NEA Probe to Clear Artists Involved in Anti-Shooting Ads

Four San Diego artists who used federal funds to pay for bus-bench ads that protested deadly force shootings by police soon will be exonerated as a result of an investigation by the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA sources said.

The NEA agreed to investigate the artists in early November, after a request from Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), who said that it was “highly unusual and improper for artists to take NEA money and buy commercial advertising, regardless of its content.”

At the time, Jack Lichtenstein, the national spokesman for the embattled federal arts agency, called the bus-bench ads “a most inappropriate use of NEA funds.” But documents later obtained by The Times showed that the artists were operating within NEA guidelines and that, in fact, money for advertising space was specifically spelled out in their grant.

And, on Thursday, a high-ranking official with the NEA, who asked not to be identified, said the agency’s inspector general had concluded his report and found “no wrongdoing” on the part of the artists. He said the findings of the investigation might not be officially released until March.

“The inspector general has turned over his findings to the general counsel,” the source said. “The general counsel has determined that he’ll wait for the final report from the art gallery that sponsored the artists,” the Installation Gallery. “But essentially, they will be exonerated. After all, they did nothing wrong.”

Karl Higgins, a spokesman for Lowery, said Thursday from the congressman’s San Diego office that he believed “the only reason” the artists would be exonerated was because they were operating under “old guidelines.”

Lowery is one of several conservative congressmen--the most outspoken critic being North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms--who called for a reappraisal of the NEA that led to new procedures for the agency.

“My understanding is that the new guidelines will prohibit artists from using taxpayer dollars for that kind of advertising,” Higgins said. “If they want to create art and display it as part of their freedom of expression, fine. . . . But to use taxpayer dollars for commercial advertising to circulate such art was and is, in our view, inappropriate.

“The new guidelines simply won’t allow that, so, if they are exonerated--and I’d prefer to comment more fully after the announcement is official--they will be exonerated purely on a technicality . . . permissible only under old guidelines.”

Deborah Small, one of the artists involved, said Thursday that neither she nor her colleagues will be surprised when the NEA clears them in a controversy that she said “didn’t make much sense from the start.”

“We knew all along that it would be no problem for us,” Small said, noting that the NEA grant, which functions as a contract, allotted the artists $4,000 for “media advertising.” The ads cost $3,662.50.

Given that the controversy arose just days before the November election, Small said she suspects that Lowery used it to enhance his bid for reelection against Democrat Dan Kripke, whom he defeated by 12,000 votes.

“What Lowery was doing was helping himself get elected,” Small said. “He used the issue as a smoke screen to mask what the work tried to address, which was police misconduct, the need for change, the need for a police review board with real power. . . . To complain about tax-dollar funding for political art was, I think, a red herring.”

Small said the ads, appearing on 25 bus benches throughout the city, showed up in late October and were removed Dec. 1. Many of the ads have been replaced by pro-police messages.

“Season’s Greetings to San Diego’s Finest from the San Diego Crime Commission,” reads one of the new ads, on a bus bench on Broadway, near the San Diego police station.

The controversial art drawn by Small and fellow artists Elizabeth Sisco, Scott Kessler and Louis Hock featured the outline of seven human bodies silhouetted in black against a red background. Within each human figure was a target, similar to those at police shooting ranges.

Within one target was a trowel, within another a baseball bat and within a third a garden stake. A pair of upraised hands and a question mark were drawn within others.

Among those killed in shootings by police in 1990 were men wielding a baseball bat, a garden stake and a trowel. Another man was unarmed.

Small noted that, since the ads appeared, even since the controversy has died down, two other people have died in so-called deadly-force shootings. Both occurred in December; one man was unarmed, and the other, police said, pulled out a gun before being shot.

The San Diego Police Department acknowledges that, since January, 27 people have been shot, 12 fatally, in what it labels deadly-force shootings.

“The situation won’t change until the police change their practices,” Small said. “Or, the City Council calls for greater accountability in the form of a review board with teeth. I have to laugh at Lowery’s call for an NEA investigation. Think about the tax dollars that must have been spent on that, and for what? So that another Republican could get reelected?”