigrating the American flag.

Later, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to extend the NEA’s legal mandate for another three years without spelling out kinds of work it can’t fund. Instead, the bill simply says the NEA is prohibited from funding obscene work, and leaves it to the courts to define whether a work is obscene.

The bill still faces an uncertain fate in the Senate.

The House votes appeared to signal at least the beginning of the end of turmoil in Congress that has dogged the federal arts agency since April of last year, when conservative religious groups complained about federal funding of an art show that included a photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine. The controversy escalated two months later into the most hostile dispute over public arts support in the United States in the last 25 years.

The Crane amendment to abolish the NEA lost 361 to 64. Rohrabacher’s amendment lost 249 to 175.

The overall bill passed 349 to 76 after the House endorsed, by voice vote, an amendment by Rep. Fred Grandy (R-Iowa) to limit penalties artists face if their NEA-funded work is judged obscene by a criminal court to simple repayment of the amount of the grant.

NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer was elated by the victory. “I am hopeful that it will lay the issue to rest,” he said by phone from his Washington home. “We had good feelings going into (the House debate), but I would have to agree the magnitude of support for the bill was greater than I had expected.”

Just before the vote on the Rohrabacher amendment was taken, Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.) argued that its defeat “will end the right-wing fling (of) intolerance, intimidation and repression.” The NEA issue, though it involves a government agency with a budget this year of just $175 million, had created a raging controversy that has preoccupied the arts community and Congress since last year.

After the vote, Williams and Rep. E. Thomas Coleman (R-Mo.), the bill’s sponsors, said they were surprised by the magnitude of their margin. Coleman said he was surprised by the number of Republicans--58--who voted against Rohrabacher’s amendment to restrict NEA financing.

Rohrabacher left the House chamber without talking to reporters.

Williams said that a second NEA bill--to appropriate money for the agency for 1991--will be taken up by the House today. Regarding Senate action he added, “The House has obviously made it much easier for members of the U.S. Senate to vote to save the NEA.”

NEA opponents were overruled during the debate when they sought to display a series of controversial NEA-funded photographs, including some by Robert Mapplethorpe depicting homosexual acts.

Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.) accused the presiding officer, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), of abridging his freedom of speech by prohibiting the photos.

Prospects for a Senate vote on the NEA reauthorization bill remained uncertain. Senate leaders, including Democratic leader George J. Mitchell of Maine, have voiced doubts about their ability to bring the bill up for a vote in the last days of the 101st Congress, given the preoccupation with the federal budget.

In the Senate, the NEA reauthorization bill is expected to face a filibuster by its key opponent there, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). Arts supporters said earlier this week they are not confident they could muster the two-thirds majority necessary to cut off a filibuster if it materialized.

But the House vote was seen as enormously important in the arts community--both symbolically and in practical terms. The vote became especially important after conservative politicians and organizations launched a last-ditch campaign late last week.

Moreover, a tougher battle was expected in the House than in the Senate, where a pending bill to renew the NEA without restrictions appears destined for approval.

Rohrabacher sent a letter signed by the heads of 20 prominent conservative and fundamentalist groups to House members earlier this week that demanded abolition of the NEA. Signees included the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Assn. and Phyllis Schlafly, head of Eagle Forum. Both are key leaders of the campaign to kill the NEA or control the content of the works it funds.

Rohrabacher called Thursday’s vote “the culmination of a year-long fight” to clamp “not extreme standards, but common sense standards” on the NEA.

“This is one of the far right’s last gasps, but it’s a dangerous one,” asserted Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.).

“I think the American people are watching this debate,” said Rohrabacher. The House, he said, “is trying to foist off (Medicare tax increases on the elderly), yet we cannot say that we are going to set standards so that our tax dollars are not going to be channeled to child pornography.”

One congressman ridiculed Rohrabacher’s approach as a “chastity checklist” to which the arts endowment would have to adhere. Rep. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.) said he had brought a reproduction of Michelangelo’s “David” onto the House floor to show how the famed painting employs nudity.

As congressmen chanted “Let’s see it!” AuCoin contended the Michelangelo would have run afoul of Rohrabacher’s NEA restrictions. “Are we going to say he (David) has to have a jockstrap on?” AuCoin asked.

Rohrabacher’s remark referred to two images by Mapplethorpe that appeared in an art show that received indirect NEA funding last year. The pictures of nude and partially nude children were among seven photographs over which a Cincinnati museum and its director faced obscenity counts in a trial that ended in acquittal last week.