Site Last Updated
|
|
|
|
Site Last Updated
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 FREE EXPRESSION IN ARTS FUNDING A PUBLIC POLICY REPORT Free Expression in Arts Funding: A Public Policy Report, copyright 2003. This report may be reproduced in its entirety as long as the Free Expression Policy Project is notified and credited, and a link to the Project's Web site is provided. The report may not be reproduced in part or in altered form without permission. Research and Drafting: Christino Cho, Kim Commerato, Marjorie Heins Grateful thanks to Kelly Barsdate, Roberto Bedoya, Thomas Birch, Bethany
Bryson, Jennifer Dowley, Maryo Ewell, David Greene, Joan Jeffri, Robert
Lynch, Nan Levinson, Norma Munn, Virginia Rutledge, Steven Tepper, and
Julie Van Camp for helpful comments, criticisms, and corrections. FOREWORD by Svetlana Mintcheva, Arts Advocacy
Coordinator,
II. FREE EXPRESSION POLICIES AMONG STATE AND LOCAL ARTS
AGENCIES
III. EXPERIENCES WITH FREE EXPRESSION POLICIES, AND PROCEDURES
FOR HANDLING CONTROVERSY
CONCLUSION Yet artistic freedom in the context of public funding remains a critical
issue. The ability to make challenging art that can explore all facets
of the human condition, including unpleasant ones, is essential to a vibrant
culture and a healthy democracy. Neither private philanthropy nor the
mass media conglomerates that dominate commercial entertainment can be
counted upon to support the give- and-take of diverse viewpoints, reflected
through literature, theater, music, film, and other visual art, or to
provide visibility for the multi-layered, varied, and inventive cultures
of America.
Creative art has traditionally enjoyed a conflicted relationship with money: art is always aspiring to be free of economic constraints, but artists can only be free of economic constraints if they have inherited wealth. One resolution of this conflict is the patronage system. With the development of modern democracies in Western Europe, the role of the patron passed from the wealthy individual to the state. As numerous studies point out, European countries spend a substantial amount of money in support of the arts. Though committees allocating funds surely have their politics and agendas, for all appearances, state patronage comes with full respect for artistic freedom. Art scandals occur with predictable regularity, but not under the banner – so familiar by now in the U.S. – of “not with my tax money.” While American
artists inherited the belief that art transcends money, few of their fellow
countrymen agreed that art should not have to prove its worth in the marketplace.
Government support for the arts began only at the end of the 19th century
under the justification that art could be educational and morally In the mid-20th century, the Cold War made art useful in a new way: as a political weapon. The creative freedom of American artists demonstrated the superiority of the American system no less vividly than its consumer products. It was in this brief period that the NEA was founded, with its initial mandate to stimulate the “freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry.” With the
end of the Cold War, demonstrating the freedom of American artists was
no longer politically useful. In the meantime, government funding for
the arts had grown and state and local art councils were supporting a
wide range of One very interesting finding in FEPP’s report on art funding and free expression is that free expression policies have not had much occasion to be tested. That is certainly not because there is no controversial art: our experience at NCAC clearly indicates that art censorship did not end with Mapplethorpe and Serrano. Might it be that, when funding decisions are made, budget cuts and the attacks of conservative legislators loom larger than free expression policies? And really, why should the public pay for art that criticizes its beliefs? If art was originally granted government support for its educational and morally elevating value, then art that challenges mainstream moral values might not qualify for that support. The problem here is that there is no consensus over what purpose government funding for the arts should serve. Should it reinforce the crumbling dominance of “traditional values” or reflect the real conflicts flashing across a diverse social fabric? Should it be limited to “uncontroversial” educational programs and leave hard-to-control artists to their own devices and the marketplace? Should it, on the contrary, unfold a dialogue between conflicting beliefs in the relatively safe space of symbolic expression? Under every answer given, there lingers the shadow of its opposite. Legislators agree that funding for art is important because art serves an educational purpose and is good for local economies. Other benefits are mentioned, like its importance to the cultural image of a community, but the argument that art might be worthy of support precisely because it can open dialogue about sensitive and controversial issues is solely to be found when an art censorship incident flares up. Outside the hothouse of academia one can rarely hear a public defense of controversial art based on the importance of challenging set beliefs and dominant values. It seems that for art institutions concerned about their funding, the less said about the potential of art to be controversial, the better. Unfortunately, that leaves them vulnerable to attacks when some group decides to protest public funding for a work that could be seen as critical of their values. It becomes clear from the FEPP report that a free expression policy is only the first step (however hard it is to make even that first step in some states). A policy not backed up by a procedure for anticipating and handling controversy at most declares a good intention. Funding cuts have put art councils in a precarious situation where they are particularly vulnerable to the attacks of religious groups and conservative legislators intent on gathering easy political points. To complicate matters further, artists are, more than ever, determined to question dominant values. The challenge for all art institutions is to take a principled position on free expression, while at the same time not alienating their audience and keeping their funding. The research, analysis and recommendations offered in the FEPP report provide both a map of the field and ways to negotiate its pitfalls. INTRODUCTION Underlying D'Amato's and Helms's rhetoric was the assumption that, because
government provides funding to art, political leaders (or pressure groups
that can produce voluminous mail from constituents) should have a veto
over the subject, style, or viewpoint of work that is funded. Defenders
of the NEA responded that where government supports a wide range of artistic
expression and is looking for the best that our many-sided culture has
to offer, it is not only unwise as a matter of public policy, but is a
violation of the First Amendment, to impose moral or ideological restrictions
on what grant recipients can create, exhibit, produce, or perform. In other words, so these advocates argued, there is a distinction between
government-commissioned art, which expresses an official viewpoint,
and government support for diverse artistic expression by private individuals
or groups. Awards from the NEA fit in the second category because they
support a variety of viewpoints, including perspectives of minorities
and previously marginalized groups, and not just officially approved,
politically correct, or "nice" art.5 In
this sense, government arts funding is like government support for libraries,
museums, and universities - institutions whose very purpose is to provide
a mix of information and ideas. These institutions are society's investment
in culture, creativity, and the dialogue essential to democracy. Ideological
or moralistic restrictions distort these purposes by allowing only expression
that is conventional, inoffensive, unrepresentative of minority viewpoints,
and otherwise unchallenging to the status quo. But however persuasive these arguments for free expression in arts funding
may be, they were drowned out in the political arena, where highly charged
soundbites, and misrepresentations about the meaning of challenging works,
continued to dominate the popular press. Legislators had only to brandish
such provocative images as Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of leather-clad
sadomasochists to garner headlines and foment outrage. In the course of
the 1990s, the NEA was nearly eliminated even though its leaders tried
to placate Congress and avoid controversial grants. As the Endowment fought for survival, much of the arts establishment
- major museums, foundations, and arts service groups - tried to stay
below the radar and distance themselves from the artists under attack.
The National Campaign for Freedom of Expression (NCFE), a now-defunct
advocacy group that represented the more cutting-edge artists and venues,
later described "the silence of mainstream cultural organizations"
as "deafening."6 The chilly climate pervaded
government arts funding even when grant denials were not overtly censorious:
artists seeking grants, art and theater groups, and funding agencies began
to shy away from potentially controversial work. By the mid-to-late 1990s,
free expression in arts funding became an issue that was not frequently
or eagerly discussed. But it is too important an issue to buried. Within the mix of resources
supporting culture - a mix that also includes for-profit investment, private
foundation support, and individual philanthropy - it is government funding
that has the capacity and obligation to represent all Americans. Public
funding not only preserves the great art of the past and makes it accessible
throughout the country, but it supports diverse and popular arts that
may never be recognized by for-profit commercial culture. Both of these
functions are threatened by restrictions on grant recipients' free expression.
As the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) observed:
How We Conducted
the Research Believing that free expression remains a critically important element
of arts funding, the Free Expression Policy Project in 2001 began a survey
of relevant state and local arts agency policies. The turmoil of the 1990s
undoubtedly affected these agencies, which, even before the downsizing
of the NEA, were responsible for the great bulk of government support
for the arts in the U.S.8 Our purpose was to learn
how many agencies have free expression policies, and to what extent such
policies are incorporated into their decision-making process. Have state
and local agencies been able to fund controversial art and respond successfully
if protest ensued? Do they have procedures in place for anticipating and
handling controversy? How many responded to the controversies of the '90s
by incorporating restrictions similar to a requirement that Congress imposed
on the NEA in late 1990 - to consider "general standards of decency"
and "respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public"
in awarding grants? We limited our survey to explicit free-expression statements and policies.
Many state laws or agency policies refer to "encouraging" or
"supporting" creative expression. (Indeed, these are the very
purposes of arts funding.) But such general language is no substitute
for an explicit policy supporting artistic freedom. How do we define free expression or artistic freedom? The NCFE gave a
good definition in 1998. "Freedom of artistic expression," it
said,
Such challenges can take place in any context, including public funding.
We began our survey by contacting regional arts groups such as the Mid-America
Arts Alliance and Arts Midwest, as well as the national service organizations
Americans for the Arts (which represents local agencies) and NASAA (which
represents state agencies), to learn what information and suggestions
they might have. Having determined that the data we sought were not available
elsewhere, we scanned the Internet for state arts agency Web sites, and
checked there for statements either promoting free expression or, conversely,
restricting the content or viewpoint of funded art. We then attempted to interview officials at each state agency that we
found had a statement of either type, to learn how, if at all, the statements
were reflected in agency policies. Agencies varied widely in their responses
- some officials were eager to talk about the issue and gave in-depth
interviews; others responded briefly to specific questions; still others
did not respond at all. In the interviews, we asked not only about the genesis and visibility
of their free expression statements and policies, but about experiences
applying them in actual funding controversies. We asked whether they had
procedures in place for dealing with controversies over funded art; and
what suggestions or recommendations they had for protecting free expression
in the funding process. As the research progressed, we discovered that many agencies have free
expression statements in their enabling statutes, even though the statements
are not found on the agencies' Web sites. We expanded our pool of potential
interviewees to include these agencies as well. Appendix A lists all state
agencies, the free-expression statements or policies we found, the interview
attempts we made, and the actual interviews or e-mail correspondence that
ensued. We also surveyed 104 city and county arts agencies, out of the more than
2,500 listed in Americans for the Arts' 2000-2001 Field Directory.
Our random sample of 100 included an approximately equal number of agencies
in large urban areas, rural areas, and mid-sized localities. We added
to the sample the arts councils in Cobb County, Georgia, Charlotte/Mecklenburg,
North Carolina, San Antonio, Texas, and New York City, because of their
particular experiences with funding controversies. (See
below.) As with the state agencies, we then conducted a Web search
for statements either promoting or limiting artistic freedom in the funding
process, and followed up with attempted interviews of those that either
had an online free-expression statement, or that had no online presence.10
(Some of the local agencies are very small and lack office space; a few
of them list the home phone numbers of their directors as their official
contact information.) Appendix B lists the local agencies we surveyed,
the statements we found, the calls we made requesting interviews, and
the actual interviews or other communications that took place. Our research was limited to arts funding. Questions about the display
of controversial art in government exhibit spaces were not within the
scope of our study. Disputes over such displays sometimes do merge with
questions about funding, however, since many local arts agencies also
operate exhibit spaces. And the policy issues are often similar as well
- in particular, the dilemma that results when a legal rule prohibiting
censorship at government venues results in a decision by public officials
to end a public art program entirely.11 We hope this report will be useful to artists, arts advocates, policymakers,
scholars, arts institutions and service organizations, government and
corporate funders, and all others interested in public arts funding, support
of our diverse cultural heritage, or free expression. Challenges to
Free Expression in Arts Funding: From Serrano and Mapplethorpe to the
"Decency and Respect" Law Senators Helms and D'Amato were not the only political leaders excoriating
the National Endowment for the Arts for supporting an exhibit that included
Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, in the spring of 1989. Twenty-three
senators signed an open letter to the NEA expressing outrage and urging
that it "comprehensively review its procedures and determine what
steps will be taken to prevent such abuses from recurring."12
Soon, close to 200 federal legislators, prodded by media sensationalism
and constituent complaints, contacted the Endowment. Its acting chair,
Hugh Southern, responded that the criticism was legitimate and that the
agency would be reviewing its procedures.13 But before the NEA or the arts world could do much to regroup from the
attack on Serrano or publicize the serious, non-blasphemous intent of
his work, a second occasion for outrage presented itself. On June 8, 1989,
Representative Dick Armey and 107 fellow congressmen wrote to the Endowment
criticizing its support of Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment,
a traveling exhibit of works by the recently deceased photographer that
included some highly provocative homoerotic images in a show that was
predominantly elegant nudes, portraits, and flowers. Four days later,
the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to avert
further public relations damage, cancelled its scheduled showing of The
Perfect Moment. The cancellation triggered angry protest from art lovers, which brought
even more attention to Mapplethorpe. The Washington Project for the Arts
presented The Perfect Moment at its own gallery space after the
Corcoran cancellation. And, while Donald Wildmon and other religious-right
leaders continued to capitalize on the situation through inflammatory
public statements, press releases, and constituent fund appeals,14
Congress began to consider the first of many "legislative retaliations"15
against the NEA. Later in 1989, Congress passed its first "content restrictions"
on NEA decision-making. Commonly known as the Helms Amendment, this law
prohibited grants to works that, "in the judgment of" the agency,
"may be considered obscene," including specifically depictions
of "homoeroticism" or "individuals engaged in sex acts."
The NEA implemented the law by requiring grant recipients to sign a certification
of compliance. The certification requirement was challenged and struck
down by a federal court in 1991.16 By this time, Congress had supplemented the Helms
Amendment with another proscription, the 1990 "decency and respect"
law. This law was inspired by the report of a prestigious "Independent
Commission" of cultural leaders and constitutional law scholars.
The commission recommended an arts funding policy that would avoid the
First Amendment pitfalls of denying funding to work because of a controversial
viewpoint, but would nevertheless convey the need for "accountability
and sensitivity" in funding decisions.17
Many NEA supporters and others in the arts world felt that the resulting
law was an acceptable compromise: it simply directed the agency to "take
into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse
beliefs and values of the American public" in awarding grants.18
Others, however, felt the law clearly sent a message that any controversial
art must be avoided. It was soon challenged in court, in the case of National
Endowment for the Arts v. Karen Finley et al. The case began in 1990 after journalists learned that an NEA peer panel
had recommended small grants to four performance artists - John Fleck,
Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller - whose work dealt with gender
and sexual politics in provocative, outspoken styles. Amid lurid press
coverage that highlighted a powerful Finley performance piece called We
Keep Our Victims Ready, which included the artist's smearing her nude
body with chocolate to symbolize society's abuse of women, legislators
began to pressure then-NEA chair John Frohnmayer to reject the grants.
Frohnmayer eventually did so, and the four artists sued, claiming that
the rejections were politically motivated, in violation of the agency's
standards and procedures as well as the First Amendment. Soon dubbed "the
NEA Four," they amended their lawsuit the following year to challenge
the decency and respect law, and a new plaintiff, the National Association
of Artists' Organizations, joined the suit.19
Outside the courts, efforts to eliminate the Endowment accelerated after
the election of 1994, which brought a conservative, "Contract With
America"- dominated Congress to Washington. In 1995, Congress cut
the NEA's budget by 40% and outlawed most grants to individual artists.
The actress Jane Alexander, who chaired the Endowment from 1993-97, restructured
it to eliminate genre-specific grants for the visual arts, dance, theater,
and other disciplines. She replaced them with generic categories: "creation
and presentation," "education and access," "heritage
and preservation," "planning and stabilization."20
Alexander later wrote poignantly of her struggles to build appreciation
for artistic freedom while simultaneously keeping the agency alive by
restructuring it to eliminate possible points of political attack. By
1995, though, she was weary of the endless lobbying and strategizing among
politicians whom she found opportunistic, hidebound, and homophobic.21
The rest of the arts community - with a few notable exceptions - tried
to preserve funding by emphasizing the economic and social benefits of
government support for the arts, encouraging more accountability, and
avoiding any mention of the First Amendment. In the courts, meanwhile, the federal government failed to get the Finley
case dismissed, and finally agreed to settle with the four artist-plaintiffs.
It paid them the amounts of the grants they would have received if not
for political interference. The case continued as a First Amendment challenge
to the decency and respect law. The lower courts ruled that the law was unconstitutional - even in the
provision of funds, they said, the First Amendment bars government from
imposing conditions that are unduly vague or censorious.22
But in 1998, the Supreme Court reversed. It upheld the law largely by
interpreting the decency and respect standard to be only advisory, and
finding no evidence that it had actually harmed any applicant. The decision made clear, however, that the First Amendment does apply
to the arts funding process. "Even in the provision of subsidies,"
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the Court, "the Government
may not 'aim at the suppression of dangerous ideas.'" If the NEA
"were to leverage its power to award subsidies on the basis of subjective
criteria into a penalty on disfavored viewpoints, then we would confront
a different case."23 Thus, the Supreme Court did not adopt the position of many NEA foes - that simply because government funds art, it may impose any restrictions that it chooses, or that it feels compelled to apply because of pressure from Congress, the White House, or members of the public. As many observers have pointed out, however, this legal rule forbidding "viewpoint discrimination" in government grant-making does not do artists, arts institutions, or the public much good if those controlling the government funds, whether in Congress, state legislatures, or city councils, choose to eliminate support for the arts entirely because they are offended by some of the end results.24 The
Politics of Arts Funding: Accountability and Free Expression From the beginning of the funding wars, members of the arts community
differed on the best strategic response. Most agreed that however broadly
the First Amendment protects sexually explicit or otherwise controversial
art, there must be "accountability," and an awareness of political
realities, when it comes to government funds. Yet accountability is a
broad and slippery term. If it means fiscal responsibility, adherence
to high artistic standards, a well-structured grant-making process, and
attention to the diverse cultures represented in a state or city, well
and good. If it is meant as a euphemism for avoiding anything challenging
or potentially offensive, then much of the purpose of public arts funding
is undermined. At the NEA's creation in 1965, it was bathed in a halo of artistic freedom.
The Senate committee that prepared the law which created both the NEA
and the National Endowment for the Humanities wrote:
The NEA law itself announced that "it is necessary and appropriate
for the Federal Government to help create and sustain not only a climate
encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the
material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent."26
In the 24 years that followed, occasional complaints from politicians
about controversial grants - for example, a set of "blistering"
letters from Jesse Helms to the NEA in 1975 regarding novelist Erica Jong's
sexually provocative bestseller Fear of Flying - were answered
by NEA officials without extended sensationalist publicity or harm to
its funding. And the agency survived the Reagan Administration's attempts
to cut it in half, thanks to "a firestorm of opposition, much of
it from mainstream Republicans who sat on boards of directors of museums
and symphonies around the country."27
Yet in 1989, as cultural scholar Kevin Mulcahy has observed, "what
should have been a political side show that the NEA could have routinely
survived developed into a kind of Kulturkampf, that is, a struggle over
the legitimacy of public support for the arts." And "the range,
intensity, and impact" of the attacks were "too great to be
dismissed as solely a delusion of the ideological fringes. In the minds
of many moderate citizens and their elected representatives, the NEA became
labeled as one of the nation's promoters of pornography."28
Many factors combined to create this crisis in 1989 and the decade that
followed. First, the NEA had evolved from an agency devoted to stimulating
"high culture" (in the words of Robert Brustein), to one that
was at least equally interested in non-mainstream art that reflected the
concerns of a multi-ethnic and diverse population, including feminists,
gays and lesbians, and racial minorities. Brustein, a critic of this trend,
attributes it to "growing pressure from rightwing legislators and
leftwing levelers" which caused the agency to become "increasingly
politicized, populist, and pop-oriented."29
In fact, the NEA supported both "elitist" and "populist"
art, and, more important, spread what is commonly thought of as high culture
to new communities. Moreover, Brustein's dichotomy is simplistic: Shakespeare's
dramas, now considered elitist art, were popular with all classes of society
in his time; Verdi's operas were pop culture in 19th century Italy. But
whether or not the relatively small amount of cutting-edge art that received
NEA support in the late 1980s was "elitist" or "populist"
(or neither), there is little question that some of it was more sexually
explicit and confrontational than anything the agency had funded in the
past. It was also immediate, visceral, and visual, thus supplying more shock
value than the written word. Even Piss Christ, though not a sexual
image, combines a sacred religious symbol with an excretory substance,
as sociologist Paul DiMaggio and his colleagues have noted, to produce
"an immediacy that words or even music lack."30
But there is much more to the 1989 crisis than the NEA's funding, in
small amounts, of explicit or visceral works of art. Complaints about
even as presumably inflammatory a work as Piss Christ would, in
earlier times, have been met by a politically sophisticated defense of
the NEA (all of the agency chairs before Frohnmayer had been insiders
versed in Washington politics), combined with support for diversity and
artistic freedom from arts-friendly legislators. Widespread outrage at
the ugly homophobia expressed by Helms and others during their NEA attacks
also might have been expected in a different political atmosphere. As
one museum director noted, the "heightened level of demagoguery"
emanating from Congress and directed against the NEA in 1989 and 1990
really had no precedent. Congress "abandon[ed] 25 years of bipartisan
support," by "pandering more cynically than ever to the anti-intellectualism
that has always simmered below the surface of American society."31
At bottom, there is no escaping the fact that the political climate by
the late 1980s, after eight years of the Ronald Reagan presidency and
major gains by the religious right, had much to do with the political
vulnerability of the NEA. Arts funding became, for advocates and politicians
on the newly powerful right, an ideal, even "juicy," symbolic
target32 that could be used in direct mail campaigns
to swell the coffers of such groups as the Christian Coalition and Wildmon's
American Family Association. Their mailings included "scare packages"
that hypocritically trafficked "in the very stuff they despise,"33
combining titillation with outrage in a recipe for political success.
And with a Washington insider no longer at the agency's helm to protect
it, "the increasing strength of the religious right proved 'the perfect
storm' for the NEA-haters who had been there all along."34
Several additional elements contributed to the debacle. First, as critic
Michael Brenson points out, the NEA was the product of Cold War efforts
to promote American culture combined with respect for avant-garde artists
as a breed of "prophetic outsiders."35
But the Cold War ideology that drove the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
in the 1960s to promote federal arts and humanities funding was ancient
history by 1989. It was no longer politically useful to idealize artists
and promote their works abroad; on the contrary, those in the avant-garde
could now more conveniently be demonized. Anti-intellectualism, often
a theme of the political right, could also now be used to stir resentment
against outré artists: the American Family Association's July 1989
press release protesting the Serrano and Mapplethorpe exhibits did this
brilliantly by asking repeatedly why truckdrivers, factory workers, and
sales clerks, who "are artists also," do not receive government
grants.36 Second, media sensationalism fanned the flames. Consistently, works were
inaccurately described and taken out of context; artistic ambiguity was
lost in a media environment more interested in excitement and headlines
than thoughtful analysis and critical explanation. The shrinking journalistic
attention span and preference for hot-button soundbites is a phenomenon
that affects not just the arts, of course; and many arts reporters were
conscientious and responsible. But overall, the mass media contributed
substantially to the NEA's woes.37 Third, the failure of most of the arts establishment to speak up loudly
and unambiguously in defiance of the campaign against the NEA cannot be
ignored. Although in 1989 and 1990, prestigious groups such as the American
Assembly were confidently announcing that free expression is "of
special importance to a thriving artistic culture" and that government
arts programs "should support new work of promise that may prove
risky or unpopular,"38 they did little
afterward to combat the rightward plunge of arts policy or persuade the
NEA's critics that they were wrong. By the mid-'90s, many arts administrators
and advocates had made a judgment that defending censorship-free government
arts funding was political suicide; that, as Jane Alexander also eventually
concluded, the only way to save the NEA was to restructure it dramatically
and be extremely cautious about grants that might be used as further ammunition
by the Endowment's enemies. Others no doubt felt that whatever the merits
of a Mapplethorpe or Karen Finley, it was a mistake to support their work
with tax dollars. It will never be known whether a more unified and assertive
response from the art world as the crisis deepened would have made a difference. By the mid-1990s, yet another explanation for the debacle was being heard.
Scholars and analysts working in the new field of cultural policy studies
argued that arts funders needed to pay much more attention to their political
base, and be better prepared to defend their decisions. Led by such advocates
of political realism and accountability as Ohio State University's Margaret
Jane Wyszomirski, cultural policy theorists stressed the need for more
empirical research about public attitudes, and about the economic and
social value of arts institutions.39 In these
efforts to build public-policy support for the arts, the issue of free
expression - or, conversely, of moral or ideological restrictions on grants
- was not often highlighted. Yet some scholars working in the field began to make interesting discoveries.
Professor Paul DiMaggio and his colleagues, for example, found that about
2/3 of American adults support government arts funding - a number that
"has been remarkably stable throughout sharp fluctuations in the
NEA's political fortunes." This support is broad but shallow, though.
In other words, arts funding is not all that urgent an issue for most
of its supporters, in contrast to the 15%-20% of the public that opposes
funding "with fierce conviction." The distinction is important
because "only citizens with strong convictions are likely to take
the trouble to sign a petition or contact an elected representative about
an arts-related subject." Hence, a vociferous minority of the population
can drive arts policy; and this is the case even though the majority support
arts funding despite years of misleading attacks. During the funding crises
of the '90s, by "fusing a coalition of fiscal conservatives, Republican
partisans, and Evangelical Christians, the NEA's opponents constructed
a potent pressure group whose relatively small size - less than 25% of
the voting public - belied its visibility."40
In other studies of arts controversies, scholars at Princeton University
found that the "culture wars," so loudly trumpeted by the mass
media and morality-promoters such as William Bennett and Patrick Buchanan,
did not correspond to the facts. After a decade of arts funding controversies,
for example, attitude surveys showed that "mass opinion is more moderate
and in many ways more sophisticated than public rhetoric." In the
area of both arts funding and "political correctness" on college
campuses, the cultural battles waged in the media and the political arena
did not accurately reflect most Americans' opinions. The researchers concluded
that "mobilized social movements," particularly on the political
right, had been able to create the false impression of a nation deeply
divided by a culture war.41 "Rather than
representing an accurate diagnosis of the American political condition,
the 'culture wars' account has served as an interpretive frame with an
intrinsically conservative bias, generalizing to the American people as
a whole a strident antagonism thus far visible mainly among political
elites and well-financed social movement organizations."42 All this is not to say that the NEA had widespread popularity before
1989, or that it was paying adequate attention to politics and grassroots
support. Margaret Wyszomirski has argued forcefully that political accountability
is a fact of life for arts funders, and that even granted the importance
of artistic freedom, this inevitably means that agencies cannot deviate
too far from the cultural and moral norms of their communities.43
NASAA notes that the attacks of the 1990s have caused state agencies to
be better prepared to articulate their accomplishments and answer questions
from legislators.44 Roberto Bedoya, former director of the National Association of Artists'
Organizations, adds that the whole issue of accountability is a "two-way
street." Just as society expects artists, especially those who receive
public funds, to be accountable, so artists "make a claim upon society,
such as a claim for inclusion, that asks society to acknowledge a group
like gays and lesbians, or art that asks us to address a societal problem
such as racism - claims that are controversial because they challenge
social systems."45 State
and Local Arts Funding The Growth of State and Local Agencies A number of state and local arts agencies existed long before the NEA.
Utah is often credited with creating the first state agency, in 1899.46
Minnesota began a State Arts Society in 1903,47
and the New York State Council on the Arts says it was the "first
agency of its kind in the nation" when it was established on a temporary
basis in 1960.48 Washington followed in 1961;
South Carolina in 1962.49 In the decade after the creation of the NEA, every state that did not
already have an arts council established one in order to receive and disburse
the federal block grants that were an integral part of the NEA law. Eventually,
the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana
Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands also created arts councils. As these
agencies grew, they began to challenge the Endowment's control, "demanding
more flexible guidelines for the funds they regranted, more influence
in developing guidelines, and symbolic acceptance as partners, rather
than subordinates, in the policy process."50
A community arts movement was also growing. With roots in the 1940s and
arts councils starting at about the same time in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, Canon City, Colorado, and Quincy, Illinois, by the mid-50s the
movement boasted about 55 community agencies. By 1967, the number had
grown to 450, of which 70 employed paid staff.51
State and federal funding stimulated further growth, until by the late
1990s, there were more than 3,000 city and county arts councils, about
1/4 of which were agencies of local government, with the remainder organized
as private nonprofits. Today, the local councils vary greatly in size
and activity level - some sponsor cultural programs of their own, provide
assistance to artists, operate exhibit spaces, and publish calendars and
newsletters, as well as giving out grants.52 Expenditures by state and local arts agencies dwarfed the relatively
small budget of the NEA even before Congress began shrinking the Endowment.53
Despite arts funding controversies in the 1990s, state agencies managed
to increase their budgets overall, from $211 million in 1992 to $447 million
in 2001. They have done so by emphasizing the role of the arts in education,
in helping "at risk" youth, and in stimulating economic development,
tourism, and community life.54 Although by 2003
several state agencies were facing severe budget cuts, these were due
to worsening economic times rather than controversies over funded art.55
This hardly means, however, that state and local agencies are immune
from political attack. Four incidents, detailed below, provide insight
into the dynamics of local arts funding controversies. Four Controversies of the 1990s Cobb County,
Georgia In July 1993, the Theatre in the Square in Marietta, Cobb County, Georgia
(just outside Atlanta), staged a production of Terrence McNally's play
Lips Together, Teeth Apart, which centers around two straight couples
spending a Fourth of July weekend at the vacation home of a friend whose
gay brother has just died of AIDS. The theater received $41,000 annually
in county funds. Homophobic complaints from constituents were compounded
when the Theatre in the Square also presented David Henry Hwang's M.
Butterfly. In late July, County Commissioner Gordon Wysong proposed
a resolution stating that "the traditional family structure"
is Cobb County's community standard; that "lifestyles advocated by
the gay community should not be endorsed by government policy makers";
and that no activities would be funded which violate "existing community
standards." Along with this was a proposed amendment to the County
Code deleting a guarantee of artistic freedom and replacing it with a
statement that arts funds "should be expended primarily on programming
which advances and supports strong community, family-oriented standards."56
The American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way wrote
letters of protest to Cobb officials, pointing out that the resolution,
with its explicitly homophobic criterion for grants, was a clear example
of unconstitutional "viewpoint discrimination" in arts funding.
Shortly afterward, the commission eliminated the county's entire $110,000
budget for arts grants. Nine organizations lost funding, including the
Cobb Children's Theater, Cobb Youth Chorus, and Cobb Symphony Orchestra.
Local businesses and gay rights groups organized protests, including a
boycott of Cobb's new convention center, but the arts community was less
unified in its response. As The Nation magazine reported: "while
Cobb County's embattled gay and lesbian community organized a vigorous
campaign in response to the resolutions, no such consensus exists in the
arts community."57 Although Cobb County today does support cultural programming through
three arts centers and a theater, it has not reinstated arts grants.58
The events in Cobb County were a dramatic reminder of the fact that whatever
artistic integrity, good public policy, or the First Amendment may require
in the context of arts funding, the legislature that controls the purse
strings can eliminate grant-making entirely if the arts do not have sufficient
political support. Charlotte/Mecklenburg,
North Carolina In 1996, the Charlotte Repertory Theater, which received partial funding
from the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Arts and Science Council, staged Tony Kushner's
Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Angels in America. An epic dramatization
of concerns about contemporary America at the approach of the millennium,
Angels has gay as well as straight characters, and deals with AIDS,
homophobia, and McCarthyism past and present. It has a very brief nude
scene. Despite picketing from Christian right activists and pressure from
the mayor, an "unrepentant" Charlotte Rep refused to "tone
down" the show, and went on to stage John Guare's Six Degrees
of Separation which includes a gay leading character.59
The following April, 1997, at a "circus-like six-hour meeting"60
of the Mecklenburg County Commissioners, members of the public excoriated
the "homosexual agenda," and the commissioners, by a 5-4 vote,
passed a resolution supporting "the traditional American family,"
attacking "perverted forms of sexuality," and denouncing the
Arts and Science Council for failing to abide by "any acceptable
community standards." The resolution relieved the Council of "any
further responsibility for the determination of where taxpayer dollars
shall be spent," and required that henceforth every arts grant must
be approved by the commissioners themselves.61
Interviewed by the Charlotte Observer, Commissioner Bill James
remarked that "as far as I'm concerned, those guys [the Charlotte
Rep] are dead on arrival. If they don't know they're the walking dead
now, I suggest they get a clue pretty quick."62
Another commissioner, when asked about homosexuality, replied: "if
I had my way, we'd shove these people off the face of the earth."63
The majority of the county's population did not concur with this bigotry;
and two years after what one critic calls "the infamous April Fools'
Day meeting," all but one of the "gang of five" commissioners
who reacted so combustibly to Angels in America had been voted
out of office, thanks to the electoral efforts of a bipartisan citizens'
group.64 The Council was able to rally political
support and retrieve its grant-making responsibilities. As its then-president
Michael Marsicano explained, "gay people pay taxes too," and
the Council fought back with a public relations campaign. "Free nights,
lower ticket prices for those who can't afford to go otherwise, free dress
rehearsals for students, raising diversity consciousness among arts organizations,
integrating the arts into education. If you think about things like libraries
and the arts - if those are not publicly supported, only the rich can
afford them," Marsicano said.65 By 2000,
the Council's budget had grown to $15.6 million, and combined city/county
arts spending in Charlotte/ Mecklenburg was more than $9 million.66
Grant decisions by the Arts and Science Council today are governed by
a peer review process. Although the "traditional American family"
and "community standards" provisions of the 1997 resolution
are no longer in effect, North Carolina does have "some odd ancient
laws about nudity and sexual orientation," says the Council's chief
operating officer, Bill Halbert. "And as long as we don't break those
laws, everybody's happy." His reference is to a prohibition on public
nudity that prosecutors interpret to apply to theater productions, and
to the fact that North Carolina's civil rights laws do not protect against
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Hence, Halbert explains,
the Council cannot fund productions that include nudity on stage; and
it cannot insist that its grantees' anti-discrimination policies protect
gays. But he says there is no problem now in supporting art with gay or
lesbian content - indeed, the Charlotte Rep presented M. Butterfly
in 2003, and in neighboring Davidson, North Carolina, Angels in America
was performed "without a hitch."67
San Antonio/Esperanza The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center is a multi-purpose nonprofit arts
and cultural center in San Antonio, Texas. It offers music, film, video,
and other cultural programming as well as space and assistance to local
artists. It is explicitly political - its mission statement mentions civil
rights, the environment, and economic justice, and proclaims the center's
intention to "advocate for those wounded by domination and inequality
- women, people of color, lesbians and gay men, the working class and
poor."68 Beginning in 1990, Esperanza received funding from the City of San Antonio
through its Department of Arts and Cultural Affairs. Some grants were
for operating expenses in connection with the center's major programming,
called PazARTE; others were for specific projects, such as the
"Out at the Movies" film festival, operated by a separate group
for which Esperanza served as fiscal sponsor.69
In 1997, as a federal court later found, Esperanza and other arts organizations
"were targeted by certain conservative groups who opposed their perceived
advocacy of the 'gay and lesbian lifestyle,'" but "none were
the target of a lobbying effort as extensive or as vicious as that leveled
against Esperanza." A Christian-right radio talk show host spearheaded
a campaign of homophobia directed in particular at the "Out at the
Movies" festival, while the local director of the Christian Pro-Life
Foundation sent a flyer to about 1,200 supporters urging opposition to
further funding for Esperanza. City Council members, some of them already
sympathetic to the religious right's goals, received calls, letters, and
e-mails dwelling on the "homosexual agenda" and "deviant
lifestyle." In September 1997, the Council voted to discontinue more
than $62,000 annually in grants to Esperanza. This scenario was repeated
the following year, when the Council, under continuing pressure, voted
down all of Esperanza's grant requests.70 Esperanza sued the city and its then-mayor for damages and an injunction.
After a lengthy litigation, the case was decided in Esperanza's favor
in 2001. The judge found that the city's decision was clearly driven by
unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination - antagonism to rights or recognition
for gays and lesbians. He noted that although "of course, the government
is not required to fund arts programs," if it does so, "it must
award grants in a scrupulously viewpoint-neutral manner." In response
to San Antonio's argument that stigmatizing homosexuality is "neither
novel nor new" and that therefore the city had cause to deny funding
to an organization that promoted it, the judge wrote that "racial
discrimination also has 'ancient roots,' but the antiquity of stupid beliefs
does not make them constitutionally acceptable."71
In contrast to Cobb County, San Antonio did not respond to the mandate
of viewpoint neutrality by eliminating all arts funding. In part, this
was because the city is culturally diverse, with a political complexion
considerably less conservative than Cobb County's. San Antonio is also
a major urban center that thrives on tourism, in which arts and culture
play a significant role. Finally, the Texas Commission on the Arts, which
contributes to San Antonio's arts budget, has a more inclusive approach
to funding. As its then-executive director John-Paul Batiste said, the
city behaved badly, and "ended up for three years in court. But the
whole situation in San Antonio has changed; there are new people elected,
and they're off to a great start over there."72
In 2002, Esperanza reapplied for funding, was ranked first in its division,
and was awarded a total of $103,000 for 2003.73
The Brooklyn Museum
and Sensation With the largest budget of any government arts agency in America, the
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs has long maintained "a
de facto policy" of "not interfering in the rights of freedom
of expression of the groups that it supports."74
In September 1999, however, then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani made headlines
by expressing outrage over the upcoming exhibit Sensation: Young British
Artists from the Saatchi Collection, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Giuliani announced that several works in the show were "sick"
and "disgusting"; and he was infuriated, in particular, by Chris
Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary, a glittering, icon-like painting
of an African madonna with a dollop of dried elephant dung near one breast.
The painting was not smeared with dung, as some reports had it, and dried
elephant dung is not an insulting or blasphemous substance in African
culture. Indeed, Ofili used it in works that were clearly respectful,
including other works in the Sensation show.75
Nevertheless, a week before Sensation's scheduled opening, Giuliani
ordered the Brooklyn Museum to cancel the show. He threatened that if
the museum refused, he would freeze funds that the city had already allocated
for general operating expenses (the city had not funded Sensation
specifically), and would evict the institution from its public premises.
On September 28, he stated that taxpayer money should not "be used
to support the desecration of important national or religious symbols,"
and a city press release the same day denounced "an exhibit which
besmirches religion and is an insult to the community."76
Giuliani's appeal to religious feelings - at a political moment when
he was preparing to run for the U.S. Senate - and his refusal to entertain
explanations of the context and meaning of Ofili's work, were painfully
reminiscent of the political grandstanding that surrounded the attacks
on Serrano's Piss Christ ten years before. It was frequently noted
that Giuliani needed a high-profile political issue on which he could
appeal to moral conservatives, particularly in view of his pro-choice
record on abortion. Sensation was an opportunity to put his likely
opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the spot. When Clinton expressed aversion
for the show but disagreement with Giuliani's desire to shut it down,
he responded: "Well, then, she agrees with using public funds to
attack and bash the Catholic religion."77
This appeal to Catholics was hardly subtle, but it did not have the outcome
that Giuliani anticipated. Although Sensation remained controversial,
with pickets for and against it appearing in front of the Brooklyn Museum
during the first days of the show, New Yorkers seemed generally unimpressed
with Giuliani's rhetoric.78 And although the
arts community's response was not uniform, the New York City Arts Coalition,
consisting of more than 200 nonprofits, organized a protest statement
within days of Giuliani's first comments, and within a week, 22 of the
33 members of the city's Cultural Institutions Group (private nonprofits
that operate the city's cultural landmarks) released a letter condemning
his threats as a "dangerous precedent" that could cause "lasting
damage" to New York's cultural life. The signers ranged from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Staten Island Historical Society and
the Bronx Zoo. Non-member institutions including the Museum of Modern
Art (MOMA), the Frick Collection, and the Jewish Museum also signed.79
This outpouring did not move Giuliani, and when city officials announced
that they would withhold the Brooklyn Museum's monthly payment of $497,554,
due on October 1, the museum filed a First Amendment lawsuit seeking to
stop the retaliation and restore the funds. The city countered with an
eviction suit in state court; then argued to the federal judge (unsuccessfully)
that she must defer to the state court action. Opposition to Giuliani's concept of arts funding solidified during the
brief but dramatic litigation. Dozens of major institutions joined in
friend-of-the-court briefs opposing the mayor, including the Metropolitan
Museum, MOMA, the American Association of Museums, the Whitney Museum,
the New York Historical Society, the New York City Arts Coalition, the
New York Foundation for the Arts, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the
New York Hall of Science, the American Association of Museum Directors,
and the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York. Local political leaders
also filed a brief supporting the museum; they included Manhattan Borough
President C. Virginia Fields, Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer,
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, 26 other members of the Council, and
seven members of the New York State Assembly.80
In November 1999, Judge Nina Gershon released her decision. Following
the Supreme Court's reasoning in the Finley case, she explained
that, even in the provision of subsidies, government cannot engage in
viewpoint discrimination, and furthermore, that the city's coercive actions
amounted to an unconstitutional effort to penalize the museum and suppress
the art being shown. Judge Gershon wrote: "there is no federal constitutional
issue more grave than the effort by government officials to censor works
of expression and to threaten the vitality of a major cultural institution
as punishment for failing to abide by governmental demands for orthodoxy."81
Giuliani described the court decision as "the usual knee-jerk reaction
of some judges," and vowed to appeal, but in March 2000, he settled
the case and agreed to restore the museum's funding.82
So matters stood until April 2001, when the mayor activated a largely
dormant Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission and instructed it to establish
"decency standards" for New York City's public museums. The
catalyst was another work by a black artist, Renee Cox's nude Yo Mama's
Last Supper, again at the Brooklyn Museum, although this time the
publicity and the level of sensationalism surrounding Giuliani's disapproval
of the work were more subdued.83 Giuliani's successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had no interest in continuing
the decency campaign. In February 2003, he appointed 21 new members to
the Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, including MOMA President-Emerita
Agnes Gund and artist Chuck Close. The new members would provide assistance
and advocacy for cultural groups, but would not screen for indecency.84
Today, Department of Cultural Affairs program services director Len Detlor
emphasizes: "these issues come up very infrequently, far less frequently
than you would imagine. We just don't get that many complaints."85
New York's experience, like San Antonio's and ultimately, Charlotte/
Mecklenburg's, suggests that efforts to censor art based on the "taxpayers'
money" rationale do not always succeed. While lawsuits were necessary
in the short term to restore public funding for Esperanza and the Brooklyn
Museum, in the long run, as the experience in Charlotte/Mecklenburg suggests,
political support and good public relations are critical in maintaining
censorship-free arts funding. State
Laws Recognizing Artistic Freedom We found 32 state arts agencies with enabling legislation that explicitly
recognizes artistic freedom. In establishing the Connecticut Commission
on the Arts in 1965, for example, the state's General Assembly mandated
"that all activities undertaken in carrying out the policies set
forth in this chapter shall be directed toward encouraging and assisting,
rather than in any way limiting, the freedom of artistic expression that
is essential for the well-being of the arts."86
Similar or identical declarations found their way into the 1965 laws establishing
the Indiana, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Oklahoma arts
councils.87 Colorado's law, with its origins
in 1963, may have been the first to use this particular wording.88
Similar language appears in the Kentucky, Michigan, and New Jersey laws
passed in 1966;89 the laws creating the Alabama,
Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island,
South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming arts councils in 1967;90
and Mississippi's enabling legislation in 1968.91
Other state laws with similar or identical language "encouraging
and assisting" the free expression "that is essential for the
well-being of the arts" are found in Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska,
and Wisconsin.92 A few state laws expand on this general formula. Pennsylvania, instead
of listing artistic freedom as one of several agency goals, devotes an
entire statutory section to the subject. Titled "Interference With
Artistic Expression or Cultural Programs," the law provides: "In
the course of carrying out its powers and duties under this act, the council
shall avoid any actions which would interfere with the freedom of artistic
expression or with the established or contemplated cultural programs in
any local community."93 Minnesota, although without a separate code section, has a similar directive,
clarifying that the board "shall insofar as reasonably possible,"
"avoid any actions which infringe on the freedom of artistic expression
or which interfere with programs in the state which relate to the arts
but which do not involve board assistance."94
Maryland's 1967 law creating the State Arts Council has not one but two
explicit references to artistic freedom. The first tracks the familiar
language of many of the state laws: "All activities undertaken by
the state" in promoting and funding the arts "shall be directed
toward encouraging and assisting rather than in any way limiting the freedom
of artistic expression which is essential for the well-being of the arts."95
The second echoes the Pennsylvania and Minnesota laws: "In the course
of exercising its powers and duties … , the Council shall avoid any
actions which would interfere with the freedom of artistic expression
or with the established or contemplated arts programs in any community."96
Finally, South Dakota's 1966 law simply states that the arts, "in
order to grow and flourish, depend upon freedom, imagination, and individual
initiative."97 Although this is more ambiguous
than the other enactments, we have classified it as a free-expression
statement. On the other hand, the closest that California's law comes to mentioning
free expression is its listing, as one of the arts council's powers and
duties, to "encourage artistic awareness, participation, and expression."98
This did not seem to us explicit enough to qualify as a statement in support
of artistic freedom. (California's 1975 amendment to its 1965 arts funding
law also announced that the "legislature perceives that life in California
is enriched by art," and that the "source of art is in the natural
flow of the human mind."99) State
and Local Agency Policies Relating to Artistic Freedom
State Policies That Reinforce Statutory
Language Of the 32 state agencies with free-expression language in their enabling
laws, some back up the mandate with policies prominently featured on their
Web sites or in other public documents; some do not advertise the policies
at all; and a few, like Arizona and Tennessee, are governed by later legislation
or policy statements that contradict artistic freedom. (For the Arizona
and Tennessee experiences, see below.) Several states agencies' free expression policies predate the nationwide
controversies over government arts funding that erupted in 1989. The New
York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), for example, has since its founding
counted "supporting … artistic excellence and the creative freedom
of artists without censure" among its missions.100
According to Richard Schwartz, chair of the Council, this means supporting
controversial art when it meets the agency's standards of merit. "If
our mission was only to fund things that were plain vanilla, I don't know
how we'd do it."101 In Rhode Island, similarly, the State Council on the Arts lists on its
Web site among its duties "to promote and protect freedom of artistic
expression" in Rhode Island.102 RISCA executive
director Randall Rosenbaum observes that "Rhode Island as a state
has always been first and foremost a proponent of individual freedom,
religious and otherwise," so that "a statement regarding intellectual
freedom that's inherent in the council's enabling legislation would be
a natural thing."103 In New Jersey, although there is no explicit free-expression language
on the arts council's Web site, its policy, according to Beth Vogel, program
officer for the council's Education and Artist Services, has been consistently
to follow the statutory mandate to "encourage and assist freedom
of expression in the performing and creative arts."104
In fellowship workshops throughout the state, Vogel says, staff assure
potential grantees that decisions on funding "are not issue-driven,"
and that the council will not reject proposals simply because the content
may be sexual or religious. Nevertheless, she feels, the funding wars
have taken their toll. Artists "are censoring themselves when they're
entering contests," she says. Ten years ago, "you'd see a lot
more nudes." Artists have told her directly that they are now submitting
"safer" work.105 North Dakota has had a visible free expression policy since at least
1987, according to Janine Webb, executive director of the state's arts
council. The council augments the free expression language in its state
legislation with a vision statement and strategic plan that include the
goal of supporting individual artists' "development, freedom of expression,
and sustenance."106 Webb explains that
North Dakota, a rural state with shrinking population, views the arts
as a potential area for economic development. She and other North Dakota
leaders believe that a welcoming climate for creativity will attract younger
people, and that "freedom of expression is key to supporting artists."107
Several state agencies with free expression language sitting silently
in their statute books adopted more public statements amid the galvanized
climate of the arts funding wars. The Minnesota State Arts Board's August
1989 resolution, for example, passed "in response to Congressional
proposals to restrict the ability of the National Endowment for the Arts
to make grants on the basis of free artistic expression," articulated
the Board's "strong support of the original objectives of the Congress
in the creating of the National Endowment for the Arts," and expressed
"its deep concern with any contemplated alteration in the landmark
objectives of artistic freedom so clearly set forth in the legislation
of 1965." The resolution was to be conveyed "to the Minnesota
Congressional delegation to indicate an undivided concern for prompt resolution
of debate in favor of artistic freedom and an unwavering commitment by
the federal government to support the arts and humanities."108
It cannot currently be found on the board's Web site, however. The New Hampshire State Arts Council also reacted to the attacks on the
NEA with a resolution recognizing its "great obligation and public
responsibility in granting public funds," while affirming that:
Again, the resolution is not now available on the council's Web site. When the Wisconsin Arts Board rewrote its mission statement in the early
1990s, it, too, incorporated free expression, declaring that the Board
was "committed to creating an environment of free expression and
open interpretation in which the arts can flourish."110
However, the policy "doesn't really enter in [our discussions]"
during the grant application review process, according to Arts Board executive
director George Tzougros. Tzougros says that the policy has had "not
a big impact," especially as the Board has made no controversial
funding decisions to date.111 Idaho provides another example of ambivalence. In this conservative mountain
state, the free-expression policy articulated in the arts commission's
governing statute has become part of the Commission's funding policies,
and has evolved into a formal statement on "Freedom of Expression
and Community Standards." The statement begins: "The Commission
is an advocate for and defender of the right of free speech for all citizens
under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States";
but goes on to announce that "the Commission intends that funded
projects exhibit a sensitivity and responsiveness to community standards.
The Commission recognizes the need for public support of the arts and
understands the responsibilities that accompany the allocation of public
funds."112 The two most recent free expression statements come from Nevada and Georgia.
The Nevada Arts Council incorporated artistic freedom in its guidelines
beginning around 1998. (Its free-expression law has been on the books
since 1967.) The policy reads: "Freedom of expression is paramount
not only to a free society, but to the creation of art. The Nevada Arts
Council bases its funding decisions on the artistic quality of submitted
artwork."113 Once "an unspoken
philosophy of the agency," according to executive director Susan
Boskoff, the official statement was not added to the guidelines in response
to the funding debates of the 1990s. "We don't like to respond to
things like that - it gives them the weight they don't deserve,"
she says.114 Finally, in 2001 the Georgia Council for the Arts adopted a statement
that the "freedom to create, view and interact with a diversity of
artistic expression is essential to our democracy and fosters mutual respect
for the beliefs and values expressed in the First Amendment."115
"We wrote it, we put it in there, we completed a major strategic
plan," says the Council's former executive director, Betsy Baker.
That plan has involved sending the policy to each member of the Georgia
legislature and participating in symposia on artistic freedom. "I
think it's very important for an agency to make its stand very clear on
artistic expression," Baker continues. "Obviously, you have
to couch all this on freedom of expression in a very normal and natural
tone. … Agencies need to be very clear in their stand on that, at
the same time realizing that you're dealing with public dollars. Since
it is public money you have an obligation to be respectful of those moneys
at the same time [that] you're educating the public; because I think there
is a lot of educating to be done in this area."116
States That Shy Away From Explicit Free-Expression
Policies If Idaho seeks to affirm artistic freedom while at the same time announcing
its sensitivity to "community standards," other states with
legislation protecting free expression do not advertise the fact at all
in their mission statements, grant guidelines, or other program materials.
Of the 32 states with free expression statements in their enabling legislation,
we found just 13 that include such language on their arts agencies' Web
sites or in other written policies.117
Alaska is an example of the less assertive approach. Charlotte Fox, executive
director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, says that while the
state law describing artistic freedom as "essential for the well
being of the arts" is still on the books, "I don't feel like
it's necessary to state it. It's a little bit about stating the obvious."118
The Missouri Arts Council takes a similar approach. Its 1965 enabling
law lists among the Council's duties "to encourage and assist freedom
of artistic expression essential for the well-being of the arts."119
This explicit language is omitted from the Council's Web site, however,
which instead lists more generally, among its eight guiding principles,
the "vital role" that the arts play in "the life and well-being
of the community," the value of "innovation and creative expression
in the arts," and the agency's "commitment to the effective
use of resources and to maintaining integrity and accountability in our
distribution of public resources."120
When we asked Don Dyer, then program development specialist at the Council,
about the discrepancy, he replied that he was not aware of the statute.
