NEA Peer Panels Face Issues of Art Ethics : Arts funding: Acting Chairman Anne-Imelda Radice’s criteria for overturning grant recommendations sends mixed signals to those who review applications.

Last week, Murry DePillars, dean of the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, was supposed to spend a few days in Washington.

As a member of a peer panel charged with reviewing grant applications for the National Endowment for the Arts Expansion Arts Program, DePillars would help decide how to funnel money to arts programs in rural communities, the inner city and other underserved areas.

DePillars was caught in an awkward position: On the one hand, he wanted very much to see the funding process go forward unimpeded. On the other, he wanted to protest recent developments at the endowment.

On May 13, NEA acting chairman Anne-Imelda Radice had overturned two $10,000 grants that had been recommended by peer panels and the advisory National Council on the Arts. The grants--to Virginia Commonwealth’s Anderson Gallery and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s List Gallery--were for proposed exhibitions exploring sexual themes and depicting body parts, including genitalia. Radice issued a statement saying the exhibitions lacked artistic quality. (The chairman has the authority to overturn grant recommendations, but critics say Radice acted out of political expediency to keep controversial grants from becoming embarrassments to the Bush Administration.)

Instead of boarding a plane, however, DePillars ended up resigning from the job. The Expansion Arts panel found a replacement and met without him.

While DePillars’ conflict is more direct than most, his predicament reflects that of many NEA peer panelists--as well as the artists whose works they judge--now faced with debating the ethics of continuing to participate in NEA activities in the wake of Radice’s action.

Radice’s decision resulted in one peer panel, which reviews sculpture fellowships, suspending its activities. Another panel, responsible for reviewing solo theater grant applications, was dismissed after presenting a letter to Radice demanding that she reinstate the Anderson Gallery and List Gallery grants and provide written explanations of her criteria for overturning grant recommendations in the future. As a result of that dismissal, no solo theater grants will be awarded this year, representing a loss of $210,000 to those applicants.

Was the protest worth the money? While solo performance artists bemoan losing possible NEA dollars, all those interviewed for this story support the action of their peer panel to hold Radice accountable.

“This money is very important,” said New York-based artist and grant applicant Marty Pottenger, who said she is $7,000 in debt. “My first reaction was, ‘Bummer, dude!’ . . . (but) I back (the panel). I think the times call for a kind of clarity and solidarity and bold responses. It took me a while to think it through.”

Ironically, the panel’s action may have inadvertently allowed the NEA to avoid future controversy because this category awards grants to performance artists whose work often includes politically and sexually charged themes. This year’s applicants included John Fleck and Tim Miller, two of the four artists suing the NEA over grants that were recommended, then overturned, in this category in 1990.

Some artists, including Miller, artistic director of Santa Monica’s Highways Performance Space, took the decision as an NEA attack on the solo performance category as a whole. A gay activist, Miller said: “I think they are trying to get rid of this category and they are using this as an excuse. They want to preserve the large institutions and they want to preserve the works of dead artists--unless, of course, those artists died of AIDS.”

Radice was unavailable for comment, but NEA spokeswoman Jill Collins denied that the NEA had any desire to eliminate the category. She also said that the NEA was forced to cancel solo performance arts grants, rather than delay consideration, because there simply was not enough time to select another panel and begin the review process again by the August deadline. “It is also expensive,” she said. “It already cost us $7,000 to bring the panel to Washington.”

Beverly Robinson, a member of the solo performance artists’ peer panel and associate professor at UCLA’s theater department, said that she was “shocked” to the point of tears that their letter resulted in dismissal. She added that could the dismissal have been foreseen, the panel might have chosen to complete the process and then seek a private meeting with Radice on the issue of the overturned grants. Robinson called the loss of money to artists “the hardest thing” to take.

Still, she believes the panel had no choice but to pursue clarification of their role in the decision-making process. She said that while she is not requesting that other panels cease operations, they must also continue to press for clarification.

“It can’t be about Beverly Robinson, it can’t be about 75 artists who applied for grants,” Robinson said. “It has to be about the thousand of artists in this country.”

While other panels continued to meet last week, the Museum Program/Overview Panel changed its agenda from discussing educational programs to focusing on the value of panel recommendations. They also sent a letter to Radice supporting the solo artists’ panel’s demands.

“I think we felt an obligation to meet expressly because the other panels had walked out,” said Margaret Holben Ellis, chairman of New York’s Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts. “We are different from other panels in that we are an overview panel; we don’t judge individual applications. We felt an obligation to support our colleagues . . . it wasn’t fair of (Radice) to ultimately override their decision.”

George Cisneros, who is a member of the Expansion Arts panel and coordinator for information services with the Texas Commission on the Arts, said he disagreed with Radice’s decision--but chose to perform his NEA duties because he believed the program to be more important than the issue at hand.

“I have already gotten calls from people who thought I had sold out the arts community (by attending),” he said. “Well, I didn’t sell out the 98 people whose applications we had to work with . . . I did not agree with the chairman’s opinion, and made my decision based on the group of artists that I represent.”

While artists expressed stronger support for the solo performance panel’s demands than Cisneros, none said they would turn down a grant money from the NEA to support the cause. Highways’ Miller said he did not encourage other artists to turn down their grants in solidarity during the “NEA 4” controversy, and now would take any money offered by the NEA because the funds are “well-deserved, and a tiny little recompense” from a government system that he says does not protect the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

Katherine Griffith, a New York-based “character comedian” whose work satirizes religion, said she would take NEA money because she can’t afford not to, adding: “I’m a part of society, too. I don’t believe any money is ‘pure’ money, or any money is ‘tainted’ money.”

Though he refused to serve, DePillars said he hopes panel walkouts don’t lead to an impasse between artists and the endowment.

“I hope there will be no further chaos,” said the administrator, who will go to Washington Tuesday to protest Radice’s actions before a House subcommittee. “My goal is to do everything I possibly can to keep the endowment alive. I think if we can take the debate out of the media and get behind closed doors, I’m sure we can hammer it out.”

STEGNER JOINS PROTEST: Author Wallace Stegner refuses a White House medal to protest alleged NEA censorship.F2