NEA official speaks on arts funding

The same day as the defeat of a Senate amendment to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, an NEA official spoke to a Law School audience about public response to controversial exhibits. During a speech yesterday, NEA General Counsel Julie Ann Davis also talked about how the NEA decides which artists should be funded. Davis spoke yesterday afternoon about the history of the controversy surrounding the NEA, saying that that it resulted from public response to Andres Serrano's "sacreligious" and Robert Mapplethorpe's "homoerotic" photography exhibits. Strong protest stemmed from these two exhibits. She said that conservatives are presently trying to restrict funds to works considered "indecent," "blasphemous" or "obscene." The amendment, authored by Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) amendment was rejected by the Senate, by a vote of 70 to 29. Davis called current legislation regarding censorship unconstitutional. She said that the section of the Appropriations Bill which says no funds to be appropriated may be used for anything that may be considered obscene in the judgement of the NEA to be obscene is vague. She also said it provides no safeguards and politicizes decisions about which artists get funding. Davis said that the NEA decides how to fund artists using panel meetings called "peer reviews," where the NEA panelists judge the "quality" of the work rather than the beliefs or persuasions of the artist. "The key here is that it is viewpoint-neutral," she said. But after the hour-long speech, one audience member said that they were not convinced that the NEA panelists could be completely objective. The Wharton MBA student said that "people are people," and "art appeals to the senses," therefore no one is without personal bias in deciding what is "art."

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