Taking Aim at Art

Critics call for an end to the National Endowment for the Arts. But not all evangelicals agree.

“Art” was once considered the realm of the genteel elite, synonymous with quiet culture and sophistication. But recent controversy over government funding has thrown the art world into the public arena, the target of rancorous debate that includes charges of pornography, blasphemy, censorship, and political grandstanding.

Conservative Christians, generally not a major force in the modern art community, have been drawn into the mess. With revelations last year about tax-sponsored art projects such as an exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s “homoerotic” photos and Andres Serrano’s urine-submerged crucifix, evangelicals began taking aim specifically at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

But more recently, as the debate over arts funding moved into the halls of Congress, tactical differences in dealing with the issue have emerged. The Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association (AFA) took the lead in attacking government-funded art. “When the average person finds out how the NEA is spending their money, they are furious,” said AFA president Don Wildmon, who has called for totally revoking funds for the arts agency.

Joined by groups including Focus on the Family and Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” AFA has disseminated explicit descriptions of “pornographic, anti-Christian ‘works of art’ ” they say were funded by the NEA. AFA also placed full-page newspaper ads headlined, “Is this how you want your tax dollars spent?”

However, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), though equally offended by some of the funded art, has taken a different tack. According to Robert Dugan, director of the NAE Washington office, the group is attempting to work with NEA chairman John Frohnmayer’s office to fashion a mutually acceptable solution to the problem. The NAE’s general counsel has met several times with the arts agency’s attorney, and Frohnmayer spoke at the NAE’s Washington Insight Briefing last month.

“We would disassociate ourselves from those who are abusing the NEA and engaging in vicious name-calling,” Dugan said. He noted that earlier this year his group canceled its planned participation in a joint press conference when it discovered the AFA and other groups planned to call for revoking all funds for the NEA.

The NAE has also put on hold its call for Frohnmayer’s resignation, expressed in a letter to President Bush late last year. “We hope that Frohnmayer’s intent to prevent the funding of obscene art will be demonstrated,” Dugan said. “We want to give him the chance to live up to what we perceive his sincere commitment to be.”

INTERVIEW

Art Gatekeeper: Man Under Fire

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman John E. Frohnmayer has the delicate job of trying to keep Congress, the Bush administration, taxpayers, and the arts community happy. Frohnmayer has a master’s degree in Christian Ethics from the University of Chicago and is an elder in the Presbyterian Church, USA. He spoke with CT about his approach to his responsibilities.

Why should government be in the business of financing the arts?

Our government has an obligation to look out for the mental and emotional health of the nation as well as to protect us and ensure that we have the necessities of life. The arts are a central part of that. Every government from the Pharaohs to the Medicis to the democracies has supported the arts as a symbol of what its people can accomplish. Literature and architecture, paintings and dance tend to be lasting because they are the most significant outpourings of a civilization’s human energy and accomplishment.

You have said the projects now under fire did not receive funds under your “watch.” What have you done to ensure it won’t happen?

We have cited 23 different ways to tighten up the internal panel process. [NEA subgroups, called panels, make recommendations on which arts projects to support.] For example, I visit virtually every panel and talk about the current law and explain what their duties are, including the necessity to make a very clear record about why they are recommending a particular artist or project. We try to get broad geographic distribution on the panels, because I think people from different parts of the country think differently and sometimes have different standards. We are trying to make the panels bigger in order to get a broader cross section of people, including educated lay persons.

What standards do you use to determine what is offensive or obscene?

I try to get as much empirical information as possible. If it’s a film, I actually watch the film to try to confront the art. I try to be as careful as I can, to get as much information as I can, and then pray for wisdom.

Can a public institution fund or exhibit religious art without violating the First Amendment?

The Supreme Court has basically held that, as something incidental to a religious organization’s activities, federal funding can be received for works that are overtly religious. We’ve funded a great number of projects, from the great masses and requiems, to mural paintings, to shows of religious art.

