Why Do We Not Want to Keep Funding the Arts

Every bit the U.S. Congress struggles to balance the federal budget and finish the decades-long spiral of deficit spending, few programs seem more than worthy of outright elimination than the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Indeed, since its inception in 1965, few federal agencies have been mired in more controversy than the NEA. Nevertheless, steadfast partisans of "welfare for artists" go along to defend the Endowment, asserting that information technology promotes philanthropic giving, makes cultural programs accessible to those who can least afford them, and protects America'due south cultural heritage.

In fact, the NEA is an unwarranted extension of the federal government into the voluntary sector. The Endowment, furthermore, does not promote charitable giving. Despite Endowment claims that its efforts bring art to the inner metropolis, the bureau offers little more than a direct subsidy to the cultured, upper-eye class. Finally, rather than promoting the best in fine art, the NEA continues to offer tax dollars and the federal seal of approval to subsidize "art" that is offensive to nearly Americans.

There are at least ten good reasons to eliminate funding for the NEA:

Reason #1: The Arts Will Have More Than Plenty Support without the NEA

The arts were flowering earlier the NEA came into being in 1965. Indeed, the Endowment was created partly because of the tremendous pop entreatment of the arts at the time. Alvin Toffler's The Culture Consumers, published in 1964, surveyed the booming audience for fine art in the Us, a side do good of a growing economy and depression inflation.² Toffler's book recalls the arts prior to the creation of the NEA-the era of the great Georges Balanchine and Agnes de Mille ballets, for case, when 26 million viewers would plow to CBS broadcasts of Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. In fact, virtually all of the major orchestras in the U.s.a. existed before 1965, and volition continue to exist later on NEA subsidies are ended.

In spite of the vast splendor created by American artists prior to 1965, partisans of the NEA claim that the arts in the U.s. would face virtually certain demise should the Endowment exist abolished. Nonetheless Endowment funding is simply a drop in the bucket compared to giving to the arts by individual citizens. For example, in 1996, the Metropolitan Opera of New York received $390,000 from the Endowment, a federal subsidy that totals only 0.29 percent of the Opera's almanac income of $133 meg-and amounts to less than the ticket acquirement for a single sold-out performance.³

The growth of private-sector charitable giving in recent years has rendered NEA funding relatively insignificant to the arts customs. Overall giving to the arts last year totaled near $x billion⁴-up from $6.5 billion in 1991⁵-dwarfing the NEA's federal subsidy. This twoscore per centum increase in individual giving occurred during the same period that the NEA upkeep was reduced past 40 percent from approximately $170 meg to $99.v million.^six Thus, every bit conservatives had predicted, cut the federal NEA subsidy coincided with increased private back up for the arts and culture.

That many major cultural institutions are in the midst of successful fundraising efforts belies the questionable claim of NEA supporters that private giving, no matter how generous, could never compensate for the loss of public funds. As Nautical chart 1 shows, many of these institutional campaigns have fundraising targets many times greater than the NEA's almanac federal appropriation of $99.5 1000000. In New York City, the geographic expanse which receives the largest relative share of NEA funding, the New York Public Library is raising some $430 million (with 70 pct already completed), the Museum of Modernistic Fine art, $300 1000000-450 meg (with 30 per centum raised), the Metropolitan Museum of Art some $300 1000000 (with 80 percent already obtained).^seven In fact, philanthropist Frederick A. O. Schwartz, Jr., recently told The New York Times that "we've entered a flow of institutional excitement comparable only to that which occurred afterwards the Civil War until World War I when several of the city's nifty borough and cultural institutions were congenital."⁸

In Keen U.k., economist David Sawers's comparative report of subsidized and unsubsidized performing arts concluded that major cultural venues would continue to thrive were regime subsidies to be eliminated. According to Sawers's calculation, 80 per centum of all London theater box part receipts, including ballet and opera, went to unsubsidized theater.⁹ (United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland's renowned Glyndebourne opera, for instance, relies entirely on private funding.)

Even smaller organizations can succeed without depending on the federal government. As Bradley Scholar William Craig Rice argues cogently in The Heritage Foundation's Policy Review, "The arts volition flower without the NEA." His survey shows that many arts venues can easily replace NEA funding, and suggests a number of alternative strategies for those who might find the disappearance of the federal bureau problematic.¹⁰

