No ‘Decency’ Oath, NEA Chief Says : Arts: Chairman John E.Frohnmayer says the NEA will draft ‘benign’ wording for guidelines implementing new endowment legislation.

Artists and arts organizations receiving National Endowment for the Arts grants in the coming year will not have to sign oaths declaring they will adhere to standards of “decency.”

The decision not to require such a certification was disclosed by NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer in an interview here. During the 1990 grant year, a controversial requirement against obscenity led to more than 30 grant rejections and three lawsuits. Many artists, arts organizations and constitutional lawyers called the pledge the equivalent of an anti-obscenity loyalty oath.

Pressed to say whether new regulations governing 1991 NEA grant awards would omit anything that might be seen as a “decency oath,” Frohnmayer said, “The answer is unequivocally yes.”

The matter had been under review for several days, according to senior endowment officials.

Frohnmayer also said that NEA officials will draft “benign” wording for guidelines implementing new endowment legislation that require the NEA to limit its support to art that respects “general standards of decency” and diverse American values and beliefs.

Frohnmayer’s declaration that the NEA does not intend to renew the anti-obscenity certification appeared to acknowledge that the requirement had damaged the NEA’s standing in the arts community.

Frohnmayer’s remarks appeared to signal a change in attitude by the NEA to address the concerns of artists. For most of 1990, the NEA had seemed to stress making peace with congressional critics at the expense of the endowment’s relationships with the creative community.

Frohnmayer’s remarks were made in an interview Saturday but embargoed for publication until after Election Day. The federal agency’s funding last year of several controversial artworks and artists had drawn criticism from several right-wing politicians, who had tried to reinstate content controls under new NEA enabling and funding legislation but were outvoted.

“I think it’s important that we remember the lessons of the last year and the divisiveness of any kind of restriction that smacks of content-control,” Frohnmayer said, choosing his words carefully. “So I think we will try our best to maintain the spirit of the legislation and still draft guidelines that make (the potentially controversial new wording) benign.”

Asked to interpret the new law’s wording regarding decency and cultural diversity, he said, “we haven’t analyzed the legislation sufficiently to answer the question.” But, he said, “one thing is clear. It does say that the basis on which grants are given is artistic merit and artistic excellence.

“How we treat that sort of dependent phrase that talks about decency and sensitivity to the diversity of American culture, I don’t know. But (we will try to) make it possible for artists to not feel that they are somehow threatened by content limitations.”

The controversial obscenity oath applied only to grants awarded during the 1990 fiscal year, which recently ended. The new decency wording is included in legislation that extends the life of the NEA through 1993 and will apply to all grants for the three-year period.

The decency wording, he said, could be interpreted as “precluding nothing” and being little more than a vague statement that artists should “pay attention to all our values,” a standard, he noted, that would rule out nothing that artists might want to say.

Over the weekend, top NEA officials conferred with artists and arts organization representatives to reassure them that the federal agency would not limit the subject matter that artists can treat.

BACKGROUND

A new bill governing the National Endowment for the Arts includes this provision: “No payment may be made under this section except upon application therefore which is submitted to the National Endowment for the Arts in accordance with regulations issued and procedures established by the Chairperson. In establishing such regulations and procedures, the Chairperson shall ensure that artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which applications are judged, taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”