Suit Exposes NEA's Denial Of Grants For Sexual Art

It was May of 1990.

The federal government was under attack for funding purportedly obscene and blasphemous art. Congress, driven by an outraged Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., barred money for such projects. Officials at the National Endowment for the Arts were reeling from the salvoes.

In this atmosphere of mounting crisis, John E. Frohnmayer, endowment chairman, convened a telephone conference with the agency's theater experts to discuss upcoming grant recommendations in the field of performance art.

After lengthy discussion of artists who deal with dicey sexual subjects, Frohnmayer cut to the nub of the matter.

"Let me ask the very crass and difficult political question," the chairman said. "What am I going to say when one of our critics comes in, gets the file, sees the site report and says, `Geez, they funded a guy who whizzes on stage?' "

"Who knows? Who cares?" responded one expert. "They're good."

The transcript of this blunt exchange is contained in a stack of confidential documents released Tuesday in connection with a suit brought against the endowment by four performance artists rejected for funding last year. The four artists - Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Tim Miller - brought suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles contending that agency officials improperly succumbed to political pressures in denying grants.

In a joint statement, lawyers representing the artists said that the documents "demonstrate in black-and-white exactly what the art world has feared: The NEA process has become polticized as a result of right-wing pressure. . . . Frohnmayer never questions our clients' artistic merit; instead he sacrifices them out of explicitly political concerns."

Frohnmayer, citing the litigation, had no comment Tuesday.

Jill Collins, a spokeswoman for the endowment, said the grant applications of the four artists had been properly considered.

"The endowment is confident that the full record will demonstrate that the plaintiffs' applications were denied for legitimate artistic reasons," Collins said in a statement.

Apart from the lawsuit, the documents provide an unusual opportunity to peek behind the veil of secrecy cloaking government action during a time of crisis. What emerges is a portrait of an agency groping with difficult artistic and political questions while attempting to fend off critics. The result was a considerable amount of confusion and uncertainty regarding the proper course of action.

It is clear that at some point in the spring of 1990, endowment officials became very aware that the area of performance art could cause political problems for them. At the time, the endowment had been attacked for funding an exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, which included some explicit images of sadomasochistic and homosexual sex, and for supporting an exhibition featuring a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a tank of urine by Andres Serrano.

On May 4, 1990, Frohnmayer convened a telephone conference with members of the endowment's solo theater panel, which had recommended grants for 17 performance artists, including Finley, Hughes, Miller and Fleck, all of whom explore sexual themes in their work. Hughes, Miller and Fleck are gay, and Fleck purportedly urinated on stage during a performance.

During this lengthy conversation, Frohnmayer repeatedly asked for more information about the four performance artists. Panel members just as repeatedly affirmed the quality of the four artists' work.

"The question is," Frohnmayer said, "if in the very short political run . . . is it more important to fund one or more of these people, or to have the endowment continue in some recognizable form? What do I do?"

"I would support the keeping of the endowment without censorship, but getting rid of portions of it . . . where you know there are going to be difficult places," suggested one unidentified panel member.

"I think the opposite," said another. "I think the NEA should not be afraid of being shut down and would consider it a very, very positive step in the basic battle."

"A lot of people would be hurt if the endowment went out of business," a third pointed out.

Less than a week later, on May 10, 1990, the National Council on the Arts, the endowment's largest advisory panel, met in Winston-Salem, N.C. for its quarterly review of grant applications. Only the day before, in a nationally syndicated column, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak attacked Karen Finley and warned the endowment not to fund her work.

"I think we have to squarely face this issue," said council member Wendy Luers, a New York writer and human-rights activist, during a closed session. "I am the great freedom-of-expression person. . . . But on the other side of the coin, we are in trouble. We are forewarned. We know Evans and Novak are not going to let go of this one. It is in the Washington Post. It is right in the heart of the land."

The 50-page transcript of this session shows council members alternately befuddled about the art and angry about being pushed unarmed onto the political battlefield.

Philip Arnout, founder and director of Baltimore's Theater Project and chairman of the performance-art panel that recommended Finley and the others, defended the performance work before the council. Finley's art, he said, seeks to stimulate "people's awareness of their fears and prejudices." That said, Arnout allowed, Finley had been known to smear chocolate on her nude body and place spermlike alfalfa sprouts in her underwear.

Council member Nina Brock, wrestling with the obscenity question, noted that for something to be declared legally obscene, it had to violate "community standards."

"Now I come from a community that is quite different from the community in New York City or maybe the community in California," said Brock, a Tennessee arts patron. " By whose standards do I judge? My own personal one? Of course, all this is weighed against the political situation that we find ourselves in. But I find this very difficult."

The council voted to postpone the matter of performance grants, and six weeks later, after sending council members additional information on the grants, Frohnmayer conducted a telephone poll.

In the poll, while council members ultimately rejected grants to Finley, Fleck and Hughes (Miller was rejected on procedural grounds), notes taken by an endowment lawyer indicate continuing confusion.

Phyllis Berney, for instance, an arts patron from Wisconsin, said "it wasn't fair to solicit her decision without the benefit of the discussion of her peers," according to the notes.

Other council members expressed similar misgivings, but not all were unnerved by the situation. Painter Helen Frankenthaler recommended that all performance arts grants be rejected, saying, "we should not fund this junk . . . why ask for more trouble?"

A few days later, the rejections of Finley, Hughes, Fleck and Miller became public, creating an instant uproar in the arts community and precipitating one of the year's major crises for the endowment.