An NEA Deal or a Gutting?

With the House on record with a bill to kill the National Endowment for the Arts and the Senate expected to ride to the agency’s rescue when Congress reconvenes next month, compromise is in the air. And that could mean a dramatic restructuring of the NEA--a change not all arts advocates would welcome.

Given the differing congressional attitudes toward the NEA, several senators are scrambling to devise a solution that will make their bid to keep the agency alive easier to swallow for the agency’s fierce opponents in the House.

“You have one body [the Senate] with a clear position for the NEA, and one body [the House] against it,” said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho). “The question is where we can find some middle ground. How can we change the NEA? It must be different from the status quo.”

Craig said “informal talks” among senators so far have concluded that “a more fair distribution” of NEA grant money to the 50 states “will be the main thing” required to find common ground.

This approach aims to appease NEA foes who attack the agency for favoring certain states in its funding decisions while ignoring others; in the current fiscal year, for instance, the endowment gave more than 20% of its grant money to New York and close to 10% to California, the second-biggest recipient. But reforming the way NEA funnels money to states could strip it of much of its power to distribute money.

Another proposal, meanwhile, would reduce the funds available for projects not directly related to arts education.

To some NEA supporters, either plan would be an additional blow to an agency already struggling with drastic budget cuts and limits on its operations imposed in recent years.

“This is simply another way of doing away the NEA--it’s like a Trojan horse,” said Graham W.J. Beale, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “We [the arts community] are interested in a compromise . . . if it means the survival of the NEA. But what is the point of it if you are throwing the baby out with the bath water?”

In the Senate, Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas has been leading the push for altering the NEA’s distribution of grants to the states. The proposal would require that between 55%-65% of the agency’s current $99.5-million budget be funneled directly to state officials, who then could decide how the funds are spent. Hutchison and others assume that much of the money would go for arts education in the public schools.

About 30%-40% of NEA’s money would remain under its direct jurisdiction and would go to “national arts” that defy state boundaries.

Under the NEA’s existing system, states receive 35% of the NEA’s $82.5-million grant money, with most of those funds going to state arts agencies--such as the California Arts Council--which have their own grant programs. The remaining 65% of NEA funds are distributed to art projects selected by the endowment in cooperation with panels of artists, arts administrators, arts critics and laypeople.

The plan the senators are discussing not only would reduce the amount of grant money the NEA could directly distribute, but also would limit the agency’s administrative cost to 5% of its total budget, down from the current 17%.

Although how much money each state receives would depend partially on population size, rural areas would get special consideration. That provision is designed to increase the grant share for such states as Arkansas, Montana and Wyoming, who currently get less than 1% of the NEA money.

While the plan might decrease the share of grant money California receives, the total amount would likely rise because of the overall increase in such funds going to the states. In the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, California got more than $8 million in NEA grants, which supported such projects in Los Angeles County as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the American Film Institute and the Jazz Tap Ensemble.

“What we’re trying to do is come up with something that will pass both the Senate and the House,” Hutchison said. “We are trying to have [NEA] fully funded in a way everyone is going to feel comfortable with.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, an association representing state arts agencies that receive NEA money, opposes increasing state funding at the agency’s expense. The group wants NEA to remain in a leadership position.

“The NEA exercises the national leadership necessary for progress and it provides national recognition that leverages additional investment [in the arts] from the private sector,” said Dennis Dewey, managing director for NASAA.

By significantly reducing NEA’s role in grants distribution, the proposal backed by Hutchinson also aims to please critics who have charged that the agency is an elitist institution that funds inappropriate art--a charge repeatedly brought against the endowment since the late 1980s, when it funded exhibitions with controversial religious and sexual themes.

The heavy criticism of the NEA has already led to severe cutbacks on what the agency can do. The current $99.5-million NEA budget represents a dramatic drop from its high of $175.9 million in fiscal 1992. And a number of reforms, some of them self-imposed, have restricted the agency from funding almost all individual artists and reduced the agency’s staff.

Another plan for changing the NEA has been put forward in a bill sponsored by Sens. James Jeffords (R-Vt.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Under their proposal, applicants proposing arts education activities would be “given priority consideration” in the awarding of grants.

As part of a five-year reauthorization of the NEA, the bill also requires that any future increases in the agency’s current $99.5-million annual budget go to arts education.

Jeffords touts the proposal as a way to revitalize arts education in the public school system. “Too often, the arts have been regarded as a frivolous extra--to be shoved out of the way to make room for more math or more science,” he said.

But through the increased emphasis on arts education, the bill seeks to ensure the NEA does not fund anything remotely controversial.

NEA officials say arts education is already a vital part of their activities.

“Arts education has been a priority of [NEA Chairwoman Jane Alexander] from Day One,” said Cherie Simon, an agency spokeswoman. However, Simon cautioned that arts education should not be supported at the expense of the endowment’s grants to symphonies, orchestras and museums across the nation.

Michael Alexander, board director of the Los Angeles-based dance company Aman Folk Ensemble, which has received NEA support for several years, is more blunt in assessing the potential restructuring of the NEA.

“Any of these proposed changes will not improve anything,” he said. “I’m not saying that the NEA is infallible, but it is fine-tuning that is needed rather than a complete overhaul.”