Helms and Arts Endowment: An Escalation

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has demanded that the National Endowment for the Arts turn over to him a set of transparencies of every image in an exhibition of work by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

In a series of requests for material from the endowment made this week, The Times has learned, Helms also sought financial records pertaining to the $90,000 in annual NEA grant funding to the Washington Project for the Arts.

WPA, as the organization is known, is attempting to host a show of Mapplethorpe’s work after cancellation of the exhibit by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, another Washington museum, last week.

The requests by Helms are developments in a dispute over financing of controversial art by the endowment that has gathered momentum this week, in what some observers say is the most serious challenge to the agency’s artistic freedom since it was founded nearly 25 years ago.

Meanwhile, the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, a national organization representing the heads of 140 of the largest art museums in the country, issued a statement warning of “a dangerous pattern of intimidation” in which the national endowment and several individual institutions “have been threatened in ways amounting to de facto censorship.”

Helms declined to be interviewed, but in a statement read into the Congressional Record on Monday night, Helms contended that “all across America, good, decent taxpaying citizens are up in arms” about the content of some art supported by the NEA.

“If that’s ‘chilling censorship,’ ” Helms said, “there are a lot of folks around who intend to make the most of it.

“There is widespread resentment to the American taxpayers’ money being wasted on crude, blasphemous and childish ‘works of art’ by people to whom nothing is sacred.”

The dispute is nominally centered on objections by conservative senators and congressmen to NEA funding of works by two photographers, Mapplethorpe--who died of AIDS this year--and Andres Serrano, whose image of a crucifix immersed in urine touched off a firestorm of objections by a fundamentalist Christian group.

The Christ image was included in a traveling exhibit last year organized by a North Carolina regional arts organization that receives part of its funding from the national endowment.

The work of Mapplethorpe, who once received a $15,000 NEA fellowship, is widely varied but much of it has strong homoerotic themes. The content prompted Helms to observe that “pictures of male genitals placed on a table is not art--except perhaps to homosexuals who are trying to force their way into undeserved respectability.”

The controversy has quickly grown into a full-scale censorship debate punctuated by demands by Helms and U.S. Sens. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) for greater control over potentially offensive artworks and a threat by a Texas congressman to attack the endowment’s budget.

The budget campaign, by Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.), centers on a demand by Armey that the endowment provide written guarantees to make government funding impossible for any artwork that, in Armey’s words, “would be blatantly offensive to the vast majority of the American people.”

Staff members at the national endowment have been working all week to draft a policy that might somehow accommodate Armey’s demands. The drafting was initiated after a meeting late last week of Armey, U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates (D-Ill.) and Hugh Southern, the NEA’s acting chairman.

Citing the sensitive status of the dispute, the NEA has declined to comment on the situation this week. “We’re working with Mr. Yates,” a spokesman said. Southern was unavailable.

Earlier this week, Yates attempted to defuse the controversy, saying he would introduce an amendment to the NEA appropriation bill to make future episodes less likely by requiring the endowment to give money only directly to artists and art groups who will be the final users of the funds.

Armey said if he does not receive a written, ironclad assurance, he will try to strip at least $6 million from the national endowment’s budget and is prepared to take a copy of a catalogue of Mapplethorpe’s photographs onto the floor of the House to shock members of congress into voting his way.

Last week, the board of the Corcoran gallery--in a move some of the museum’s trustees say they were not told about in advance--decided to cancel the Mapplethorpe show, which had been scheduled to open July 1. The Corcoran cited an aversion to being drawn into a political dispute.

Corcoran officials said another board meeting is scheduled for Monday and new discussions will be held on the cancellation. However, Marvin Gerstin, one of three people who sit on both the WPA and Corcoran boards, said there is little chance of reconsideration.

Gerstin contended that Corcoran officials railroaded the decision to cancel the Mapplethorpe show through the board in the belief that, by barring it, they could appease conservatives.

“Maybe it was a bit of bad advice,” he said. “They were clearly fearful of being a political football and it was easy to conclude that they should not have the show and bring it up for a vote hush-hush.”

The controversy has developed as the national endowment is without a permanent chairman. The White House has been expected to nominate a new head for the agency for several weeks, but when President Bush may make his selection public remains uncertain.