Reason #2: The NEA Is Welfare for Cultural Elitists

Despite Endowment claims that federal funding permits underpriviledged individuals to gain access to the arts, NEA grants offering little more than a subsidy to the well-to-do. 1-fifth of straight NEA grants become to multimillion-dollar arts organizations.^eleven Harvard Academy Political Scientist Edward C. Banfield has noted that the "fine art public is now, as it has always been, overwhelmingly heart and upper eye class and in a higher place boilerplate in income-relatively prosperous people who would probably enjoy art about as much in the absenteeism of subsidies."¹² The poor and the heart class, thus, benefit less from public art subsidies than does the museum- and orchestra-going upper-middle form. Sawers argues that "those who finance the subsidies through taxes are likely to be dissimilar from and poorer than those who benefit from the subsidies."^xiii In fact, the $99.5 million that funds the NEA also represents the entire annual tax burden for over 436,000 working-course American families.^fourteen

Every bit function of the Endowment'due south effort to dispel its elitist image, Chairman Jane Alexander has led a nationwide campaign painting the NEA as a social welfare plan that can assistance underprivileged youth to fight violence and drugs. In congressional testimony, she has trumpeted her "American Canvas" initiative "to gain a better understanding of how the arts tin transform communities."^xv Simply despite the heartwarming anecdotes, claims for the therapeutic employ of the arts are not supported by empirical scientific evidence. Studies that claim to evidence the arts prevent crime are methodologically questionable, due to problems of self choice. And the arts offering no cure for alcoholism either: Tom Dardis devotes his 292-page scholarly work, The Thirsty Muse, precisely to the high occurrence of alcohol abuse among American writers.¹⁶

Reason #iii: The NEA Discourages Charitable Gifts to the Arts

Defenders of the NEA argue that the much of its benefit lies in its ability to confer an imprimatur, similar to the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," necessary to encourage private support of the arts. NEA officials accept asserted frequently that by persuading donors who would otherwise not give, Endowment support tin offer a financial "leverage" of up to 10 times the corporeality of a federal grant honour.¹⁷ In that location is niggling or no empirical evidence to support such claims. The only bachelor written report of "matching grants"-those designed specifically to stimulate giving- concluded that matching grants did non increment total giving to the arts. Instead, "matching grants" appear to shift existing money around from ane recipient to another, "thereby reducing the private resource available to other arts organizations in a specific community."¹⁸ Indeed, a study by the Clan of American Cultures (AAC) revealed that individual funders found major museum exhibits, opera, ballet, symphony orchestras, and public telly to be "attractive" for donors without an official government postage.^nineteen

Economist Tyler Cowen also sees an ominous issue to regime arts programs: "In one case donors believe that government has accepted the responsibility for maintaining civilisation, they will be less willing to give."²⁰ This analysis is consistent with recent public statements from foundation executives that the private sector volition non brand up the gap resulting from decreases in NEA funding, despite tape levels of private giving in contempo years. Cowen's conclusion: "The government can best support the arts past leaving them alone, offering background assistance through the revenue enhancement organisation and the enforcement of copyright."²¹

Reason #4: The NEA Lowers the Quality of American Art

NEA funding also threatens the independence of art and of artists. Recognizing how authorities subsidies threaten creative inspiration, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that "Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature.... It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men."²² Recent critics echo Emerson's creed. McGill Academy Management Professor Reuven Brenner has declared: "The NEA's opponents accept it right. Bureaucratic civilisation is non genuine culture.... It was the unsubsidized writers, painters and musicians-imprisoned in their homes if they were lucky, in asylums or in gulags if they weren't-who created lasting civilisation."²³

Indeed, to many of the NEA'south critics, the idea of a federal "seal of approval" on art may exist the "greatest anathema of all."²⁴ Thus, to maintain its editorial independence, The New Criterion, a journal edited by sometime New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer, has rejected NEA funding since its founding some 15 years agone. In 1983, Kramer was a vocal, principled critic of an NEA program offering subsidies to art critics; his opposition forced the agency to fleck the grants.²⁵

When government gets in the business of subsidizing art, the affect upon fine art is oftentimes pernicious. According to Bruce Bustard, author of a catalogue for the current retrospective on art funded through President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Public Works of Art Project," notes that the "New Deal produced no truthful masterpieces." Instead, as Washington Post columnist James Glassman alleged, the PWA "stifle[d] creativity," producing works "that are dreary, unimaginative condescending and political."²⁶

Cowen notes that the "NEA attempts to create a mini-industrial policy for the arts. But governments have a terrible tape for choosing future winners and losers, whether in concern or the arts."²⁷ Regime subsidies oftentimes can hurt the quality of art by promoting a new cult of mediocrity. Rice has pointed out that the NEA helps the well-continued and the well-established at the expense of less sophisticated-and possibly more talented-outsiders.²⁸ The NEA thereby reduces the importance of popular entreatment for the arts, substituting instead the demand to please a third-party regime patron, and thus driving a wedge between artists and audiences.

