Arts Official Backs Restrictions on Grants : Funding: The National Gallery chairman says the public has a right to play a role in judging works that its tax money supports.

Franklin D. Murphy, chairman of the National Gallery of Art, admonished the nation’s artists Wednesday that they cannot expect full freedom to explore explicit and homoerotic themes in work that is subsidized by public grants.

Murphy, a former Times Mirror Co. board chairman, said in a lecture to the American Council for the Arts that the public has a right to play a role in judging the content of work its tax money supports.

For artists or their patrons to insist otherwise, he said, “crosses the line into arrogance and unreality.”

He defended the requests by some conservative groups that applications for grants under the National Endowment for the Arts, which the council oversees, be sharply scrutinized for subject matter considered controversial, particularly “homoeroticism.”

“The physical relationship between consenting human beings is an extremely private matter, not a subject for public display,” said Murphy.

Murphy’s remarks were the latest in a long-running debate over the nature of the art that has been supported by the NEA’s publicly funded grants. The controversy was sparked in 1989 when grant recipient Robert Maplethorpe’s bold photographs of gay men were refused by Washington’s Corcoran Gallery, and a Cincinnati museum director was arrested on obscenity charges for showcasing them.

So intense has the controversy become that it resulted in the resignation in February of NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer, who will leave his post on May 1.

The issue also has fostered intense debate on the campaign trail, with conservative Republican Patrick J. Buchanan assailing President Bush--who appointed Frohnmayer--for supporting what he has termed “filthy and blasphemous” art.

Although Murphy’s comments Wednesday night echoed those of others embroiled in the NEA controversy, his stature as a former media executive and museum trustee sparked intense reaction from opposite corners.

David Mendoza, executive director of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, called Murphy a poor choice to deliver the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture in view of the namesake’s standing as a defender of artistic freedom.

He called Murphy’s approach to artists on the cutting edge “patronizing” and a “disgrace” to the Hanks legacy.

Although agreeing with Murphy’s plea for all parties in the emotional debate to “calm down,” he criticized Murphy’s request to adopt “common sense” limits so that individualized expression is made more palatable for public funding.

“It’s a personal thing, where to draw the line, whether it’s Mr. Murphy’s or someone else’s,” said Mendoza. “What he’s trying to say is some people should not have access to create art about their lives and their culture.”

However, Murphy said the heart of the controversy is not a battle over an artist’s right to create objectionable works: “ . . . it has to do with the expenditure of public funds in which the taxpayer has a very proper interest.”

Conservative Republican activist and Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, who once dubbed the former NEA chairman “the dirty art czar,” called Murphy’s suggestion for sharper scrutiny of NEA funding requests “good advice.” But she disagreed with him on salvaging the NEA or even continuing government support of the arts.

But Murphy, a current trustee of the J. Paul Getty Museum and a former board president of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, described himself as an “unabashed and vigorous supporter” of the NEA. “To put an end to any of those initiatives today or in the future is unthinkable,” he added.