Men of Letters : Notes Between NEA Chief, Senator Reveal Political Arm-Twisting Behind Arts Crisis

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts called photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe “probably” obscene last year when asked point blank, in private letters from Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), what he thought of them.

The episode occurred six months before the arts agency, in a separate action, pulled its name from the credits of a play whose author was openly critical of Helms and of a key conservative religious leader attacking the NEA.

The actions are disclosed in a file of NEA correspondence obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act and other internal agency documents obtained independently.

The arts endowment files appear to reflect an ongoing attempt to mollify the beleaguered NEA’s most vocal political opponents over at least a seven-month period of 1990 and shed light on the degree of subtle pressure put on the endowment by Helms and other conservatives, including Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) and Robert Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).

The documents also show an agency willing--privately and, on occasion, publicly--to distance itself from controversial work and artists. It is a stark contrast with endowment Chairman John E. Frohnmayer’s strong defense last week of the NEA’s support of the gay-themed film “Poison” from an attack by the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Assn.

Much of the correspondence is between endowment officials, including Frohnmayer, and Helms, the agency’s chief critic in Congress. Some of the communications are signed simply “John” and “Jesse.”

The exchanges began last March and continued sporadically until Sept. 11, when the NEA removed its name from the credits of “Sincerity Forever,” a play by New York dramatist Mac Wellman. The play was commissioned and produced by the acclaimed Berkshire Theatre Festival in Massachusetts last year. Wellman received a $15,500 NEA fellowship last year.

Last March 26, Helms wrote to Frohnmayer, noting that he had just received a fax from White House Chief of Staff John Sununu that included several of Frohnmayer’s statements. It was not clear why Sununu had sent the documents to Helms, but in recent weeks, White House sources have confirmed that Frohnmayer has been under pressure from Sununu aides who were ordered late last year to “get control” of the NEA. The objective of the Sununu staff was to prevent the outbreak of new controversies with political and religious conservatives over NEA support of provocative art.

“John, it is important for me to know what you mean when you use the word obscene ,” the senator wrote. Almost as a test, Helms offered cryptic descriptions of three photographs and a performance-art piece. Typical was the Helms description of “a photograph of a nude man with a bullwhip protruding from his rectum.” Helms demanded an opinion from Frohnmayer on whether the works described in his letter were obscene or “patently offensive.”

The Helms letter concludes: “I like you personally, and as I told you during your visits, I want to be your friend--but not at the price of closing my eyes to the reprehensible allocation of funds that appear to remain unabated in recent months.”

Two weeks later, Frohnmayer replied, having realized that Helms had in mind several of a series of controversial Mapplethorpe photos that were at the center of part of last year’s NEA controversy.

Frohnmayer recognized the performance work described by Helms as a controversial show by Annie Sprinkle, which the NEA insisted last year it had not supported directly when Sprinkle’s show played at a New York City gallery. Frohnmayer said that Sprinkle engaged in obscenity “if her show was as described in the media.”

The three works cited by Helms that were obviously Mapplethorpe photos, Frohnmayer said, “in isolation, are probably also obscene.” But Frohnmayer complained of “discomfort” in the characterization because the images “were part of a show of approximately 175 photographs. By analogy, several lines could be pulled from a poem or a book and the claim made that that work is obscene.”

Responding carefully, Frohnmayer--a former Portland, Ore., trial lawyer--told Helms that his definition of obscene was exactly that of the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark case called Miller vs. California. The case held that, to be obscene, something must be utterly devoid of literary, artistic or scientific merit and appeal exclusively to the prurient interest--as defined by local government agencies.

The letter also makes it clear that Frohnmayer was concerned about eventual public disclosure of his observations to Helms. “From past experience, I recognize that this correspondence is a part of the public’s business and may well become available to the media,” he said.

The exchange between Helms and Frohnmayer was weeks old when a Helms aide, John Mashburn, phoned the NEA congressional liaison office to demand information on Wellman. Mashburn’s call on July 19, according to a copy of a telephone message form, came two weeks after Helms and the Rev. Wildmon, head of the Mississippi-based American Family Assn., were first mentioned derisively on a dedication page of Wellman’s script.

Neither Helms nor Mashburn returned calls from The Times. Wildmon also failed to respond to telephone messages.

Theater experts characterized the NEA’s decision to disassociate itself from “Sincerity Forever,” as unusual. The Berkshire Festival managing director suggested that the NEA decision was motivated by a desire to politically appease Helms. The NEA did not attempt to revoke Wellman’s grant money. The playwright sent scripts to both Helms and Wildmon, with a note reading, “with my compliments for the fine job you are doing of destroying civil liberties in These States.”

“Sincerity Forever,” which critics characterized as “an angry, dark comedy,” dresses its characters in Ku Klux Klan outfits and focuses on idiosyncrasies of contemporary American society as seen through the eyes of two teen-aged girls in the Deep South. It includes a character named Jesus H. Christ, and is sprinkled with uses of a common, earthy term for sexual intercourse.

The NEA acknowledged that the decision to remove its name from “Sincerity Forever” was linked to political pressures it was under at the time the action was taken.

“That (the Helms inquiry) came in, I think, during the heat of that controversy,” said Randy McAusland, the NEA’s deputy chairman for programs and the person who signed the NEA letter to Wellman. “As a result of the (Helms-initiated) controversy, we were being pressed to answer some questions at that time.”

The Berkshire festival had earlier awarded Wellman its first $3,000 Roger Nathan Hirshl playwrighting prize. Wellman received his 1990 NEA playwrighting fellowship in late March, when, he said in a telephone interview, he had finished about half of the play. He said he used the NEA award to defray his living costs while he completed it.

On July 5, Wellman mailed copies of the script to Helms and Wildmon. In addition to the cover letter, the play included a line reading, “This one’s for Jesse and the Wildman.”

Finally, on Sept. 11, McAusland wrote Wellman calling inclusion of the NEA in the play’s financial support credits an “error” and directing him to remove the endowment’s name from “all copies of this play” and to “confirm to me in writing that this step has been taken.” Wellman complied, though he added a facetious aside: “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

McAusland maintained in a telephone interview that he was under the impression Wellman had not actually applied his NEA money against living expenses he incurred in completion of “Sincerity Forever.”

Chuck Still, the Berkshire festival’s managing director, said “We all want the NEA to not play those kinds of political games.” But, he said, “to some extent, that’s very naive of everyone in every arts organization. We’re not very realistic to expect them not to play politics. Of course, we want them to stand up for an artist, especially someone like Mac Wellman. We want them to have some guts, but they are a political organization.”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Wellman of the sequence of events between the telephone call from Mashburn and the NEA action stripping its name from his play. “Frankly, it gave me the chills. It seemed as if they were trying to distance themselves from me because I had taken the stand that I wanted to provoke and mock Helms and Wildmon.

“I thought through what I would do pretty carefully. I wanted to do something that would really bother them. I do think (the play) is what (Helms and Wildmon) might think is obscene, but I don’t think it is.