In his major comparative study of subsidized and unsubsidized art in Swell Britain, Sawers noted that government subsidies actually work to reduce selection and diverseness in the artistic marketplace past encouraging artists to emulate each other in society to achieve success in the grants process. Privately funded venues, thus, are more artistically flexible than publicly funded ones. (For example, it was private orchestras that introduced the "early music" movement into United kingdom.²⁹) In addition, such favoritism endangers funding for otherwise worthy arts organizations merely because "they exercise not receive a public arts bureau matching grant."³⁰

The threat to quality fine art from federal subsidies was already crystal articulate to Toffler in the 1960s: "Recognizing the reality of the danger of political or bureaucratic interference in the process of artistic decision making, the principle should be established that the United states government will make absolutely no grants to independent arts institutions-directly or through us-to underwrite operating expenses or the costs of artistic product. Proposals for a national arts foundation that would distribute funds to foster experiment, innovation...are on the incorrect rails. They ask the authorities to brand decisions in a field in which it has vested political interests."³¹

Reason #five: The NEA Volition Continue to Fund Pornography

In Nov 1996, in a 2-one decision, the Ninth U.S. Excursion Court of Appeals upheld a 1992 ruling in the "NEA Four" case of Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes-all "performance artists" whose grant requests were denied on grounds their fine art lacked merit.³² The Court ruled that the 1990 statutory requirement that the Endowment consider "general standards of decency and respect" in awarding grants was unconstitutional.³³ The congressional reauthorization of the agency in 1990 had added this "decency provision" in keeping with recommendations of the Presidential Commission headed by John Brademas and Leonard Garment.

Without such a "decency" standard, the NEA tin can subsidize whatsoever type of art it chooses. As a result, attorney Bruce Fein called the Court of Appeals determination a recipe for "government subsidized depravity" that must (if non reversed by the Supreme Courtroom) force Congress to "abolish the NEA, an ignoble experiment that, like Prohibition, has not improved with age."³⁴ Literary critic Jonathan Yardley, writing in the Washington Post, alleged: "Merely fools-of whom, alas, in the Ôarts community' there are many-would argue that the federal government is obliged to underwrite obscene, pornographic or otherwise offensive "art."³⁵

There is no shortage of examples of indecent material supported directly or indirectly by the NEA. Nevertheless, Jane Alexander has never criticized any of these NEA grantees publicly. And the Clinton Administration has nevertheless to file an appeal of the 9th Circuit's decision. Moreover, no Fellow member of Congress has however attempted to provide a legislative fix that would require NEA grant recipients to abide past full general standards of decency in their work.

On March half-dozen, 1997, Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Chairman of the Education and Workforce Subcommittee that has oversight over the NEA, complained about books published past an NEA-funded printing called "Fiction Collective 2," which he described every bit an "offense to the senses." Hoekstra cited four Fiction Collective two books and noted that the publisher's parent organization had received an additional $45,000 grant to establish a World wide web site. According to The Washington Times, the NEA granted $25,000 to Fiction Collective 2, which featured works containing sexual torture, incest, child sexual activity, sadomasochism, and kid sex activity; the "excerpts describe a scene in which a blood brother-sister team rape their younger sis, the torture of a Mexican male prostitute and oral sexual activity between two women."³⁶ Pat Trueman, onetime Chief of the Kid Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Segmentation, characterized the works as "troubling" and said the NEA posed a "direct threat to the prosecution" of obscenity and child pornography considering of its official postage on such material.³⁷Incredibly, the NEA continues to defend such funding decisions publicly. "Fiction Commonage 2 is a highly respected, pre-eminent publisher of innovative, quality fiction," NEA spokeswoman Cherie Simon said.³⁸

The current controversy is naught new for the NEA. In Nov 1996, Representative Hoekstra questioned NEA funding of a picture show distributor handling "plain offensive and possibly pornographic movies-several of which appear to deal with the sexuality of children."³⁹ He noted the NEA gave $112,700 over three years to "Women Make Movies," which subsidized distribution of films including:

• "Ten Cents a Dance," a three-vignette video in which "two women awkwardly discuss their mutual allure." It "depicts anonymous bathroom sexual practice between two men" and includes an "ironic episode of heterosexual phone sex."
• "Sex Fish" portrays a "furious montage of oral sex, public rest-room cruising and...tropical fish," the itemize says.
• "Coming Home" talks of the "sexy fun of trying to fit a lesbian couple in a bathtub!"
• "Seventeen Rooms" purports to answer the question, "What do lesbians practise in bed?"
• "BloodSisters" reveals a "various cross-section of the lesbian [sadomasochistic] customs."

