NEA Wants Name Off 3 LACE Shows : Arts: The gallery director calls the request a clear attempt to ‘target certain minorities.’ The endowment says it is to prevent ‘misinformation’ about grants.

The National Endowment for the Arts has asked Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions to remove “any acknowledgment of endowment support” from materials associated with three recent LACE projects that had erotic and homosexual themes.

LACE executive director Gwen Darien said that NEA funds were not used for the activities in question and called the request a clear attempt to “target certain minorities.”

In a March 30 letter, NEA deputy chairman for programs Randolph McAusland said a copy of LACE’s February-March events brochure, sent to them by LACE, reflects three events that were “not specifically identified or described in any of LACE’s grant applications or progress reports.” The events were the “Valentine’s Erotica Bash,” the “Spew 2: National ‘Zine Convention” (an alternative magazine conference that the brochure describes as being dominated by a “queercore contingent”) and “A Tribute to Tom of Finland,” the late artist known for homoerotic imagery.

The letter called any acknowledgment of NEA support for those projects “inaccurate” and asked that LACE remove such acknowledgment from all materials associated with the events. In addition, the letter asks that “any costs for these projects must be excluded from the grant budgets.”

The letter comes in the wake of NEA chairman John E. Frohnmayer being fired from his post in February after Republican challenger Patrick J. Buchanan made the endowment a campaign issue by criticizing several grants for projects with sexual themes. NEA press spokesman Josh Dare estimated that about a “half dozen” such letters had been sent by the endowment in the past six months. He would not address whether pressure from Buchanan was a factor in the letters, saying only “I don’t think there’s any more intent at this point than to just make us accountable to . . . what we funded, nothing more and nothing less.”

While Dare said the NEA’s request was made to prevent “misinformation” about NEA support, Darien alleged that the NEA’s singling out of these projects constitutes “implied surveillance of our programs whether or not they are funded by the NEA.”

In a statement delivered by the NEA press office, McAusland said that the three projects were cited because “the NEA doesn’t want the American public to get the impression that we either reviewed or approved applications from LACE that contain these types of activities--which one might logically conclude based on their promotional materials.”

An NEA press spokesman called letters asking for such clarification “not uncommon” and “routine.” While Darien insisted that the projects cited were not funded with any of three recent NEA grants, she noted that another project in the brochure, a panel discussion called “Comic Art in the ‘90s,” was not mentioned by the NEA, even though that project did not use NEA funds either. “By and large, they are targeting art with sexual content,” she said. “These letters are not routine.”

She added that even if NEA funds had been used for the projects, since LACE’s grants were for “ongoing support,” the argument that the events “were not specifically identified or described” in the grant applications is “immaterial.”

Darien said she believes that the NEA’s request speaks to a larger issue: an attempt on the part of the NEA to distance itself from artistic works that “are about dissent and minority voice.” She added that the NEA’s request reflects a “homophobic” attitude.

Darien described the Valentine’s Day Fund-raiser, “The Garden of Eden: A Sexual Romp Through Global Erotica,” as being “more weighted toward the playful than the sexual.”

The “Tribute to Tom of Finland,” a one-day, four-hour event, was described in the LACE brochure as a “multimedia soiree” to celebrate the “life and times of (the) internationally renowned male-erotic artist.”

The brochure listing for “Spew 2” read in part: “In a (media) world dominated by ‘straight’ culture, ‘zine publishing gives voice and visibility to a growing population of homemade misfits, disaffected dykes and fags, who find themselves outside the mainstreams of American cultures.”