O.C. Groups Praise Decision on Grants

A federal judge who struck down the National Endowment for the Arts’ “decency clause” as unconstitutional won praise for his ruling Tuesday from the only two Orange County arts organizations to take concrete action against NEA grant restrictions.

“I (always) think that justice will out, and obviously it has now,” said John Lottes, president of the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach.

In 1990, during the height of a nationwide controversy over the NEA, the institute became the only county organization to reject NEA funding. At the recommendation of then-president Russell E. Lewis, its trustees turned down a $15,000 NEA grant rather than sign a pledge that the money would not be used to create or present obscene work.

Early last year, the pledge was declared unconstitutional in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles after separate lawsuits against the NEA were filed by the Newport Harbor Art Museum and the Los Angeles-based Bella Lewitzky Dance Company. (The museum accepted four NEA grants totaling $100,000 the year it filed the suit.)

Newport Harbor Art Museum curator Michael Botwinick did not take up that post until after the museum won its federal lawsuit, but he also heralded the new ruling.

“This is totally consistent with the very strong opinion that was handed down in the Newport Harbor-Bella Lewitzky case,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be any inclination on the part of the courts anywhere in this country to apply these kind of vague, open-ended (definitions) of obscenity.”

Subsequently, the NEA adopted language requiring applicants to adhere to “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”

That language was ruled unconstitutional on Tuesday by Los Angeles District Judge A. Wallace Tashima.