Should NEA Spend Scarce Arts Money on Grants to Superstars? : Fellowships: Funds that have gone to established artists like Eudora Welty or Lionel Hampton might be better spent on youngsters’ arts education.

The National Endowment for the Arts probably didn’t intend for its most recent annual report to shock its readers, but there it is in black and white. Eudora Welty received $40,000 from the NEA’s literature program, and the late Sarah Vaughan got $20,000 from its music program.

According to NEA staffers, these superstars in the firmament of American artists did not apply for the awards as other fellowship winners must do. Nor were they required to do a special project or submit a final report. They were nominated and selected within the literature and music programs.

If one reviews the years since the Jazz Master Award--like Vaughan’s--began in 1982, one finds a galaxy of stars receiving these $20,000 prizes: Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Taylor, Lionel Hampton.

The $40,000 senior fellowships given to Welty, to Gwendolyn Brooks and to Hortense Calisher by the NEA’s literature program in fiscal 1989 are twice as large as the ordinary $20,000 fellowships for creative writers. Similarly, Vaughan’s $20,000 was generous when compared to the NEA’s other jazz grants to individuals. Jazz-study grants were as small as $1,140 that fiscal year, and grants for jazz composition and performance were in the $5,000 to $12,000 range.

In earlier years, NEA fellowships were designed to help promising artists on the threshold of careers. The arts endowment also gave fellowships to artists at later career stages to buy time or to help with special projects--for example, to a composer for the creation of a musical work.

What, then, is the justification for the NEA’s monetary awards to renowned artists? I asked the NEA and got this answer: “Competition in all endowment fellowship programs is fierce. . . . Fellowship decisions are based on the quality of sample work submitted by the applicant, not on financial need or other criteria. Most artists lead financially precarious lives; those who really don’t need money generally do not apply. That an occasional applicant does not need the money but still applies is regrettable but very rare. A ‘means test’ could ensnare people in red tape and work against quality . . .” The NEA statement did not address the specific question about noted artists receiving awards through nomination.

It is also difficult to find any endorsement in the NEA’s authorizing legislation. The congressional declaration of purpose for the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities, of which the NEA is a component, states: “While no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, 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.” This language is the foundation for NEA’s grants to individual artists.

How did the celebrity grants begin? One NEA staffer said, “We certainly wouldn’t hold it against them (the recipients) that they’re rich.”

Another NEA official said, “The arts endowment can encourage excellence in the field in many ways. We can reward people who have made major contributions to their field over their lifetimes.”

Is the NEA equating these awards with Oscars for lifetime achievement? Or maybe the NEA is confusing itself with the private MacArthur Foundation, which bestows generous sums to anyone it deems worthy--no strings attached.

The NEA’s monetary awards to famous artists seem particularly redundant since 1985, when the agency, along with the White House, created the non-monetary National Medal of Arts to honor distinguished artists and arts patrons. Leontyne Price, Elliott Carter, Martha Graham, Louise Nevelson, Jose Ferrer, Ralph Ellison, Hallmark Cards, Paul Mellon and Dorothy Chandler are among the recipients of this silver medal. Welty received a National Medal of Arts in 1987.

In explaining the NEA’s monetary awards to recognized artists, another NEA official suggested that they are an outgrowth of the successful National Heritage Fellowships of $5,000 awarded since 1982 to about a dozen artists each year through the NEA’s Folk Arts Program. It’s true both types of awards are made by nominations rather than applications; but for the folk artists, the nomination system seems justified. It’s unlikely that an Eskimo mask maker/dancer/singer, a Chitimacha basket maker, or a spoons/bones player/poet is going to apply to a government agency to pursue his art.

The heritage awards have been an effective public-relations tool for drawing attention to folk arts. In addition to the relatively modest $5,000 for the artist, there is a ceremony on Capitol Hill and a display and performance at Washington’s Lisner Auditorium.

But when it comes to the celebrity awards, who would claim that Fitzgerald needs federal seed money? Or who believes that Gillespie needs public-relations assistance from the federal government? Or who would say the NEA award makes the works of Welty more accessible to Americans?

During the past year and a half, public debate surrounding arts policy has focused on obscenity and First Amendment issues, to the exclusion of practically everything else. The debate has created a climate in which people are reluctant to raise legitimate questions about the NEA, lest they be called Philistines. It is an atmosphere in which the faults of the agency go unchallenged and its real achievements ignored.

The report on the endowment issued last September by a commission set up by Congress and chaired by John Brademas and Leonard Garment carried stern language. It concluded, “The endowment is not, in setting policy and making grants, adequately meeting its public responsibilities at the present time.”

The commission’s report was eloquent in calling attention to the importance of arts education, stating, “The arts will not fully contribute to American life until arts education is an integral part of the education of all our children.” Why not set up a trust fund where successful and affluent artists and performers from all disciplines can contribute to arts education?

How much could be done for arts education with the money used annually by the NEA for celebrity grants? How about using that money, for instance, to rebroadcast Leonard Bernstein’s young people’s concerts on TV? Or to make video tapes or laser discs of those programs available for purchase by libraries, schools, individuals?

Or how about using those funds to videotape artists like Welty and Billy Taylor telling about their work, their ideas and their fields? All video projects should ensure availability of the tapes not only for TV broadcasts, but for purchase or loan. It’s time to use today’s technology to achieve the NEA’s goals in arts education.

Americans can honor our leading artists in many ways without bestowing NEA’s limited funds on them. When it comes to government funding for the arts, we are dealing with public money, so we need more than idealism and good intentions. We need accountability and some common sense.