Arts Groups Paint a Bleak Picture : Briefing: California artists and administrators testify at MOCA before a House subcommittee seeking to determine the impact of new NEA grant guidelines.

State artists, administrators and educators forecast a bleak future for the arts and described an existing climate of fear and repression at a House subcommittee briefing held Monday by Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The House Subcommittee on Government Activities and Transportation, which manages the National Endowment for the Arts, is seeking to uncover how new NEA grant guidelines have affected the arts.

For the last two years, the NEA has become a source of controversy as Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and other conservative legislators have attempted to control what kind of art the government supports. In 1989, Helms led attacks against a photography exhibit by Robert Mapplethorpe featuring homosexual themes, and against a museum in North Carolina that displayed a photograph of a crucifix in urine by Andres Serrano.

Last year, Congress passed legislation that required the NEA to give grants to artists who met “general standards of decency,” to increase the funds allocated for state and local arts agencies from 20% in 1990 to 35% by 1993, and to distribute 50 cents of every dollar appropriated above $175 million to arts education programs.

After listening to nearly four hours of sometimes heated and emotional testimony, Boxer, the chairwoman of the House subcommittee said: “We set up this briefing 18 months after the ‘general decency’ restrictions to get a sense of what’s happening and what’s happening is even worse than I had thought.” The subcommittee conducted its first hearing in June in Washington and a final session is scheduled at the end of October in New York.

Panelists also discussed the recent amendment to the Interior Department’s 1991-92 appropriations bill, prohibiting NEA grants for artists who promote “patently offensive art.”

The amendment, which would ban the depiction of “sexual and excretory activities and organs,” was introduced by Helms on Sept. 19 as legislators raced to meet Tuesday’s deadline to pass a 1992 federal budget.

Passed in the Senate by a 68-28 vote, the amendment faces a bicameral budget conference meeting Thursday. Boxer said that Rep. Sidney Yates (D-Ill.), the chairman of the committee, was confident that he could fight it. “But you never walk away from Jesse Helms without something,” Boxer said.

In response to several panelists who expressed concern that federal grants passed down to the states would replace, and not enhance, currently allocated state monies, Boxer promised to legally attempt to prevent such diversions.

One after another, the panelists detailed a shrinking pool of federal funds that was weakening the arts. They criticized the redirection of federal funds from artists and arts organizations to state and local agencies, and emphasized the need for a strong national arts organization. They decried the NEA’s lack of leadership and alleged domination by a right-wing agenda.

Susan Hoffman, executive director for the California Confederation of the Arts, called the legislative restrictions an attack on the freedom of expression and blamed the NEA for not fighting back.

“The endowment’s lack of courage to defend its own process, track record, artists and organizations is perfectly expressed in the diverting of its funding discretion to the states--by turning their monies over to the states, the NEA turns over to the states the censorship issue as well,” Hoffman said.

Alma Robinson, executive director for California Lawyers for the Arts, criticized the NEA for gradually eliminating grants to art service organizations that often serve low-income artists and emerging arts organizations.

“Service organizations assist the neediest artists and emerging arts organizations with legal problems and business skills. For example, our organization has developed special seminars and outreach for artists with AIDS, homeless and disabled artists,” Robinson said.

Adolfo V. Nodal, general manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, said that the restrictions on language and decency have gone beyond the “chilling effect.”

“There’s no more talking about the chilling effect, people are getting frozen out of the system. Already there are a lot of people who will never be part of the endowment,” Nodal said.

Artist Rachel Rosenthal compared the new restrictions on “patently offensive” art to Nazi attacks on non-traditional arts and rooted the current censorship in Christianity’s attack on paganism.

“The body remains a taboo, and contemporary artists have used the body in shocking ways. Artists break taboos. The body is the ultimate signifier. How can it not be used as an instrument to shock those who are shocked by nudity and human functions?”