Federal Panel OKs Grants for 2 Controversial Artists : The arts: The awards to gay performers could renew funding battle. Endowment chief to have final say.

The National Council on the Arts approved grants Saturday for two controversial performance artists whose applications were rejected a year ago, a move that could reopen political debate over federal funding for potentially offensive works of art.

The council voted to award the grants against the apparent wishes of John E. Frohnmayer, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who must make the politically sensitive decision to uphold or overturn the awards--perhaps as early as this week.

The two performers, Holly Hughes of New York and Tim Miller of Santa Monica, Calif., are openly gay solo performance artists who have built stage acts around issues of sexual preference, politics and racism.

Although they won relatively small grants of between $5,000 and $8,000, their work is the kind that has attracted criticism of the NEA by conservative politicians who oppose federal funding for sexually explicit or otherwise controversial works of art.

Both performers were among a group of artists whose grant applications were approved by the council’s preliminary selection panel last year but then rejected by the full council.

Hughes and Miller later joined two other performers--John Fleck and Karen Finley--to become the self-described “NEA Four.” They filed a lawsuit, contending that the council had misapplied artistic standards when rejecting the applications. That suit is still pending.

The council, an advisory panel to the NEA, quizzed John Killacky, chairman of the preliminary selection panel and director of a performing arts center in Minneapolis, over the criteria used in selecting the 19 winning solo performers from the 124 applicants.

In every other category, the selection panel’s recommendations were accepted as a group with little or no discussion. When the time came Saturday for a vote by the full council, Frohnmayer tried to prod council members into even more discussion.

“You know there is controversy here,” he said, asking the council to “name the names--you know who they are--and give your advice.”

The response by council member Phyllis Curtin of Boston, a theater teacher with a long career in opera, was typical of the reaction by council members. “These names have been here before,” she said. “They have been approved by the panel before, and now they have been recommended (again). We need no more explanations.”

Lloyd Richards, retiring dean of the Yale University drama school, chided Frohnmayer for “putting the council in a . . . defensive position. There is no reason for any name to emerge (separately) here.”

Frohnmayer called for a routine vote on all 19 solo performance grants as a unit. The vote affirming the grants, including those to Hughes and Miller, were recorded as “unanimous.”

Reached at his home Saturday afternoon, Miller said that the actions of the council--and Frohnmayer--did not surprise him.

“This is like a political maneuver (for Frohnmayer), even if his plan is ultimately to respect the recommendation of the panel. . . . ,” he said. “It is not like the book is closed” on the grants with the council vote, he added.

But, he said, the anger within the arts community after last year’s grant rejection and the pending litigation that followed may avert a new controversy this time.

The controversy surrounding federal funding for the arts first erupted two years ago over an NEA-supported photo exhibit by Robert Mapplethorpe that included sexually explicit material.

Staff writer Allan Parachini in Los Angeles contributed to this story.