The dispute also comes as the endowment is undergoing a process called “reauthorization,” in which, every five years, Congress decides whether to continue the endowment at all and how its financing is to be arranged. Reauthorization is different from annual renewals of the endowment’s budget--about $170 million this year.

A House subcommittee chaired by Yates this week completed drafting of the endowment’s 1990 appropriation bill, due to come up for approval by the full House after the Fourth of July recess.

Controversy has dogged the endowment for years and longtime observers of the agency said it has never navigated through a reauthorization without some dispute. In 1984, Armey led a protest over an allegedly pornographic poem. As early as 1969, congressmen attempted to restrict the national endowment’s activities in a fit of rage over the payment of $500 by the NEA for publication of a book that included a poem whose entire text was: “L-I-G-H-G-H-T.”

But a number of observers say this year’s dispute is more intense and more ominous than previous ones.

“There has never been a situation quite like this,” said Martin Freedman, director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and a former member of the endowment’s National Council, the agency’s policy-making board.

“Periodically, the issue is bound to arise concerning works of art, artists and programs sponsored by the NEA,” Freedman said. “Things have come out that have been disturbing, but the function of artists is not to sedate. When you have openness and freedom, there will be incidents, but the real issue is artistic freedom.”

Anne Murphy, executive director of the American Arts Alliance, said the controversy is more intense and ominous because of “the mood of America.”

“There is a Pilgrim-Puritan look at a lot of things that are happening in this country,” she said.

Robert Bergman, director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and chairman of the art museum directors association’s Government and Art Committee, said, “The intensity of the present controversy is at a higher pitch than what we have seen before.” Bergman said that the combination of fundamentalist Christian groups and conservative congressmen and senators has brought a focus on the content of artworks absent from previous debates.

“A lot of the current brouhaha . . . came as a result of groups that are concerned with ‘moral issues,’ ” he said. “I do think it’s dangerous if the NEA is intimidated. One public’s taste and another public’s taste are two different things. I personally find it extremely frightening to read where people (in Congress) take stands more or less defining what art is and should be. We can’t do that.”

Freedman and other observers said this year’s dispute is also different in that it involves a concerted effort to force the endowment to institute written policy strictures that would prohibit funding to potentially offensive arts projects. The pressure has evolved even though the endowment’s 25-year-old authorizing legislation prohibits the agency from controlling the content of art works in all media that it supports.

Yates said both the specific legislative provisions governing the NEA and constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech may lead to an impasse.

“I don’t know if NEA can come forward (with such) language,” Yates said. “I don’t know how such a guideline could be prepared. I told (Armey) I thought writing one was impossible.”

“What we have asked for is some written guidelines for the decision-making process by which we can hold (the NEA) accountable,” Armey said, “and have some assurance that the standards of taste and preference for decency that are clearly shared by the majority of the American people are observed.” Most immediately at issue is the status of the Mapplethorpe show. The works that compose the exhibit are currently in crates, sitting in a Boston warehouse awaiting word if they will be sent to Washington. A final decision is expected today or Monday.

On Wednesday, WPA’s director, Jock Reynolds, met with officials of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art, which organized the show, and representatives of Mapplethorpe’s estate.

Reynolds contended that the current NEA dispute is different from previous controversies because of “a real undertone of homophobia and gay-bashing as a way to attack the endowment, which I believe is despicable.”

Reynolds said the Mapplethorpe show had been displayed in Philadelphia and other cities, without incident.

“I think this is a clear way for ideologues to go after the endowment,” he said. “I think it’s a recurrent pattern and it’s very troubling. I don’t think it’s a spontaneous eruption.”

John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu and current president of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, said the nature of the opposition to the national endowment indicates “there’s a pattern here.”

Walsh said he is suspicious since the controversy involves such a small number of the 80,000 grants made by the NEA since it was founded.

“I don’t think many people feel threatened by a wave of filth, paid for by taxpayers’ money,” he said. “I hope that congressmen can get a wider look at the NEA and what it’s accomplished and listen to the people back home.

“It’s an absolute sure thing that artists are going to offend from time to time. I should hope so.”