Sidney Yates; Longest-Serving Member of U.S. House, Supporter of the Arts

Mr. Yates came to Washington when Harry S. Truman was president, and left when William Jefferson Clinton was in the White House.

Sidney R. Yates, the oldest and longest-serving member of the House until his retirement last year, died at a Washington hospital Thursday at 91.

The congressman from Chicago will best be remembered as a fervent defender of arts funding in America who fought efforts by conservatives to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.

As chairman of the powerful House appropriations subcommittee, which funded the endowment, Yates was at the center of the storm in the late 1980s when it was found that federal grants had been used to fund two controversial photography exhibitions. They featured homoerotic images by Robert Mapplethorpe and a work by Andres Serrano that included the image of a plastic crucifix in urine.

The disclosures prompted what Yates called a massive mail-in campaign, along with some outsized rhetoric on Capitol Hill. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) called the NEA “a ministry of culture we can no longer afford.” Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) proposed a funding cut.

But Yates , a thoughtful man, noted that the agency had made tens of thousands of grants and had encountered only a few controversies of this kind.

As a compromise, Yates suggested cutting only the $45,000 paid for the Mapplethorpe and Serrano exhibits.

In the 1990s, when Republicans took control of the House and tried to eliminate the NEA, Yates again blocked their efforts. Although its funding was trimmed over the years, the NEA survived.

“Every civilization throughout history, you know, has been judged not by its military conquests but by its civilized achievements,” he once told the Chicago Tribune.

Yates lead a campaign in the 1980s to preserve American film classics at the Library of Congress, ensuring protection from colorization. The first 25 films designated under the National Film Preservation Act were chosen in 1989. The National Film Registry now includes 275 American movies.

“Just as we preserve our still masterpieces in museums and collections,” Yates said, “we ought to do that as well for the great motion pictures.”

Born in Chicago in 1909 to Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Yates grew up in a theatrical home. The youngest of six children, he often attended the theater because his brother Charles was a vaudeville talent agent. At the University of Chicago, where he received his undergraduate and law degrees, he memorized Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

Yates’ political career began on a whim. He had returned to his Chicago law practice after serving in the Navy during World War II when the Democrats came calling, desperate for a candidate to take on Rep. Robert J. Twyman, a popular Republican. But 1948 was a Democratic year. Truman defeated Dewey, and Yates defeated Twyman by 18,000 votes. Narrow wins followed in 1950 and 1952. No one came close again in his 24 elections to the House of Representatives.

During the first Eisenhower administration, Yates joined the liberal campaign to preserve a public housing program. During the Kennedy years, Yates backed a proposal to provide medical insurance to the elderly, which would eventually become Medicare.

“Opponents say if people 65 and over can’t pay the costs of medical care, let them apply for relief and their medical bills will be paid,” he said in debate. “But relief medicine is socialized medicine . . . [where] the doctor is working for the state, not for the patient.”

He might have been even more influential in Congress had he not tried, in 1962, to unseat Sen. Everett Dirksen, the minority leader. Despite a strong effort, Dirksen was reelected by a vote of 53% to 47%.

Two years later, Yates won his old House seat. Representing a liberal, lakefront district, he championed environmental causes. He worked for a moratorium on mining patents, fought against the attempt to open Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to increased timber harvesting and engineered a 1988 moratorium on offshore drilling licenses.

Yates is survived by his wife, the former Adeline Holleb; his son, Stephen, a circuit judge in Cook County, Ill.; and three grandchildren, all musicians.