Three other films center on the sexual or lesbian experiences of girls age 12 and nether. "These listings have the advent of a veritable taxpayer-funded peep show," said Hoekstra in a letter to NEA Chairman Alexander. He noted that the benefactor was circulating films of Annie Sprinkle, a pornographic "operation artist" who appeared at "The Kitchen," a New York venue receiving NEA support.^twoscore In response, The New York Times launched an advertizing hominem attack on Hoekstra (while neglecting to mention that The New York Times Company Foundation had sponsored Sprinkle's performance at ane time).⁴¹

Another frequent response supporters of the NEA make to such criticism is to claim that instances of funding pornography and other indecent textile were elementary mistakes. Only such "mistakes" seem function of a regular pattern of support for indecency, repeated twelvemonth afterwards year. This pattern is well-documented in the appendix to this paper.

Reason #six: The NEA Promotes Politically Correct Art

A radical virus of multiculturalism, moreover, has permanently infected the agency, causing artistic efforts to be evaluated by race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation instead of creative merit.⁴² In 1993, Roger Kimball reported that an "effort to impose quotas and politically correct thinking" was "taking precedence over mundane considerations of quality."⁴³ Possibly the well-nigh prominent case of reverse discrimination was the cancellation of a grant to the Hudson Review, which based its selections on "literary merit."⁴⁴

More recently, Jan Breslauer wrote in The Washington Post that multiculturalism was now "systemic" at the agency.⁴⁵ Breslauer, theater critic for The Los Angeles Times, pointed out that "private grantees are required to conform to the NEA's specifications" and the "fine art world's version of affirmative action" has had "a profoundly corrosive result on the American arts-pigeonholing artists and pressuring them to produce work that satisfies a politically right agenda rather than their best creative instincts." NEA funding of "race-based politics" has encouraged ethnic separatism and Balkanization at the expense of a shared American culture. Considering of federal dollars, Breslauer discovered, "Artists were routinely placed on bills, in seasons, or in exhibits because of who they were rather than what kind of art they'd made" and "artistic directors began to button artists toward `purer' (read: stereotypical) expressions of the ethnicity they were paying them to represent."⁴⁶ The upshot, Breslauer ended, is that "nigh people in the arts establishment continue to defer, at least publicly, to the demands of political correctness."⁴⁷

Aside from such blatant cultural engineering, the NEA as well seems intent on pushing "fine art" that offers trivial more a decidedly left-wing agenda:

• Last summer, the Phoenix Art Museum, a recipient of NEA funding, presented an exhibit featuring: an American flag in a toilet, an American flag fabricated out of human skin, and a flag on the museum floor to be stepped upon. Fabian Montoya, an xi-yr-former boy, picked upward the American flag to rescue information technology. Museum curators replaced it, prompting Representative Matt Salmon (R-AZ) and the Phoenix American Legion to applaud the boy's patriotism by presenting him with a flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol. Whereas the American Legion, Senator Bob Dole, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich condemned the exhibit, NEA Chairman Alexander remained conspicuously silent.
• Artist Robbie Conal plastered "NEWTWIT" posters all over Washington, D.C., and sold them at the NEA-subsidized Washington Project for the Arts.⁴⁸
• And the NEA withal has non fully answered a 1996 query from Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) for details of its back up to the (now defunct) Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco, which had received an estimated $30,000 per year from the NEA since the early 1980s. The reason for the enquiry was to decide what the NEA knew about the activities of i of the leaders of the eye, Gilberto Osorio. Osorio co-founded the center in 1977, and since had been exposed as a commandante in the FMLN guerrilla command during the ceremonious state of war in Republic of el salvador past San Francisco journalist Stephen Schwartz.⁴⁹ Ane of the FMLN missions undertaken while Osorio had been principal of operations was a June 19, 1985, assault on a restaurant in San Salvador that killed 4 U.S. Marines and 2 civilian employees of the Wang Corporation. In 1982, Osorio reportedly had ordered that any American establish in San Vicente province be executed. Schwartz concluded, "some of their [NEA] grantees may be guilty of more than just crimes confronting good taste."^fifty

Reason #7: The NEA Wastes Resources

Like any federal bureaucracy, the NEA wastes taxation dollars on administrative overhead and bureaucracy. Anecdotes of other forms of NEA waste are legion. The Cato Plant's Sheldon Richman and David Boaz note that "Thanks to an NEA grantee, the American taxpayers once paid $1,500 for a verse form, `lighght.' That wasn't the title or a typo. That was the entire poem."⁵¹ In addition to such frivolities, the Endowment diverts resources from artistic activities equally artists are lured from producing art to courtship federal grant dollars and even attention demonstrations in Washington, D.C.

