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On Arts: Public financing for the arts is safe for now, if the art is safe
Sunday, April 29, 2001 By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor
Remember John Frohnmeyer? Appointed by George Bush the Elder to run the National Endowment for the Arts, he walked the plank in 1992 as the controversy over what kind of art the federal government should support flamed up during the presidential primary campaign.
Perennial presidential candidate Pat Buchanan had been gorging himself on the spectacle of NEA-funded art exhibits containing urine and gay sex and was beating George I over the head with his sanctimonious outrage. Other art experts, such as Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson, lent their voices to the din, and the little-known Frohnmeyer was the obvious scapegoat.
He was my first NEA chairman. I met him when he visited Pittsburgh just as calls for his head were being heard, and it was a memorable experience to be in the same room with a hunted animal. I finally understood the term "the smell of fear."
Later, I spotted the same symptoms in Jane Alexander, the actress appointed by President Clinton to ride out what appeared to be the last days of the NEA. The agency was a prime target of the rabid followers of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich when his "Contract With America" shock troops had taken over Congress.
In those days, Alexander would make occasional trips to Pittsburgh where she could be assured of finding at least one friendly face -- Bill Strickland, founder of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and then an NEA board member.
She seldom granted interviews, but once she allowed me "seven or eight minutes," just long enough for her to defend the agency bravely while her eyes nervously darted from my notebook to her hovering aides.
Both Alexander and the NEA survived the zealots whose bloodlust was satiated by lopping $62 million from the agency budget in exchange for changes in the grant-making process that wiped out aid to individual artists, save writers.
Interestingly, one of the consistent opponents of the NEA was our own R. Bud Shuster, the longtime U.S. representative from the Altoona area. Our Bud was renowned for his support of federal highway spending, but he couldn't bring himself to approve an arts agency budget so tiny that it wouldn't pay for even a few miles of the R. Bud Shuster Highway built near his Blair County bailiwick.
What's curious is that Our Bud is himself an artist, having written two novels, "Double Buckeyes" and "Secret Harvest," published by White Mane Books in Chambersburg.
When the congressman turned thumbs down on the NEA's 1999 budget, his assistant, Scott Brenner, said Shuster was still offended by those dirty pictures that the agency had paid for 10 years earlier.
But, Our Bud's no prude, as this passage from "Secret Harvest," proves:
"She was already in bed waiting for him. Like two wild animals in heat, their passion fused. ... Satiated, satisfying each other, they would lie still, panting, only to be aroused within minutes by the slightest touch."
And you thought only concrete and guard rails could tickle Our Bud's fancy.
At least Shuster could have shown some sympathy for his fellow Pennsylvania writers who had applied for a $20,000 NEA grant, a very trying process by the way, and voted to fund the agency just to help them.
But, Our Bud's a hard-liner when it comes to the arts, even though his conservative allies found a bigger issue to occupy their moral agenda by '98. It came in the form of a little blue dress, which was in need of a visit to the dry cleaner. The NEA quietly slipped off the hook.
Alexander slunk out of town quietly as well, and Clinton appointed the Grand Ole Opry's Bill Ivey.
After saying "How-deee!" to Congress, Ivey played a folksy tune heavy on establishment organizations, education, culture heritage and preservation with no mention of nudity or waste products. For example, a $40,000 check to the Mattress Factory this year is earmarked for the gallery's 10-year retrospective catalog of installations. Sounds both safe and worthy.
But even Ivey has jumped ship under the reign of George II, whose new budget was surprisingly generous to the NEA -- $104.7 million, up $7 million from the last year of Democrat and Walt Whitman-loving Clinton.
Ivey's leaving Sept. 30, he said Tuesday, and plans to work on several book projects. The only reason he gave for his resignation was to take his "first break from work in 30 years."
Pre-inaugural jitters that Bush would gut the NEA were calmed, for now, but they were not without good cause. Texas, after all, ranks 50th among these United States in public support for the arts, spending $5.3 million last year. That means about 26 cents per Texan.
Pennsylvania's current state arts funding is $14 million, or $1.27 for each commonwealth dweller.
Then there are the president's reading habits: His favorite book is "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," which, as I recall, has no words in it.
Another fear was that Vice President Cheney's wife, Lynne, who raised cultural hackles as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Poppy, might press her conservative views on the arts. But she's promised to hold down her desk at a right-wing think tank for now.
Now, in George's defense, Texas' arts funding increased under his watch as governor, and he's done the same since taking over the White House.
And, since Bush has bigger fish to fry (or poison, depending on your environmental views), such as tax cuts and Star Wars spending increases, federal funding of the arts appears secure.
We might even be so bold as to suggest that federal support of the arts is now accepted practice, like farm subsidies. Despite the occasional blundering of such public servants as New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- his latest efforts were aimed at establishing "decency standards" for publicly funded art -- the populace seems comfortable allotting some tax dollars for music, dance, museums, libraries, plays and films as long as there are "limits" on content.
In other words, public funding for the arts comes with its own price: the elimination of risk. Play it safe and you'll get your $5,000 for that dance camp or that bus tour of Montana for your string quartet.
Push the limits, attempt to reach beyond the conventional and you run the risk of not only losing funds but also having some windbag politician use you as whipping boy to advance his or her campaign.
Poet Adrienne Rich rejected President Clinton's National Medal for the Arts in 1997. In her letter she said, "I do know that art -- in my case the art of poetry -- means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power that holds it hostage."
The NEA continues to provide a meaningful, necessary service for a country that needs all the quality art it can get these days from the thousands of dedicated groups starving themselves to make it.
It's impossible to hope, however, that someday the political restraints will come off and that the politicians will let the people decide what is worthy.
Bob Hoover is the Post-Gazette book editor.
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