As in any other art, we’re looking for excellence, not whether it is or isn’t religious. We need to be sensitive to the strongly held feelings of all religious groups. The First Amendment says the government can’t establish a religion; it also prohibits interference in the free exercise of religion. We have to make sure we don’t run afoul of either of those prohibitions.

What social responsibilities do artists owe the public?

I have always felt that artists are watchers of society, and thinkers about what society is and what it could or should be. The way that conscience is reflected can be in praise or in beauty or it can be very confrontational. One of the hardest things for me to deal with is that very fine edge between art as expression and that which slips over into polemic. That is as hard to get a real handle on as the whole obscenity question is. Part of the reason this is so hard is that art is really our ultimate expression, and we find it in so many different ways. And very often we, at the time, are not able to make the kind of judgments that society in 10, 50, or 100 years from now will be able to make. So, it’s a terribly difficult but very, very worthwhile endeavor that we’re engaged in.

Artists In The Middle

Christian painter Ed Knippers, editor of Christians in Visual Arts Newsletter, says he and other Christian artists find themselves caught in the middle of the debate. As an artist, Knippers supports funding of the NEA and opposes any regulations that would “restrict the possibilities” open to an artist. However, he also chastises the arts community. In testimony before a congressional panel last month, Knippers said he believes artists are increasingly equating the shocking with the significant. “In the process of raising the shocking to such a status, we have lost common sense and have become an arts community with few standards and less and less taste,” he testified.

Knippers opposes the efforts of some Christians to devise specific standards for what constitutes “offensive” art. “Little lists don’t work,” he said. “The best defense against Mapplethorpe and the other aberrations is a yawn, not a rule.” Knippers suggests that Christians come up with a long-term plan to support talented young Christian artists who will produce work with which the arts community will be forced to contend.

Rhetoric And Reaction

As the debate has played out, rhetoric has at times turned acrimonious. Frohnmayer told CHRISTIANITY TODAY he has felt ill-treated by some in the Christian community. “I think their zeal has often carried them too far,” he said. “The Endowment has become the whipping boy and fund-raising source for some of these groups, and I resent that.”

Frohnmayer emphasized that, contrary to the implications of many groups, the Serrano and Mapplethorpe exhibits received funds under the Reagan administration, before he came to the NEA. Likewise, he categorically denied the AFA’s assertion that the NEA funded the controversial Annie Sprinkle act, where the actress performed various sex acts on stage and proclaimed that the performance was government funded.

Wildmon said, however, that his group can document all allegations. In the Sprinkle case, he said the NEA grant went to the theater where Sprinkle performed her act. “They used that money to pay for the heat, ushers, and overhead, and then they had an extra $60,000 to pay for Annie Sprinkle and others,” he said. Further, Wildmon denied that this is a fund-raising effort. “We have probably lost in the neighborhood of $100,000 on this,” he said.

Rep. Paul Henry (R-Mich.), an evangelical who was listed in an AFA newspaper ad among members of Congress who voted for a motion described as “supporting the NEA in its abuse and misuse of your tax dollars,” has also criticized Wildmon. The congressman said the ad was misleading because the vote in question was a procedural motion, not a vote on the merits of the issue.

Henry supports content restrictions and conditions on public money for the arts. The ad prompted confused letters from his constituents, he said. “I am personally enraged that some of us who have records of trying to address the issue have been branded as supporting pornography,” he said.

Wildmon defended the list as coming straight from the Congressional Record. “We did not say Mr. Henry and the others voted to fund pornography; we said, ‘Here’s the amendment that would allow the NEA to continue what it is doing,’ ” he said.

Most expect the fight over the NEA to heat up even more before it is resolved. And adding fuel to the flames are rumors that more controversial tax-funded projects are about to be revealed. Still, in the view of Knippers, one positive aspect coming from the debate is that Christians are moving from what he sees as nearly two centuries of neglect of the arts. “The church abandoned its creative engagement in building and sustaining our culture,” he said. “We need to set the agenda and be culturally engaged.”

By Kim A. Lawton.

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