There are other ways that the NEA wastes tax dollars: Author Alice Goldfarb Marquis estimates that approximately half of NEA funds go to organizations that lobby the government for more money.⁵² Not only has the NEA politicized fine art, but because federal grant dollars are fungible, they can be used for other purposes besides the support of quality art. In addition, approximately 19 percent of the NEA's total upkeep is spent on administrative expenses-an unusually high figure for a government program.⁵³

As noted above, Sawers's comparative report of British fine arts noted little divergence in the quality of fine art betwixt subsidized and unsubsidized venues. Sawers did uncover one major difference, however, between subsidized and unsubsidized companies: unsubsidized companies had fewer, if any, performers nether contract, relying instead on freelance staff. Fixed and total costs for unsubsidized companies were, therefore, substantially lower than those of the subsidized companies. Subsidized venues kept "more permanent staff on their payroll" instead of lowering ticket prices.⁵⁴ Subsidies, thus, result in higher ticket prices to force the public to subsidize bloated arts bureaucracies.

Reason #8: The NEA Is Across Reform

In 1990, the Presidential Commission on the NEA, headed by John Brademas and Leonard Garment, concluded that the NEA had an obligation to maintain a high standard of decency and respect because it distributed taxpayer dollars. The recent tape of the bureau, and the November 1996 appellate courtroom decision in the case of the "NEA Iv," make it unlikely that the Endowment will be able to ever award that recommendation. NEA Chairman Alexander has not condemned the continued subsidies for indecent fine art nor explained how such grant requests managed to get through her "reorganization." Unfortunately, not a single Senator or Representative has asked her to do and then.

Recent history shows that despite cosmetic "reorganizations" at the NEA, the Endowment is impervious to genuine change because of the specific arts constituencies information technology serves. Every few years, whether it be by Nancy Hanks in the Nixon Administration, Livingston Biddle in the Carter Administration, or Frank Hodsoll in the Reagan Administration, NEA administrators promise that reorganization will be bring massive change to the bureau. All these efforts accept failed. It was, in fact, under Mr. Hodsoll's tenure in the Reagan Administration that grants were awarded to Robert Mapplethorpe, known for his homerotic photography, and to Andres Serrano, infamous for creating the exhibit "Piss Christ."

Recent changes in the titles of NEA departments accept had little effect. In the words of Alice Goldfarb Marquis, "All Ms. Alexander has washed is, to coin a phrase, re-accommodate the deckchairs on the Titanic."⁵⁵ Indeed, Alexander has retained veteran NEA executive Ana Steele in a top management position to this engagement. Steele approved the payment of over $250,000 to the "NEA Four" while serving as acting chairman in 1993.

The NEA claims to have inverse, no incertitude in hopes of mollifying congressional critics. Nevertheless the NEA has connected to fund organizations that accept subsidized materials offensive to ordinary citizens while attempting to recast its public paradigm as a friend of children, families, and educational activity. It is a "two-track" ploy, speaking of family unit values to the general public and privately of another agenda to the arts lobby. For example, Chairman Alexander has defended NEA fellowships to private artists, prohibited by Congress after years of scandals. In her congressional testimony of March 13, 1997, she declared: "I ask you once again in the strongest terms to lift the ban on back up to individual artists."⁵⁶

To send its indicate to the avant garde arts constituency, the NEA continues to fund a scattering of "cutting-edge" organizations in each grantmaking cycle. The NEA has even maintained its peer-review panel procedure used to review grants, past irresolute its name to "discipline review"; The Heritage Foundation cited this procedure in 1991 as ridden with corruption and conflicts of interest, and every bit a major gene in the Endowment's option of offensive and indecent proposals.⁵⁷

Despite the rhetoric of reform issuing from its lobbyists, and 5 years of reduced budgets, the reality remains defiantly unchanged at the NEA.

Reason #nine: Abolishing the NEA Will Prove to the American Public that Congress Is Willing to Eliminate Wasteful Spending

President Clinton proposes to spend $1.7 trillion in his FY 1998 upkeep. Over the next five years, the Administration seeks to increment federal spending by $249 billion.⁵⁸ Further, Clinton also proposes to increase the NEA'due south funding to $119,240,000, a ascension of 20 pct.⁵⁹ These dramatic increases in spending come in the age when the federal debt exceeded $5 trillion for the first time and on the heels of a 1996 federal deficit of $107 billion.

In this era of budgetary constraint, in which the need to reduce the federal deficit is forcing fundamental choices near vital needs-such as housing and medical care for the elderly-such boondoggles equally the NEA should be among the first programs to be eliminated. Representative Wally Herger (R-CA), citing a contempo NEA grant to his own constituents (the California Indian Handbasket Weavers Clan), pointedly said that he "does not believe that in an era of tight federal dollars, basket weaving should take a tiptop priority in Congress."^sixty Whenever American families take to cut make cuts in their spending, nonessential spending-such as entertainment expenses-are the first to become. If Congress cannot stand up and eliminate the $99.5 million FY 1997 cribbing for the NEA, how will information technology be able to brand the instance for far more than fundamental budget cuts?

