Congress Divides, Conquers the NEA

Last week, the National Endowment for the Arts announced its grants to American museums and visual arts organizations for fiscal 1997. The news was eagerly awaited, because the grants were the first to reflect the full impact of the 40% slash in funds mandated by Congress for the federal agency.

Grants went here, grants went there, some were stellar, some were dumb.

Here’s the bottom line: Just over 26 cents of every NEA dollar for visual arts grants was awarded to groups in the metropolitan New York area (including Long Island, Weschester County and Newark).

By contrast, 27 cents went to groups in the next five metropolitan areas combined. About 4 cents of that went to metropolitan Los Angeles.

These figures are startling. When you begin to break out specific examples, they only get more so.

For instance:

* In exhibition grants to museums, a single award was made in Los Angeles: $15,000 to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the eccentrically engaging artist’s project in Culver City.

By contrast, grants totaling $1,392,500 were made to 13 museums in New York City.

* One museum in New York received a grant that is larger than the total amount of NEA funds awarded to all museums and visual arts organizations in L.A. combined: The Whitney Museum of American Art received $400,000 to support augmentation of its current $31-million endowment, while eight L.A. organizations will share $385,000 in program funds.

* The Museum of Contemporary Art was L.A.’s only major art museum to receive a grant of any kind ($80,000, for a series of exhibition-related education projects).

In New York, $1.2 million in program funds will be distributed among the Metropolitan, Guggenheim, Whitney and Brooklyn museums of art and the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Other surprising facts and figures could be cited. But there’s no need to go on. The pressing question is, how should they be interpreted?

One way, I suppose, is to get out the bunting and climb aboard the hometown bandwagon. You could wave your local flag.

That means, if you live in L.A., that you can carp loudly to your congressman about the short shrift obviously being given to your beloved city, which, it is universally conceded, is the No. 2 home for visual art in the United States. The huge disparity between 26 cents and 4 cents suggests something is way out of whack.

*

The urge to flag-wave also means that, if you live in New York, you can quietly adopt a self-satisfied grin, which demurely says, “Well, of course. What did you expect? The discrepancy may be huge, but so is the difference between the visual art infrastructure so long established Back East and art activity everywhere else across this great land of ours. Twenty-six cents out of every dollar is probably about right.”

And so on and so forth and blah-blah-blah.

However, maybe there’s a more productive way to go than simply jerk into the mode of Concerned Taxpayer--that is, taxpayer concerned to get back for himself virtually every penny he supposedly turned over to the greater good of the American commonweal.

Maybe Concerned Citizen, not Concerned Taxpayer, is the better way to go.

Try this one on for size instead: In the wake of withering attacks against the NEA from right-wing Republicans, the grants distributed for fiscal 1997 are a clear demonstration that conservatives have succeeded in making the federal agency look more like them. Born of a liberally minded era, the NEA is now conservative.

Take a deep breath. Now, let it out slowly.

Remember, the punitive 40% budget cut ordered by the Republican-led Congress was accompanied by a structural reorganization of the NEA’s program. Seventeen former grant categories were collapsed into just four. Eliminated were fellowships to individual artists. Also gone was general operating support for institutions, which had often used those flexible funds for topical programming (grant requests for specific programs often require a two-year lead time). Finally, institutions were limited to just one all-or-nothing application per year.

This structural reorganization created major concern in the art world, one that went beyond worries over the total reduction in available funds. A political dimension also loomed.

In the furious struggle for remaining funding scraps, wouldn’t large organizations, established institutions, the strongest art infrastructure with the most formidable existing resources claim undue advantage? Wouldn’t the art establishment be hugely favored?

Of course it would. That’s conservatism. Preservation of established traditions meets a determined resistance to institutional change.

NEA Chairwoman Jane Alexander reiterated to The Times last week what the agency has been saying all along of its newly revamped program guidelines: Congress “wants to know exactly where the taxpayers’ money is going.” In reality, of course, it’s the NEA that wants to know, so that it can head off at the pass anything politically questionable, long before it ever gets to the ear of some Congressman Bluster who’s in desperate need of a handy red herring to flail about. There is safety in the status quo.

*

You can nit-pick the specifics of the 1997 grants all you want, finding exceptions that merely prove the rule: No, the great big establishment L.A. County Museum of Art wasn’t successful in its application for $200,000 in exhibition funding, while an ad hoc group headed by the virtually unknown local artist Matthew Coolidge did get $20,000 for an upstart project planned for an abandoned Army barracks on the edge of Utah’s Bonneville salt flats. Condolences, LACMA; congratulations, Matt.

But, quibbles don’t change the bigger picture. Twenty-six cents of every NEA dollar for visual arts grants is being funneled directly to the traditional headquarters of America’s art establishment. Four cents goes to its nearest artistic rival.

That’s conservatism in action. Remember it at the ballot box.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Where the Money Went

Fiscal 1997 NEA grants in the visual arts totaled $9.3 million. Los Angeles, where eight organizations will receive grants totaling $385,000, ranks sixth on the list of metropolitan areas awarded funds. The top five are:

*

New York: $2,438,500 ($.26 per NEA dollar)

Philadelphia: $610,000 ($.07)

Houston: $565,000 ($.06)

San Francisco: $465,000 ($.05)

Washington: $430,000 ($0.5)

Source: Compiled from National Endowment for the Arts figures.