Are Artists Godless Perverts?

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

At the end of Indecent Materials, a pair of one-act plays linking homophobia to right-wing criticism of the National Endowment for the Arts, an actor from North Carolina steps out of character to vow that this year his state will unseat the NEA's foremost critic, Senator Jesse Helms. Despite that bravado, many cultural leaders fear that what started out as a skirmish against would- be censors is turning into an unwinnable war. After years of debate about whether public funding for the arts was growing fast enough, cultural institutions now worry whether the NEA will survive at all, at least on terms consistent with intellectual freedom. Says Yale Drama School professor David Chambers, a prominent director in nonprofit theaters: "The arts lobby has failed."

The anti-NEA debate was ignited in June 1989 by a photo exhibition that included homosexually explicit work by the late Robert Mapplethorpe. As is made plain by Indecent Materials, which last week transferred from Durham, N.C., to New York City's Public Theater, the flash point for Helms was gay rights. The opening play, drawn from Helms' words, quotes him assailing "homosexuals who are trying to force their way into undeserved respectability."

But the assault from the right has expanded to target all sorts of dissident material touching on politics, religion and power relationships between the genders. Conservatives reject the argument that artists deserve aid because cutting-edge ideas lead to progress. Instead, the right has advanced the know- nothing notion that artists tend to be leftist, godless and sexually perverse and that public funding amounts to promoting an "antifamily agenda."

Sensible citizens may be able to laugh off the idea of depravity emanating from their civic orchestra, ballet or Shakespeare theater. But in a battle conducted chiefly in the media, all it takes is a couple of controversial recipients to overshadow thousands of uncontested ones. And in the overheated climate of current debate, attempts to weed out controversial recipients can poison relations between the NEA and its beneficiaries. Last week the endowment reaffirmed a decision to strip grants from four performance artists, all of whom deal with sexual issues, after they had been chosen by fellow creators. NEA Chairman John Frohnmayer asserted that their work would not "enhance public understanding and appreciation of the arts."

In addition, the NEA expanded on a detailed anti-obscenity pledge that recipients have been required to sign by setting up a process to investigate charges of obscenity from "any responsible source." At first blink, the procedure sounded so cumbersome and so fraught with potential for misuse by accusers seeking publicity that many in the arts said NEA money might no longer be worth having. Impresario Joseph Papp of the Public Theater, which spurned one $50,000 NEA grant and expects to reject another for $325,000, denounced the new procedure as "a kind of cultural vice squad with people ratting on one another."

The NEA's survival is scheduled for debate in the House in September or October, and pending proposals range from unrestricted reauthorization to outright extinction. The pork-barrel aspects of the agency -- it funds many hundreds of institutions, large and small, in all 50 states -- would seem to ensure its survival in some form. But Anne Murphy, executive director of the American Arts Alliance, seemingly speaks for much of the U.S. cultural leadership when she warns, "The endowment is bleeding to death."

With reporting by Janice C. Simpson/New York, with other bureaus