Irrepressible NEA

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 31, 1999 | by Julia Duin

The National Endowment for the Arts, or NEA, has announced $58 million in new grants, including $12,000 to Women Make Movies, a New York distributor that Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, once likened to a "veritable taxpayer-funded peep show."

Although the grant is minuscule compared to much larger awards to orchestras, operas and ballets around the country, it is symbolic of the NEA's new confidence. The agency's fortunes were at a low ebb in 1997 when Hoekstra blasted Women Make Movies for its themes on lesbians and children's sexuality. House Republicans voted to kill funding for the endowment, but the Senate squashed the measure. Since then, NEA has acquired a new chairman, William Ivey, and President Clinton recently proposed increasing its budget by 53 percent.

"Rather than raise the red flag, why don't they let it lay for a couple of years?" Hoekstra says, referring to Women Make Movies' Girls Like Us, a study on the sexuality of girls growing up in the 1990s that won the 1997 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury award for best documentary. NEA money will help finance a high-school study guide for Girls Like Us and three other films.

Hoekstra is even more concerned about "inequities" in NEA funding. The 600,000 people in his western Michigan district "didn't receive $1" from the NEA, he points out, while New York got 14 percent of the money distributed. The agency postures itself "as wanting to build a better relationship with Congress," says Hoekstra, "but in 1998, 167 congressional districts received no grants. If you want to build some bridges and show you're at least listening to a sizable group in Congress, start distributing the money more fairly."

New York groups that received large grants include the Dance Theater of Harlem ($60,000), the Metropolitan Opera ($100,000), the New York Philharmonic ($150,000) and the New York City Ballet ($200,000).

Grants for $100,000 also went to opera companies in Houston and Los Angeles. The National Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York got $100,000, as did the Nebraska Arts Council and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla.