NEA Council Discusses Grants, Its Future : Arts: With high security at the first meeting since the NEA chairwoman’s vetoes and panel walkouts, the group recommends a grant to Highways.

In a besieged atmosphere of high security and criticism, the National Council of the Arts met this weekend to discuss grants and its own future.

The council, which is the presidentially appointed advisory body for the National Endowment for the Arts, appeared to be weary of the controversy that has dogged acting NEA chairwoman Anne-Imelda Radice since she assumed her position in May.

Shortly after taking over from the deposed John E. Frohnmayer, Radice cited a lack of artistic merit when she vetoed grants to art galleries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Virginia Commonwealth University for exhibitions that included depictions of body parts, including genitalia. Radice’s act was followed by the refusal of two peer review panels to make grant recommendations because of the allegedly political nature of her decisions.

The controversy may have been the reason why members of the U.S. Marshal’s office, the Federal Protection Service and the D.C. Police were in attendance at the weekend’s meetings. A spokesperson for the NEA, who declined further comment, said there was reason to believe an incident of some kind might occur.

At the first council meeting since Radice’s vetoes and the panel walkouts, the NEA’s public image was at the forefront of the discussion on two separate occasions. At the beginning of Friday’s afternoon session, council member and National Gallery of Art deputy director Roger Mandle asked Radice “to reconfirm that (grant) judgments are made for artistic reasons.” Radice, obviously annoyed at the heat she has been taking, stated flatly: “I make decisions based on the law (under which the NEA was chartered), and artistic excellence, which is the law.”

This led to a review of the entire grant process by deputy chair for programs Randy McAusland. Poet and panel member Donald Hall called this “an exercise in evasion,” said Radice’s vetoes were “arbitrary and disingenuous,” and referred to “serious disaffection within the artistic community.” Radice defended her vetoes and said the council could return to the topic after the business at hand was disposed of.

The business included a proposed grant to Highways, the Santa Monica arts space that has been at the center of many NEA controversies. The proposal was for a series of works by three artists, including Holly Hughes, one of four performance artists suing the NEA because of what they charge is a politically motivated refusal to award them fellowships during Frohnmayer’s tenure.

Objecting to the grant was council member Louise McClure, who said: “I have a problem with Holly Hughes. It bothers me to be awarding a grant to someone who is suing us.” She was chided on her views by Harvey Lichtenstein, executive director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, who noted that “the legal question is really separate. It’s almost as if we’re blacklisting somebody if we turn this down.”

The panel eventually voted 18-2 to approve the grant (patron Jocelyn Straus was the other dissenting vote), but in the only such incident of the day, Radice directed that the record stipulate there were two naysayers. Radice’s action on the grant is expected in two months.

As for resolving what to do with the grant money from the two peer panels that rebelled, because the Solo Theater allotment had to be spent in 1992 and the NEA did not have time to put together a new panel, a $210,000 allotment was split between the NEA’s reserve program and increased funding for on-site grant evaluations. The $750,000 for sculpture was allocated to 1994 Regional Visual Arts Fellowships in painting and works on paper.

Following the grant reviews, Mandle suggested a committee be formed whose task would be to increase communication between the council and its peer panels, as well as to set clearer guidelines on what to expect if a grant is rejected. Though Mandle said he only wanted to “clarify” existing law, his proposal ran into some stiff opposition from other council members. By Saturday afternoon the council voted for a watered-down version of Mandle’s proposal and voted overwhelmingly to create a committee to act as an advisory body to the acting chairwoman to discuss grant procedures and other issues.

In other action, a proposed grant to create an urban design plan for South-Central Los Angeles was dropped from the agenda. The NEA’s general counsel had determined that the $70,000 grant represented a potentional conflict of interest for the California Arts Council, which had submitted the application. The head of the CAC was also on the NEA panel that would have voted on it.