National endowment for administrators; the NEA's real problem isn't crucifixes in urine - it's bureaucrats in Dubuque - National Endowment for the Arts

Washington Monthly, June, 1991 by Liza Mundy

The Arts Endowment has never called a great artist into being," declares National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) chairman John Frohnmayer in the NEA's glossy 1989 annual report. It seems an odd and ambiguous declaration for the chairman of the nation's leading arts agency to make-one that clearly resonated with the wrong faction during the NEA debate of 89 and '90. Thousands of cranky constituents wrote Congress protesting that their tax dollars had gone to support artists they had never heard of, but were pretty sure they disliked: names like Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Shawn Eichman, Annie Sprinkle. Not a Titian or a Faulkner in this crowd, the citizenry suspected-not even a Fragonard or a Ford Madox Ford.

But now that the dust has settled on the Mapplethorpes and the NEA has survived reauthorization for another three years, we have the time to parse Frohnmayer's words anew. The chairman's point was not that the NEA prefers to fund undistinguished painters, photographers, poets, and potters, but rather that only a minuscule amount (7.6 percent) of NEA funding goes directly to artists. To make this point abundantly clear, the Endowment is distributing a "fact sheet" emphasizing that-contrary to rumors fomented by the Right, none of the above-mentioned artists received direct NEA funding for his controversial exhibit.

Rest assured, America: During its first quarter century, the NEA has doled out the lion's share of its budget to arts organizations-symphonies, dance companies, presenters, theaters, cultural centers, and various "arts alliances." In other words, you may not have underwritten Serrano's rent or Sprinkle's sex toys, but you did contribute $4,700 to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles "to support a comprehensive survey of security needs at the museum's Temporary Contemporary facility."

Feel better about shelling out $17,500 to Dimensions Dance Theater in Oakland, California, "to support the salary of the executive director"? How about $5,000 to the Society of Folk Arts and Culture, Inc., in Eutaw, Alabama, "to support the salaries of an outreach coordinator and a clerical assistant, and other administrative expenses associated with the implementation of programs that preserve and document the cultural traditions of West Alabama"?

Or-last, but not least-a whopping $50,000 to New York's Theater Projects Consultants, Inc. "for a cooperative agreement to conduct a feasibility study for the development of performance facilities within the International Cultural and Trade Center in Washington, D.C."?

In truth, one of the NEAs most enduring accomplishments has been to save a considerable and evergrowing number of consultants, development directors, grant writers, and other professionals from lives of alcoholism, misery, and obscurity-a possibility that accounts for the considerable self-interest that permeates Public Money and the Muse*, a collection of essays that grew out of several seminars attended by these very people. According to the list at the end of the book, only four bona fide artists were among the 73 attendees at eight seminars sponsored by the American Assembly of Columbia University to consider the fate of government-financed arts in America; the rest were arts administrators, professors of arts administration, directors of foundations, and arts patrons-in other words, the prime architects and beneficiaries of today's cultural policy.

Serrano rap

A collection that purports to broaden the arts debate beyond the narrow focus of the 1989-90 obscenity discussion, Public Money and the Muse falls far short of illumination. While the authors do raise some compelling criticisms of the NEA and American cultural policy in general-its elitism, its cliquishness, its conservatism-nearly all conclude with a rote paragraph wistfully harking back to the NEA they knew and loved before Congress began obsessing about sex. (The 1991 reauthorization bill declares that NEA money will be withdrawn from any work judged obscene by a court of law-a milder version of the 1990 bill, which forbade the funding of any work the Endowment or Congress deemed obscene.) None of the 12 contributors is willing to acknowledge that the federal government has no obligation to fund the arts, for example. Nor do the authors waste time showing the skeptic why, obligation or no obligation, the federal government might want to do so.

To understand the origin of this vested interest, it helps to understand the funding structure of the NEA and the intricate web of arts agencies to which it has given rise. The Endowment was created in 1965 to help resuscitate the country's great arts institutions. At the time, production costs for museums, symphony orchestras, dance companies, and other "national treasures" were escalating faster than ticket income, with no respite in sight. The NEA's aim was to encourage these institutions to make up for the growing "income gap" by culling charitable contributions from foundations, corporations, moneyed individuals, and government sources. Toward this goal, the NEA requires that all grants except those to artists must be matched by other contributed dollars on at least a one-to-one basis. Thus, while the NEA's current budget falls short of $200 million, the Endowment calculates that the matching mechanism leverages as much as $1.3 billion in private funds. None of it goes to rank amateurs, either; the NEA restricts its money to "professional" artists and staff, as do many private donors who use the Endowment's imprimatur as their criterion for selection.