He added that "a couple of years ago I put together a free expression
policy, but then the director left, and a new director came in …
and it's been sitting in a file in my cubicle." He indicated that
he would be submitting the draft to the new director and thanked us "for
giving me that spark."121 States That Promote Artistic Freedom Absent
Specific Statutory Language We found four state agencies - Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, and Oregon - whose
governing laws do not explicitly mention artistic freedom but that nevertheless
have announced free-expression policies on their Web sites or in other
public documents. In addition, the Washington State Arts Commission posts
a mission statement that stresses cultivating "a thriving environment
for creative expression," but it does not explicitly embrace artistic
freedom. Mary Frye, the Commission's awards program manager, says "there
has always been an internal unwritten perspective that freedom of speech
is important."123 This seemed a
bit too informal to qualify as a free-expression policy. A high-profile battle over a student exhibit at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago in 1989 led the Illinois Arts Council to adopt a
"Position on Freedom of Expression." The controversial work,
"Dread" Scott Tyler's What Is the Proper Way to Display a
U.S. Flag?, featured a flag on the floor and gave rise to outcry among
legislators and veterans' groups, as well as bomb threats to the Institute,
which felt compelled to close the show.124
Although the Illinois Arts Council did not fund the exhibit - it provided
general funds to the School of the Art Institute for public programs,
not for student shows - the Illinois legislature from that point on limited
Council funding to the school to one dollar.125
The Council's position, while never formally published, was drafted after
the Dread Scott incident, and is to be used by staff as a reference in
the event of complaints about allegedly inappropriate funding decisions.
It affirms that:
Since the policy was written, the Council has not faced any controversies
that would force the agency to test it.127
The Iowa Arts Council also produced an artistic freedom policy in response
to the crises of 1989 and the early 1990s. The Council sought the aid
of Wayne Lawson, executive director of the Ohio Arts Council, which had
been a focal point for controversy in 1990 when the Cincinnati Contemporary
Arts Center and its director were criminally prosecuted for obscenity
in connection with their showing of the traveling Mapplethorpe retrospective,
The Perfect Moment. (A jury acquitted them, finding that the works
had serious artistic value.128) According
to the Iowa Council's community development coordinator, Julie Bailey,
bringing in a peer with experience in the arts funding debate was "the
best thing we could have done." Believing it was crucial that the
statement be worded correctly to avoid potentially thorny differences
in interpretation, the Council involved not only its staff, its board,
and Lawson in its drafting; it also initiated public involvement in and
awareness of the statement, and before finalizing it, the Council published
a draft in its newsletter to give constituents "reaction time."129
The text that eventually emerged from this multifaceted discussion process
is today a prominent part of the agency's policy, and is highlighted on
its Web site. It states:
In July 1990, the Oregon Arts Commission (OAC) also published a formal
declaration on free expression. In conjunction with the (now defunct)
Oregon Advocates for the Arts, it adopted "An Arts Policy for Oregon,"
the announced goal of which was "to preserve and protect freedom
of artistic expression in Oregon." The Policy's "Preamble"
explains:
The Policy itself states that:
This statement, however, is "not something people really go back
to and refer to at this point," according to Christine D'Arcy, executive
director of the Oregon commission. D'Arcy remarks that "it's good
policy stuff" but is essentially dormant; it has neither been officially
re-affirmed nor repealed.132 Finally, a policy written by the Ohio Arts Council in the early 1990s
has also fallen away from the agency's mission statements. The statement
notes "the responsibility that accompanies the allocation of public
funds," and the Council's commitment to "the highest artistic
standards." It then asserts that:
The policy is "something we'd have to have the current Council vote
on before making it public again," says Ohio Council communications
manager Jami Goldstein.134 As of 2002,
there were no plans to bring it before the Council.135
The Council's Web site, however, does note among the "Public Purposes
of the Arts":
Local Policies In our sample of local agencies, we only found a few with publicized
free-expression policies. (Many may be unstated, such as the "de
facto" policy in New York City of "not interfering in the rights
of freedom of expression of the groups that it supports."137)
Chicago is one city with an explicit statement. As currently worded in
the introduction to materials describing its Visual Arts Program, the
city's Department of Cultural Affairs "strives to foster freedom
of expression" as well as freedom of access.138
According to DCA assistant commissioner Pat Matsumoto, the statement has
been there since the early '80s but has not been widely publicized or
incorporated into the department's other policies or program guidelines:
"It's a constitutional right, so we don't feel the need to reestablish
or reiterate it."139 Among less densely urban locales, the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and
Forsyth County, North Carolina stands out for its 1995-96 "value
statement," featured prominently on its Web site, that "we stand
in the belief ... that freedom of artistic expression is a fundamental
human right."140 Similarly, the Web
site for the Portland, Oregon Regional Arts & Culture Council states:
"We value freedom of artistic and cultural expression as a fundamental
human right."141 In Santa Monica, California, the Arts Commission includes in its mission
statement the belief that "it is our responsibility" to "honor
and support artistic vision, artistic excellence and freedom of expression."142
Cultural Affairs Coordinator Hamp Simmons says that if a constituent were
to complain that one of Santa Monica's funded projects was offensive,
he would reply: "You're entitled to your opinion, but so is the Arts
Commission, and they decided to fund it." The Commission "wouldn't
back off from a grant because somebody was offended by some odd element."143
Policies Limiting Artistic
Freedom We did not find any state or local arts agencies that have copied the
"decency and respect" mandate that Congress imposed on the NEA
in 1990, or a close equivalent. We did find a number of states that include
"community standards" in their guidelines. For example, Louisiana,
whose "Decentralized Arts Funding Program" disburses funds to
eight regional agencies to ensure that each parish in the state receives
arts support, includes among its "Evaluation Criteria" the application's
"objectives and community standards."144
The Ohio Arts Council's "Percent for Art" program, similarly,
urges its advisory committee "to be sensitive to the immediate community"
in decisions about the siting of public art.145
We also found a handful of policies that were enacted in response to
particular controversies, or that might be considered markers for restricting
grants based on potentially controversial content. And we found one case,
Georgia, in which the arts council reacted to the funding battles of the
early 1990s by following the lead of Congress in its treatment of the
NEA, and eliminating individual artists' grants. It was "an unfortunate
result of everything that was happening nationally and at the state level,"
then-executive director Betsy Baker explains. But "we give money
to organizations, and we're hoping they're funding individual artists,
and of course they are."146 We do not include here restrictions on religious or sectarian events,
which are found in a number of agency policies, since these seem to be
aimed at avoiding violations of the First Amendment prohibition on "establishments
of religion," and not at disqualifying art because of objections
to its content.147 Similarly, we do not
consider agency requirements that funded events be open to the public,
or that grant recipients not engage in partisan political activity,148
to threaten free expression in the same sense as moral or ideological
restrictions such as "decency," "community standards,"
or hostility to "the gay lifestyle." Of course, we recognize
that in many cases, agencies' restrictions on potentially controversial
grants may be inexplicit, unofficial, and internalized. In Texas, a restriction that inhibits the funding of art with sexual
content arose from the NEA crises. In 1995, the state legislature added
to the law governing the Texas Commission on the Arts a statement that
"the commission shall not knowingly foster, encourage, promote, or
fund any project which includes obscene material," as defined in
the state penal code.149 The commission
accordingly added an obscenity clause to its "Guide to Programs and
Services" which repeats the terms of the new statute.150
The provision is technically meaningless, because as a matter of law,
any work that has serious artistic value and therefore is likely to receive
funding cannot be legally obscene.151 But
the legislature's message seems clear enough - to avoid art with sexually
explicit content. The new wording was added "absolutely in the wake of the NEA case," says former TCA executive director John-Paul Batiste. "It ended up in our strategy" in order to avoid being "mired" in the same ki |