1994 / YEAR IN REVIEW : Arts and the Coming Storm : After this year's power shift in Washington, many fear that government funding for the arts will once again be targeted for extinction.

By Diane Haithman

Dec. 25, 1994 12 AM PT

<i> Diane Haithman is a Times staff writer</i>

The phrase sounds like some ominous new kind of military strategy: “Zeroing out.” A tactic that might, say, destroy all foliage within a 50-mile radius or wipe out the population of a mid-sized city.

Instead, “zeroing out” seems to be the buzzword in Washington when discussion turns to a much smaller target in a very civilized war: the battle over federal funding for arts and culture in the United States.

For the first time since the agencies that control federal arts dollars--the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Corp. for Public Broadcasting (CPB)--were established in the 1960s, Congress is in the hands of a Republican majority. And the Speaker of the House of Representatives will be ultra-conservative Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who has recommended that these agencies be scrapped in favor of private-sector funding.

Conservatives--most notably Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and George Bush’s 1992 challenger for the Republican nomination, Patrick J. Buchanan--have consistently bashed the NEA since 1989, when the agency was challenged for funding “obscene” exhibitions by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano. But this is the first time Republicans have the power to actually “zero out” the NEA, NEH and their sister organization, the Institute of Museum Services, and CPB.

“Everyone in the arts universe, no matter what party, what meeting they are attending, is talking about 1995 and what it holds,” said Wayne Lawson, executive director of the Ohio Arts Council. “There is not one person who is not, as we speak, thinking about what’s going to happen.”

Peter Hero, president of the Community Foundation of Santa Clara County and a member of the National Council for the Arts, the NEA’s advisory board, says council members nationwide have been sent an alarming stack of East Coast newspaper clippings predicting doom for the agency.

“I’m optimistic that this new Congress, which contains many people who are, and were, supportive of the arts before they were elected, will give thoughtful considerations to the role of the NEA. I don’t anticipate a wholesale shutting down of the agency,” Hero said. “But then, there is that stack of clippings . . . “

On Dec. 2, at a meeting of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities--a group of 31 private citizens appointed by the President--First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged support for continued federal funding of cultural programs and encouraged bipartisan support. In attendance were Californians Harold Williams, director of the Getty Trust (who described the mood as one of “apprehension and concern”), and Irene Hirano, executive director of Los Angeles’ Japanese American National Museum, among others.

Also on Dec. 2, a Washington Post Op-Ed piece by conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer recommended balancing the Republican plan to cut welfare by also cutting “middle-class welfare”--the NEA and the NEH.

“The beauty of these cuts is the cultural side benefit that comes from strangling agencies that cannot--it has by now been proven--be kept out of the hands of the academic Left,” Krauthammer wrote. Clearly, on any given day in Washington, both sides of the issue are being vehemently debated.

While NEA watchers are split down the middle as to whether NEA chief Jane Alexander has made recent funding cuts due to political pressure or is simply trying to save money, all agree that a conscious feather-smoothing effort has been made by Alexander to go from state to state, soothing egos and pointing up NEA’s role in supporting educational programs and traditional institutions to stave off a backlash against the agency.

“It’s serious, but we are going to work very, very hard,” said NEA spokeswoman Terry Simon. “We are going to do everything we can to educate the new Congress as to what the NEA does in their own back yards.”

Corp. for Public Broadcasting President Richard W. Carlson is also stressing education and cooperation with the new Congress. While denying that CPB will grow more conservative, “I think Congress has a right and even the responsibility to question how those dollars are used,” he said.

The stakes are particularly high for the NEA and the NEH, which come up for a reauthorization in 1995. But from a public relations standpoint, CPB may be taking a greater hit. In what amounted to a pitch for conservative cable channel National Empowerment Television, on which Gingrich hosts a weekly program, Gingrich told NET viewers that CPB should be “zeroed out” and that they “have been paying taxes involuntarily to subsidize something which told them how they should think, and NET is free.”

CPB, with a current annual budget of $285 million, helps operate public TV and radio programs and stations. The bulk of its money goes for television, and it has long been a target for conservatives claiming a liberal bias, as has the NEA. The always-colorful Buchanan once called the NEA “the upholstered playpen of the arts-and-crafts auxiliary of the Eastern liberal Establishment.”