Reason #x: Funding the NEA Disturbs the U.Due south. Tradition of Limited Regime

In retrospect, turmoil over the NEA was predictable, due to the long tradition in the United States of opposing the apply of federal tax dollars to fund the arts. During the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, delegate Charles Pinckney introduced a motion calling for the federal government to subsidize the arts in the United States. Although the Founding Fathers were cultured men who knew firsthand of various European systems for public arts patronage, they overwhelmingly rejected Pickney's suggestion because of their belief in limited, ramble government. Appropriately, nowhere in its listing of powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government does the Constitution specify a ability to subsidize the arts.

Moreover, as David Boaz of the Cato Plant argues, federal arts subsidies pose the danger of federal control over expression: "Government funding of anything involves government controlÉ. As we should not want an established church, so we should not want established art."⁶¹ As Cowen notes, "When the government promotes its favored art, the almost innovative creators find information technology more hard to ascension to the tiptop.... But the true costs of government funding exercise not show up on our taxation bill. The NEA and other government arts agencies politicize fine art and jeopardize the principles of democratic authorities."⁶² The French regime, for instance, tried to suppress Impressionism through its control of the Academy.

The deep-seated American conventionalities against public support of artists continues today. Public opinion polls, moreover, show that a majority of Americans favor elimination of the NEA when the agency is mentioned by name.⁶³ A June 1995 Wall Street Periodical-Peter Hart poll showed 54 percent of Americans favored eliminating the NEA entirely versus 38 percent in favor of maintaining it at whatsoever level of funding. An earlier January 19, 1995, Los Angeles Times poll establish 69 percent of the American people favored cut the NEA upkeep.⁶⁴ More recently, a poll performed by The Polling Visitor in March 1997 demonstrated that 57 percent of Americans favor the proffer that "Congress should terminate funding the NEA with federal taxpayer dollars and instead leave funding decisions with state government and private groups."

Determination

After more than than three decades, the National Endowment for the Arts has failed in its mission to enhance cultural life in the The states. Despite numerous attempts to reinvent it, the NEA continues to promote the worst excesses of multiculturalism and political correctness, subsidizing art that demeans the values of ordinary Americans. Every bit the federal debt soars to over $5 trillion, it is time to terminate the NEA as a wasteful, unjustified, unnecessary, and unpopular federal expenditure. Catastrophe the NEA would be proficient for the arts and good for America.

Appendix

The NEA has used tax dollars to subsidize pornography, sadomasochism, and other forms of indecency. Here are some selected examples:

