Senate Votes to Ban Funds for ‘Obscene’ Artworks

WASHINGTON —  The Senate Wednesday, falling to pressure from conservatives, voted to bar the National Endowment for the Arts from funding “obscene artwork” that denigrates the beliefs of a particular religion.

Sponsored by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill was approved on a voice vote and sparked little debate.

“No artist has a preemptive claim on taxpayer funds” to pay for obscene art, Helms said on the Senate floor.

Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) was one of two senators to voice disapproval for the amendment, saying that “the U.S. Congress should not decide what is and what isn’t art.”

Both Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee and Sen. John McClure (R-Idaho), ranking Republican on the committee, accepted the amendment. Byrd said that the amendment would be discussed in conference with the House.

The Senate also upheld other punitive measures against the National Endowment for the Arts, banning two private art agencies from receiving endowment grants for five years and stripping the endowment’s budget in retaliation for endowment sponsorship for exhibits considered offensive by conservative congressmen.

Under the provisions, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, N.C. and the Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania will be barred for five years from receiving endowment funds. Both private arts agencies came under attack for organizing exhibits that included art considered offensive by right-wing congressmen.

Passed without any debate as part of the Senate Interior Appropriations bill, the measures were identical to the ones endorsed Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee. Lawmakers from the House and the Senate will meet in a conference that could occur this week, to reconcile their differing bills.

Meanwhile, two members of the North Carolina House of Representatives introduced legislation Wednesday morning to make the center permanently ineligible for state funds--a move paralleling the U.S. Senate action in Washington. The move took the form of an amendment to a pending statewide appropriations bill to finance all operations of North Carolina government.

A spokeswoman for the North Carolina Arts Council said the amendment materialized without warning. Arts sources in Winston-Salem said the two state legislators involved acted after the U.S. Senate’s Appropriations Committee endorsed the five-year moratorium on funds to the center and the Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

The North Carolina fund cutoff was not finally approved Wednesday. A compromise was being negotiated to rewrite the fund ban to make it applicable only to the center’s participation in the federal government’s Awards in the Visual Arts program. But that program is entirely financed by the NEA with no state monies.

The Awards for the Visual Arts program’s 1988 exhibition included the photograph “Piss Christ” by photographer Andres Serrano, depicting a crucifix immersed in urine. Although Serrano and arts observers familiar with his work have insisted the image was intended as a protest against financial exploitation of Christian values, conservative critics have seized on the work as an alleged example of blasphemy. Serrano’s photographs also include an image titled “Piss Pope.”

The center receives about $75,000 a year in state funds in North Carolina state funds. Ted Potter, the center’s executive director, said the fund cutoff would severely affect the center’s in-state arts education program. The agency has an annual budget of about $1.7 million.

The Senate’s bill, going further than the House in punishing the agency, budgets $170.2 million for the agency compared to $171.4 million allocated by the House, which cut a symbolic $45,000 from the endowment’s budget, but did not consider blacklisting the two art agencies.

The $45,000 cut equals endowment grants received by the two agencies for the controversial exhibits. The center received $15,00O for a traveling exhibiting that included a photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine by photographer Andres Serrano.

The endowment also granted $30,000 to the University of Pennsylvania for a traveling exhibit of works by late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, which included some pictures with homoerotic and sexually explicit themes.