Capitol Hill watchers say that it’s not just a case of the Republicans being in the majority, since there have always been some Republican arts supporters on the Hill.

Rather, they see a particularly strong movement against such funding among the new leaders, especially in the House (Senate leadership in those committees that oversee arts and culture are perceived to be more moderate). Even California representative-elect Sonny Bono, according to the Washington Post, has denounced the NEA--leading some wags to suggest that Bono had already harmed the arts enough during his musical career. (Bono could not be reached for comment.)

“He (Gingrich) has made his intentions pretty clear: He does not see federal support for the arts as part of the ‘contract with America,’ ” said attorney Marjorie Heins, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Arts Censorship Project.

“The effort (to abolish the NEA) has been made ever since the Mapplethorpe-Serrano controversy began in ‘89, but there hasn’t until now been enough support in the Congress for complete abolition of the agency,” Heins said. “From what I now hear from Capitol Hill pundits, that support now does exist.”

In an appendix, the ‘contract with America’ recommends a 50% budget cut for the NEA, rather than the complete withdrawal of support suggested by Gingrich. But some NEA supporters say that a cut this massive would effectively eliminate the NEA’s power. The agency already underwent a $2.9-million cut (down from $170.2 million to $167.3 million) for fiscal year 1995.

Despite repeated phone calls, Gingrich was not available for comment.

His press secretary and spokesman, Tony Blankley, said that Gingrich’s position is that “philosophically, there is no need to have taxpayer subsidies of art or public broadcasting in America. When the Corp. for Public Broadcasting was brought on line three decades ago (in 1967), there were three networks. Today, there are 120 channels, and there are soon to be 500. There is an explosion of niche programming . . . every conceivable taste is available to the public. Why are we subsidizing--with taxpayer’s money?”

On the NEA, Blankley said: “In the past few years, we have seen the difficulties which arise when bureaucrats get involved in the arts and make, shall we say, eccentric patronage choices with their artists. The public is outraged, and the artists who aren’t funded claim they are being censored in some way.”

Although the NEA did not seem to surface strongly in anyone’s campaign platform in November’s election, the NEA-as-whipping-post rhetoric, at least, is back with a vengeance, according to a White House official who requested anonymity.

“(NEA) detractors continue to look for some ancient incident that gives some grotesque interpretation of what is art,” the official said, adding, “there will be some on the Hill who will vigorously try to change the landscape of the level of public funding for the arts.”

There have been a few less- than-ancient NEA flash points, too. This year, the NEA came under fire for a grant to the Minneapolis Walker Arts Center that paid $150 to Los Angeles performance artist Ron Athey. Complaints came from Congress about a performance in which Athey, who is HIV-positive, carved a pattern into the back of another artist, who was said not to have the HIV virus.

And the NEA sparked another controversy by overturning grant recommendations to three photographers--a group which included the infamous Serrano, whose 1986 photograph of a crucifix in urine, “Piss Christ,” touched off the earlier round of censorship battles.

While expecting a flood of anti-NEA rhetoric as the new Congress settles in, however, longtime NEA watchers argue that the agency is not a whole lot more embattled than usual; routinely, Helms proposes that the agency be abolished and it remains standing, though perhaps a little wobblier than the year before.

“This happens every year,” said one Capitol Hill source. “I have serious doubts that there will be any real obstacles to reauthorization.”

Said former NEA chief John Frohnmayer, who weathered the agency’s most controversial years before being forced out by Bush in 1992, “I’m not sure that they (Republicans) will, willy-nilly, rush in to rip apart the endowment. My guess is that when they take a close look at it, they will recognize two things: one, the endowment does contribute significantly to mainstream America, and the second is that the endowments (which operate on a system of matching grants) more than pay for themselves in terms of their stimulation of tax dollars. When you lay out that argument, it’s a very Republican thing.”

While NEA supporters hope to preserve the agency by arguing its financial prudence, the Getty’s Williams mused that perhaps a more important issue is at stake.

“The federal government plays a very significant role in today’s world in articulating what’s important to this country,” he said. “I guess what I worry about most is what message comes out of Washington about the importance of culture in this nation, and the importance of the arts and humanities to what we call a civilized society.

“I don’t believe the issue is federal funding. That’s my sense of it --it’s something more profound.”*