Demands by NEA Panel Signal New Protests : Arts grants: Review board demands a political truce in the selection process. The action reflects growing restiveness within the arts community.

An influential National Endowment for the Arts review panel has demanded assurances that its recommendations will not be set aside on political grounds and that five controversial pending grants--including two for artists already subject to NEA grant rejections--will be awarded on a priority basis.

The demands by the NEA’s visual artists organization grant-review panel, made in a letter sent to top endowment officials last week, appeared to be the latest evidence of broadening restiveness and concern within the arts community over the course of the arts endowment.

The visual artists organization panel was the third grant-review jury in the last month to offer either mass resignations or place conditions on its continued service to the NEA. The resignations and employment of demands reflect fears about how the NEA intends to implement new legislation that requires the agency to take into account “general standards of decency” and traditional American values in selecting artists whose work it will support.

The NEA has already scheduled an emergency meeting of its advisory National Council on the Arts for the middle of next month to discuss effects of the legislation. The letter to the endowment containing the demands by the visual artists organization panel asserts that top NEA officials have given verbal assurances that finding ways to set decency standards without diminishing the quality of NEA-supported art will be a priority.

The demands to the arts endowment were contained in a letter signed by Tad Savinar, a Portland, Ore., artist who is chairman of the 1990 visual artists organization panel. Savinar was a member of the same panel late last year, when one of its members resigned and the entire review board threatened to quit in a protest over obscenity restrictions in an earlier NEA law.

The new situation appeared to reflect increasing problems of credibility for the administration of NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer. Frohnmayer was reportedly on an official visit to the Soviet Union and not expected to return to Washington for nearly three weeks. The latest grant panel demands were contained in a letter addressed to Randy McAusland, the NEA’s deputy chairman for programs who is acting head of the agency during Frohnmayer’s absence.

“We make this request . . . because we feel it is the right thing to do,” the letter said in summarizing demands for assurances against interference in its recommendations. “We also make this request of Mr. Frohnmayer to give him the opportunity to send a clear signal to the field that the endowment is on track in its funding of high-quality artistic investigation, regardless of its political or marketing strategies.”

Arts community leaders said that the panel letter appears to reflect diminished confidence in the NEA’s ability to weather its 18-month-old political crisis without sacrificing cutting edge or provocative work. “They (the NEA) don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just hoping for the best and hoping that nothing gets them in trouble,” said Charlotte Murphy, executive director of the Washington-based National Assn. of Artist Organizations.

“They say they’re trying not to put a damper on controversial work, but everything they do is to the contrary. The (grant-review) panels know (that their grant recommendations in controversial cases) no longer have the support of the agency.”

The NEA had no immediate response to the Nov. 20 letter from Savinar, which was released to reporters this week.

The letter was the latest in a series of panel protest actions at the NEA in the last few weeks. In early November, nine of 11 members of a panel reviewing grants to small literary publishing and distributing organizations resigned to protest the so-called decency standards. Later, a panel reviewing grants to playwrights demanded a meeting with Frohnmayer before their scheduled Dec. 7 meeting to obtain assurances that their recommendations would not be altered on political grounds.

Last year at this time, after Congress imposed anti-obscenity restrictions on the endowment in a one-year appropriations bill, Frohnmayer, who is a former Oregon lawyer, and other legal experts predicted that the strictures would have no practical effect on work by NEA-supported artists and arts groups. Frohnmayer and legal experts said the wording was so vague it could be read as prohibiting nothing and the NEA chairman urged artists not to panic.

Later, however, Frohnmayer put into effect a requirement that artists sign a written agreement not to disobey the obscenity wording--action that provoked dozens of grant rejections and three pending lawsuits.

This year, after Congress passed the new legislation including the decency requirement, Frohnmayer again urged artists to remain calm. He said specifically that no “decency oath” would be required and that the NEA would seek “benign” ways to put the legislation into effect.

But in the ensuing weeks, said Savinar and other arts community spokesmen, there have been mounting indications that artists are not prepared to simply accept the NEA assurances at face value again.

“I am not calling for a boycott” either by artists refusing NEA support or declining to serve on endowment review panels, Savinar said. “Most people feel that the most subversive thing we can do right now is to make sure those people (artists who create potentially controversial work) get the money.”

Among demands by the visual artists organization panel were calls for a guarantee by Frohnmayer that the NEA will reconvene the entire 10-member panel if Frohnmayer proposes to veto any of its recommended grants, amend them or reduce any of the awards by more than 15%. Such a meeting would have to occur before any final decision rejecting or reducing any grant.