Cutting NEA Grants Makes No Sense

Reading the article “Studying the Politics of the Arts” (Calendar, Oct. 23) about Jane Alexander and the National Endowment for the Arts’ decision to stop funding the visual arts grants, plus many other significant grants to individual artists, was both scary and appalling.

Of course, this is due to budget-cutting. But do people really understand the severity of our government not supporting such artists anymore? Art is the soul of a country and to give up on its most precious purveyor, the artist , is a slow path to collective suicide.

As a recipient of a 1977 NEA grant for photography, I want to share with others the tragedy of our government choosing not to continue supporting people like myself.

I was 27 years old then. That grant meant everything to me. It meant my government, the people of the United States of America, cared about art ! How fantastic, how incredible! They cared enough to support my work, which meant money for rent, the phone bill, money for film, chemicals, photographic paper to make exhibition-quality prints, food to live on, etc.

That kind of positive validation for a young artist to believe in himself or herself, to continue to go up against all odds in a society that is caring less and less about art, should never be lost. It should be considered a national treasure. The importance of that grant for an artist’s survival, plus what results can come from it, are immeasurable to our culture. To turn our backs like this on the young artists of America today is unforgivable.

Do most Americans realize that it cost them, individually, approximately 83 cents each year to maintain the NEA grants the way they used to be given out--when every year grants were given to individual artists of many different expressions? Then the slashing began and the grants were given out every two years . . . and now Finito! R.I.P.

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House Speaker Newt Gingrich, when he talks of private support for the arts, has no real idea what it’s like to get money from a big corporation to support your art. He has no clue. Generally, if it’s done at all, which is rare, there are usually conditions involved to better the image of the company somehow. Does he think the corporations are going to support artists on the edge? And what is art about anyway if it’s not somehow on the edge? And I mean that in all ways, dealing with the light and the dark. Grow up, Sen. Jesse Helms and other insensitive congressmen uneducated about art.

The NEA grant was pure: Do what you believe in. . . . No questions asked. . . . We have faith in your decision. What a magnificent grant for an artist.

Aren’t artists our scouts? Our explorers of the deeper meanings of life, coming back with evidence of things known, things discovered, things to be questioned?

Our neighbors all over the world will look upon this decision to stop funding individual artists as another example of our cultural decay. Why can’t Americans realize that the violence and self-destruction taking place across our country is actually related to the issues of how we take care of the arts ?

They are all connected. When society either tries to take control of art or loses all respect for it, including failure to nurture it, it will die. It’s been proven historically.

I strongly recommend that all of us, in our own way, try to reverse this awful decision by the NEA to no longer give out grants to individual artists--no matter what it takes or to whom the issues go.