• In 1995, the NEA-funded "Highways," a venue featuring a summer "Ecco Lesbo/Ecco Human being" festival in Santa Monica, California. The festival featured a program actually called "Not for Republicans" in which a performance artist ruminated on "Sexual practice with Newt's Mom." The artistic director was Tim Miller (of the "NEA 4"). Former Clinton adviser Paul Begala agreed that items in the published schedule were obscene.⁶⁵
• NEA grants appear in Dec 1996 included $20,000 to the "Woolly Mammoth Theater" venue for Tim Miller, one of the "NEA Four" performance artists. He had stripped twice, talked about picking upwards homosexual prostitutes, and asked members of the audience to blow on his genitals in a 1995 production entitled "Naked Jiff." The NEA also awarded $25,000 to "Photographic camera News, Inc.," also known as "3rd Globe Newsreel," a New York distributor of Marxist revolutionary propaganda films.⁶⁶
• In June 1996, Representative Hoekstra raised questions about "The Watermelon Woman." The film was funded by a $31,500 NEA grant. It contained what ane review described as the "hottest dyke sex activity scene ever recorded on celluloid." "I had high hopes that Jane Alexander would prevent further outrages by the NEA, simply apparently even she-nice lady that she is-lacks the ability and the will to put an end to the NEA'south obsession with handing out the taxpayers' money to cocky-proclaimed `artists' whose mentality is just so much flotsam floating around in a sewer," said Senator Jesse Helms.⁶⁷
• Hilton Kramer, in a March 1996 issue of The New York Observer, noted a new "disgusting" Whitney exhibition he characterized as a "jolly rape of the public sensibilities." The Whitney was showing the work of Edward Kienholz, and "information technology nigh goes without maxim that this America-equally-a merde [French for excrement] testify is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts." The Whitney Museum recently received the largest grant issued by the NEA thus far in 1997-$400,000.
• The Sun Maine-Telegram, reported on March 3, 1996, that William Fifty. Pope, a Professor at Bates Higher, received $twenty,000 grant in the final circular of NEA grants to individual functioning artists. He intended to use the money for at to the lowest degree two projects. In ane, he would chain himself to an ATM car in New York Urban center wearing simply his underwear. In the other, he "plans to walk the streets of New York wearing a six-foot-long white tube like a codpiece. He's rigged it up so he tin can put an egg in one end, and information technology will ringlet out the simulated, white penis." The Maine-Telegram noted that the NEA individual fellowship programme "volition go out with a blindside, at least with this grant."
• "Sex activity Is," a pornographic video displaying the NEA credit, is still in distribution.
• Bob Flanagan'southward "Super Masochist," featuring sexual torture, and an Andres Serrano exhibit featuring "Piss Christ" were shown at the NEA-funded New Museum in New York Metropolis. Flanagan (at present deceased) was recently the star of a moving-picture show at the Sundance Film Festival entitled "Sick," which showed him nailing his male organs to a wooden plank. "Sick" is also on the 1997 schedule of the New Directors/New Films series co-sponsored by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Both institutions have been NEA grant recipients, and Lincoln Center master Nathan Leventhal is one of President Clinton'due south nominees for the National Council on the Arts. His nomination is pending in the Senate.
• Ron Athey's video of his ritual torture and bloodletting, subsidized indirectly through bout promotion at NEA venues like Walker Art Gallery and PS 122 in New York. (Walker Art Center grants actually increased in the year later the museum booked Athey.)
• Joel-Peter Witkin, a four-fourth dimension recipient of NEA individual fellowships whose photograph of severed heads and chopped upwards bodies were displayed past Senator Helms on the Senate floor two years ago as evidence of the moral corruption of the NEA (Helms discussed one featuring a man'southward caput beingness used as a flowerpot). Witkin was honored with a retrospective at New York's NEA-funded Guggenheim museum. Even The New York Times condemned the prove as "gruesome."
• Karen Finley, also of the "NEA Four," brought her new "operation piece" to an NEA-funded venue in Boston.
• Holly Hughes, another of the "NEA Four" (and recipient of a 1994 individual fellowship), brought her human action to an NEA-funded institution in suburban Virginia.
• New York City's New Museum, an NEA-funded performance, hosted a retrospective of the work of Andres Serrano, which one time more than included an exhibit of "Piss Christ."
• New York's Museum of Mod Art, funded by the NEA, hosted an NEA-funded exhibit of Bruce Nauman'due south piece of work, also displayed at the Smithsonian'due south Hirshhorn Museum, which included neon signs reading "Due south- and Die" and "F- and Die."
• The NEA literature program subsidized the writer of a volume entitled The Gay 100, which claims that such historical figures as Saint Augustine were homosexuals.

Endnotes

¹ Laurence Jarvik is an Adjunct Scholar at The Heritage Foundation, Editor of The National Endowments: A Critical Symposium (Second Thoughts Books, 1995), and author of PBS: Behind the Screen (Prima, 1997).

² Alvin Toffler, The Culture Consumers: A Written report of Fine art and Affluence in America (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 188.

^three A typical sold-out performance at the Met brings in nigh $485,000 in ticket revenue, given the average ticket price of $125 and a seating chapters of 3,877.

⁴ Creative America: Written report of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, Washington, D.C., February 1997

⁵ Joseph Ziegler, Testimony earlier House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, March 5, 1997.

⁶ Giving USA 1996 (New York: AAFRC Trust For Philanthropy, 1996).

^seven Judith Miller, "Large Arts Groups Starting Drives for New Funds," The New York Times, February 3, 1997, p. 1

^viii Ibid.

⁹ David Sawers, "Should the Taxpayer Support the Arts?" Current Controversies No. 7, Institute for Economic Affairs, London, 1993, p. 22

^ten William Craig Rice, "I Hear America Singing: The Arts Will Flower Without the NEA," Policy Review, March/April 1997, pp. 37-45.

^xi Derrick Max, "Staff Briefing on the National Endowment for the Arts," U.South. Firm of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, p. 29.

¹² Edward C. Banfield, The Democratic Muse (New York: Basic Books, 1984); every bit cited in "Cultural Agencies," Cato Handbook for Congress: 105th Congress (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1997).

¹³ Sawers, "Should the Taxpayer Support the Arts?" p. 22.

¹⁴ Heritage Tabulations from 1993 IRS Public Use File.

¹⁵ Jane Alexander, Testimony to the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, March thirteen, 1997.

¹⁶ Tom Dardis, The Thirsty Muse: Booze and the American Writer (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1982).

¹⁷ See Jane Alexander, Testimony to the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, May 8, 1996.

¹⁸ David B. Pankratz, Multiculturalism and Public Arts Policy (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1993), p. 55.

^xix Ibid., p. 56.

²⁰ Tyler Cowen, draft ms. for Affiliate 6, "Market Liberalization vs. Government Reaction" in Enterprise and the Arts, forthcoming from Harvard University Printing, pp. 22-31.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Art," in Work (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), p. 342.

