Council kills 2 grants to visual arts centers sex, quality at issue in panel

Council kills 2 grants to visual arts centers: sex, quality at issue in panel-picked applications Essay The National Council on the Arts, the presidentially appointed advisory body for the National Endowment for the Arts, set off yet another NEA controversy in late January when it overturned two Visual Arts grants that had been recommended by the peer review panel. The Franklin Furnace Archive, a New York avant-garde art center, was denied a $25,000 grant for its upcoming visual arts program. ming while Highways, a Los Angeles gallery, lost a recommended $5,000 grant, as a result of sexually explicit materials submitted with their applications. After viewing 15 minutes of a 70-minute tape of performance artist Scarlet Os appearance at the space, the council voted 17-1 to reject the Franklin Furnace grant application. Im a champion of the avant-garde and respond to whats going on sexually today, said council member Wendy Luers, but the tape had no artistic merit. Had it been someones work like Mapplethorpe I would have been bleeding down the table to support it, because it would have been artistically significant. If Martha chose to submit that video, she did it for a reason. And I had no choice other than to vote against it. The Highways gallery grant was overturned by a closer 10-7 vote with one abstention. The 25 photographs that had been submitted with the gallerys application were felt by the council to be of mixed quality and raised questions about the quality of judgment about work the gallery might present in the future. Poet and council member Donald Hall, the sole council member who voted against rejecting the Franklin Furnace grant, defended the panels recommendation during the council session, saying, I would actually prefer to follow the panel and that is what I think the honorable thing is to do. To act out of fear of what will be said of us is beneath our dignity and beneath the dignity of the arts. If we have panels which are making aesthetic judgments, who are themselves chosen because they have the knowledge within their own fields, I think we should trust them and stand behind them, believing that their judgments are better informed than our own. The Visual Arts Program panel that initially recommended the grants saw only two minutes of the Scarlet O videotape submitted by Franklin Furnace. The panel did not view the entire tape because they did not consider a performance tape relevant to a visual arts application. But panel chairman Renny Pritikin, director of a San Francisco exhibition space, told the Washington Post that he didnt think the sexual content would have bothered the panelists. Pritikin sent a letter of protest to the council, suggesting that the grant should not have been overturned on the basis of the videotape alone regardless of its artistic merit, but that the application in its entirety should have been considered. The federal budget for  fiscal year 93 that President Bush presented to Congress in late January included the Administrations appropriation request of $176 million for the NEA, an amount that would maintain federal arts funding at the 1992 appropriation level. In contrast, the National Endowment for the Humanities received a request for $187.1 million for 1993 a 6.3 percent increase for the agency that would for the first time, raise the annual budget for the NEH above that for the NEA. In accordance with the Endowments three-year reauthorization legislation passed in 1990, the 1993 budget request includes a 5 percent increase in funds allocated to state arts agencies for bloc grants and underserved communities, bringing the total funds distributed to state arts agencies to 35 percent of all NEA program funds, up from the 20 percent earmarked for the states in 1990. The proposed budget also reflects support for the NEAs funding priorities: arts education; expanding opportunities for international programs; increasing access to the arts through support for presenting organizations; and stabilizing arts institutions by way of major Challenge grants. The play "Merchant of Venice" EssayBRIEFLY NOTED   In response to a letter from Theatre Communications Group supporting the inclusion of language stressing the contribution of the arts in President Bushs AMERICA 2000 educational strategy, the U.S. Department of Education has asserted that the arts are already sufficiently emphasized. A return letter from the DOE points out that one of the six new national education goals that comprise the strategy makes clear that competency is sought in a variety of challenging subjects, which must include the five core subjects but does not exclude others, such as the arts and music. The letter also pointed out that the department has received funding to develop an assessment system to measure the progress of the AMERICA 2000 plan and the learning of school-age children in the areas of music, visual arts, theatre and dance. The Philadelphia City Council passed a law in December t the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, a nonprofit corporation which will provide financial support for arts and cultural institutions and activities. Although there is no current funding for the plan and despite an anticipated five-year budget for the city which would severely limit new spending   there are indications that some modest funds might be forthcoming for the new authority. In a rare bit of good news for New York cultural institutions, Mayor David N. Dinkins recently released a preliminary four-year financial plan for New York City which includes drastic cuts to many city agencies, but contains no cuts in funding to the Department of Cultural Affairs. Although the budget for the city arts agency was reduced nearly 30 percent in fiscal 92, the new plan maintains the current arts-funding level, stating, In recognition of the importance of the citys cultural institutions and their education programs, the beneficial impact they have on the local economy, and the effects of the reductions taken in previous years, the plan contains no further expense reductions during the four-year period. The New York State Council on the Arts new planning committee, appointed by chairman Kitty Carlisle Hart, has determined that, despite 1992 funding cuts, a basic minimum of audits and staff site visits must be provided to maintain the integrity of the councils work. While certain funding categories will be eliminated and funds available will be reduced, the committee plans to continue the councils recognition of the importance of general operating support to arts organizations and to ensure that projects initiated by individual artists will continue to be funded. As a means of dealing with the cutbacks, the council plans to extend multiyear grants and limit the number of separate requests an applicant organization can make in a given year. The city of Providence, R.I. has agreed to loan Trinity Repertory Company $1.2 million in federal funding to be repaid over a 20-year period. The loan, which is believed to be the largest city-backed loan of its kind made to a nonprofit theatre, will come from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development and will be guaranteed by the city and collaterized by the theatres building and land. In addition to the HUD loan, a consortium of local banks will make a short-term loan of $225,000 to Trinity, also to be guaranteed by the city, to meet immediate cash flow needs.