Highways Is Target for Fund Cuts : Arts: Anti-NEA forces attack art center that promotes work by racial and ethnic minority groups, gays and lesbians.

As Congress debates a massive 39% cut in federal funding for arts and culture, Santa Monica’s performing arts center Highways Inc.--noted for promoting work representing racial and ethnic minority groups, gays and lesbians--has once again become a hot target for conservative activists lobbying Congress to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.

The current attack, by groups including Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Assn., the Virginia-based Media Research Center and the Christian Action Network began just as Senate reauthorization hearings for the arts agency are about to begin. In response, NEA chairman Jane Alexander sent a letter this week to individual senators defending Highways as “an institution that serves its community well--this time, one that supports the work of homosexual and minority artists.”

In her letter, Alexander also told legislators that the conservative organizations were mischaracterizing the NEA in an effort to raise funds for their own groups.

Highways has received NEA funding for several years and will receive $15,000 this year ($10,000 for operational support and a $5,000 dance-presenting grant).

This year’s complaints center on the brochure for Highways’ 1995 Ecco Lesbo/Ecco Homo Summer Festival. The brochure, which reportedly has been mailed to Congress members as well as various organizations across the country by the American Family Assn., contains photos of partially unclothed performers as well as humorous sexually explicit descriptions of some performances.

In an op-ed article published Wednesday by the Washington Times, L. Brent Bozell III, chairman of the Media Research Center, protested the NEA’s funding of Highways, expressing dismay over the fact that the summer schedule includes the Purple Moon Dance Company, which according to the brochure “explores the experience of lesbians of color,” and comedian Marga Gomez, whose act is titled “Not for Republicans” and according to the brochure includes material on “her favorite subjects: pain, regret, self-pity, doom and sex with Newt Gingrich’s mom.”

Highways--particularly artistic director Tim Miller--has been targeted by conservative groups in the past. Miller, a gay activist, is among the provocative performance artists who came to be known as the “NEA 4” when they sued the NEA over a 1990 grant recommendation by a peer panel which was overturned by then-NEA chief John E. Frohnmayer. The artists received a settlement from the NEA in 1993.

Repeated phone calls to Wildmon were not returned. Nor was a call to Bozell. Christian Action Network communications director Tom Kilgannon said that, while he had not seen the brochure, the network had placed Highways on the list of targeted organization in the network’s lobbying activities. The group, which staged a symposium called “A Graphic Picture Is Worth a Thousand Votes” on Capitol Hill Tuesday, targeted specific NEA grants to Highways in a similar demonstration in 1993.

Jordan Peimer, associate artistic director of Highways, said the organization has been deluged with phone calls about the matter, adding: “It really seems like we are going to be the major scapegoat for whatever happens with the current NEA crisis. That’s how the religious right is positioning it--gay men and people of color are the easiest to attack . . . . I see these attacks as both racist and homophobic.”

NEA spokeswoman Cherie Simon said Thursday that the attack against Highways “is not about Highways.” “This is about shifting the dialogue away from the real story of how the NEA has been a lifeline to nonprofit arts in every pocket of this country. The American people are smarter than this.”