²³ Reuven Brenner, "Culture By Committee," The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 1997.

²⁴ Laurence Jarvik and Nancy Strickland, "Forget the Speeches: The NEA Is a Racket," Baltimore Sun, January 22, 1995.

²⁵ Hilton Kramer, "Criticism Endowed: reflections on a debacle," The New Criterion, Nov 1983, pp. i-5.

²⁶ James K. Glassman, "No Coin for the Arts," The Washington Post, April ane, 1997, p. A17.

²⁷ Cowen, "Market Liberalization vs. Regime Reaction," pp. 2-22.

²⁸ William Craig Rice, The NewsHour, contend moderated by Elizabeth Farnsworth, March x, 1997.

²⁹ Sawers, "Should the Taxpayer Support the Arts?" p. 39.

^xxx Pankratz, Multiculturalism and Public Arts Policy, p. 55.

³¹ Toffler, The Culture Consumers, p. 200.

³² Diane Haithman, "Did NEA Win Battle, Lose War?" Los Angeles Times, November thirteen, 1996, p. F1.

³³ Affirming opinion of Guess James R. Browning, U.S. Ninth Excursion Court of Appeals, filed November 5, 1996, in Karen Finley et al., v. National Endowment for the Arts.

³⁴ Bruce Fein, "Dollars for Depravity?" The Washington Times, Nov 19, 1996.

³⁵ Jonathan Yardley, "Art and the Pocketbook of the Beholder," The Washington Post, March 17, 1997, p. D2.

³⁶ Julia Duin, "NEA Funds `Criminal offence to the Senses,' Lawmakers Lip Arts Bureau for Aiding Prurient Publications," The Washington Times, March eight, 1997, p. A2.

³⁷ Patrick A. Trueman, Managing director of Governmental Diplomacy, American Family Clan, Testimony before the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, March 5, 1997.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Representative Pete Hoekstra, letter to NEA Chairman Jane Alexander, Nov xvi, 1996.

^xl Ibid.

⁴¹ Frank Rich, "Lesbian Picket," The New York Times, March 13, 1997, p. A27.

⁴² Encounter Pankratz, Multiculturalism and Public Arts Policy.

⁴³ Roger Kimball, "Diversity Quotas at NEA Skewer Magazine," The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 1993.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Jan Breslauer, "The NEA's Existent Offense: Agency Pigeonholes Artists by Ethnicity," The Washington Post, March 16, 1997, p. G1.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. G8.

⁴⁸ Laurence Jarvik, "Committing Suicide at the NEA," COMINT: A Journal About Public Media, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Bound 1996), p. 44.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 46

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ "Cultural Agencies," in Cato Handbook for Congress, 105th Congress, (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1997).

⁵² Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Art Lessons: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding (New York: Bones Books, 1995).

⁵³ Max, "Staff Briefing on the National Endowment for the Arts," p. 27.

⁵⁴ Sawers, "Should the Taxpayer Support the Arts?" p. 33.

⁵⁵ Alice Goldfarb Marquis, alphabetic character to author, February 7, 1997.

⁵⁶ Jane Alexander, Testimony before the Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies, U.S. House of Representatives, March 13, 1997 .

⁵⁷ Robert Knight, "The National Endowment for the Arts: Misusing Taxpayer's Money," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 803, Jan xviii, 1991; Robert Knight, "The National Endowment: It's Time to Free the Arts," Family Research Council Insight, Jan 1995, p. 1.

⁵⁸ "The Era of Big Government is Back: Talking Points on President Clinton's Fiscal Year 1998 Budget," Heritage Foundation Talking Points No. 17, Feb 24, 1997, p. one.

⁵⁹ Appendix to the Budget of the U.s., p. 1080.

^threescore Judith Miller, "Federal Arts Agency Slices its Smaller Pie," The New York Times, Apr x, 1997, p. B6.

⁶¹ David Boaz, "The Separation of Fine art and State: Who is going to make decisions?" Vital Speeches of the Mean solar day, Vol. LXI, No. 17 (June 15, 1995).

⁶² Cowen, "Market Liberalization vs. Government Reaction," pp. 2-22.

⁶³ Pro-NEA pollsters tend to ask about "the arts," not the federal agency and its record.

⁶⁴ Jarvik, "Committing Suicide at the NEA," p. 44.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Julia Duin, "NEA makes grants as fight for life nears, Agency conducts `business as usual' with its selections," The Washington Times, December 19, 1996.

⁶⁷ Julia Duin, "Blackness lesbian motion-picture show likely to rekindle arts-funding furor NEA defends graphic comedy," The Washington Times, June xiv, 1996.

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Source: https://www.heritage.org/report/ten-good-reasons-eliminate-funding-the-national-endowment-orthe-arts

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