How Much Money Goes To National Endowment For The Arts

As the U.South. Congress struggles to balance the federal budget and finish the decades-long spiral of deficit spending, few programs seem more than worthy of outright emptying 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" keep to defend the Endowment, asserting that it promotes philanthropic giving, makes cultural programs attainable to those who can least afford them, and protects America's 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 city, the agency offers little more than than a direct subsidy to the cultured, upper-middle 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 most Americans.

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

Reason #1: The Arts Volition Have More Than Enough Support without the NEA

The arts were flowering before the NEA came into being in 1965. Indeed, the Endowment was created partly because of the tremendous popular appeal of the arts at the time. Alvin Toffler's The Culture Consumers, published in 1964, surveyed the booming audience for art in the U.s.a., a side benefit of a growing economic system and low inflation.ⁱⁱ 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 instance, when 26 one thousand thousand viewers would plow to CBS broadcasts of Leonard Bernstein and the New York Combo. In fact, about all of the major orchestras in the United States existed earlier 1965, and will proceed to be subsequently 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 The states would face almost sure demise should the Endowment exist abolished. Yet Endowment funding is just a drop in the bucket compared to giving to the arts by private 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'southward annual income of $133 million-and amounts to less than the ticket revenue for a unmarried sold-out operation.³

The growth of private-sector charitable giving in recent years has rendered NEA funding relatively insignificant to the arts community. Overall giving to the arts final year totaled almost $10 billion⁴-up from $6.v billion in 1991⁵-dwarfing the NEA's federal subsidy. This forty percent increment in private giving occurred during the same period that the NEA budget was reduced past 40 pct from approximately $170 one thousand thousand to $99.five meg.^{half dozen} Thus, every bit conservatives had predicted, cutting the federal NEA subsidy coincided with increased individual back up for the arts and civilization.

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 Chart 1 shows, many of these institutional campaigns accept fundraising targets many times greater than the NEA's almanac federal appropriation of $99.v million. In New York Metropolis, the geographic surface area which receives the largest relative share of NEA funding, the New York Public Library is raising some $430 million (with seventy percent already completed), the Museum of Mod Art, $300 million-450 million (with 30 percent raised), the Metropolitan Museum of Art some $300 1000000 (with 80 percentage already obtained).⁷ In fact, philanthropist Frederick A. O. Schwartz, Jr., recently told The New York Times that "we've entered a period of institutional excitement comparable only to that which occurred afterward the Civil State of war until World War I when several of the city's great borough and cultural institutions were built."⁸

In Nifty Britain, economist David Sawers'due south comparative study of subsidized and unsubsidized performing arts concluded that major cultural venues would continue to thrive were government subsidies to be eliminated. According to Sawers's adding, 80 per centum of all London theater box office receipts, including ballet and opera, went to unsubsidized theater.⁹ (United kingdom's renowned Glyndebourne opera, for example, relies entirely on individual 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 will blossom 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 offer fiddling more than a subsidy to the well-to-practice. One-5th of direct NEA grants become to multimillion-dollar arts organizations.^eleven Harvard University Political Scientist Edward C. Banfield has noted that the "art public is now, as it has always been, overwhelmingly middle and upper middle class and above average in income-relatively prosperous people who would probably enjoy art about as much in the absence of subsidies."¹² The poor and the middle class, thus, do good less from public art subsidies than does the museum- and orchestra-going upper-centre class. Sawers argues that "those who finance the subsidies through taxes are likely to be different from and poorer than those who do good from the subsidies."¹³ In fact, the $99.5 one thousand thousand that funds the NEA also represents the entire annual revenue enhancement burden for over 436,000 working-class American families.¹⁴

Equally part of the Endowment'south effort to dispel its elitist epitome, Chairman Jane Alexander has led a nationwide campaign painting the NEA as a social welfare programme 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 can transform communities."¹⁵ But despite the heartwarming anecdotes, claims for the therapeutic use of the arts are non supported by empirical scientific evidence. Studies that claim to show the arts prevent crime are methodologically questionable, due to problems of self option. And the arts offer no cure for alcoholism either: Tom Dardis devotes his 292-page scholarly work, The Thirsty Muse, precisely to the high occurrence of alcohol corruption amongst American writers.^xvi

Reason #3: The NEA Discourages Charitable Gifts to the Arts

Defenders of the NEA argue that the much of its do good lies in its power to confer an imprimatur, similar to the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," necessary to encourage individual support of the arts. NEA officials have asserted frequently that by persuading donors who would otherwise not give, Endowment support tin offer a financial "leverage" of upwards to ten times the amount of a federal grant award.¹⁷ At that place is little or no empirical evidence to back up such claims. The only available report of "matching grants"-those designed specifically to stimulate giving- ended that matching grants did not increment total giving to the arts. Instead, "matching grants" announced to shift existing money around from one recipient to some other, "thereby reducing the private resource available to other arts organizations in a specific customs."¹⁸ Indeed, a study by the Association of American Cultures (AAC) revealed that private funders found major museum exhibits, opera, ballet, symphony orchestras, and public television to be "bonny" for donors without an official government stamp.^xix

Economist Tyler Cowen also sees an ominous effect to government arts programs: "Once donors believe that government has accustomed the responsibility for maintaining culture, they volition be less willing to give."²⁰ This analysis is consistent with contempo public statements from foundation executives that the private sector will not make upwards the gap resulting from decreases in NEA funding, despite record levels of individual giving in contempo years. Cowen'southward conclusion: "The regime can best support the arts by leaving them alone, offer background assistance through the tax system and the enforcement of copyright."²¹

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

NEA funding as well threatens the independence of art and of artists. Recognizing how government subsidies threaten artistic inspiration, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that "Beauty will not come at the telephone call of the legislature.... Information technology will come, every bit always, unannounced, and jump upward between the feet of dauntless and hostage men."²² Recent critics echo Emerson'southward creed. McGill University Direction Professor Reuven Brenner has declared: "The NEA'due south opponents have it right. Bureaucratic culture is not 18-carat civilisation.... Information technology 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 culture."²³

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

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

Cowen notes that the "NEA attempts to create a mini-industrial policy for the arts. But governments take a terrible record for choosing futurity winners and losers, whether in business organization or the arts."²⁷ Government subsidies oftentimes tin hurt the quality of art by promoting a new cult of mediocrity. Rice has pointed out that the NEA helps the well-connected and the well-established at the expense of less sophisticated-and perchance more talented-outsiders.²⁸ The NEA thereby reduces the importance of popular appeal for the arts, substituting instead the need to please a third-party government patron, and thus driving a wedge betwixt artists and audiences.

In his major comparative study of subsidized and unsubsidized art in Great Britain, Sawers noted that authorities subsidies actually work to reduce pick and diverseness in the artistic marketplace by encouraging artists to emulate each other in guild 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 Britain.²⁹) In improver, such favoritism endangers funding for otherwise worthy arts organizations merely considering "they do not receive a public arts agency matching grant."^thirty

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

Reason #5: The NEA Will Continue to Fund Pornography

In November 1996, in a ii-1 decision, the 9th U.Southward. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 1992 ruling in the "NEA Four" case of Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes-all "operation artists" whose grant requests were denied on grounds their art lacked merit.³² The Court ruled that the 1990 statutory requirement that the Endowment consider "general standards of decency and respect" in application grants was unconstitutional.³³ The congressional reauthorization of the bureau in 1990 had added this "decency provision" in keeping with recommendations of the Presidential Committee headed by John Brademas and Leonard Garment.

Without such a "decency" standard, the NEA can subsidize whatsoever type of art it chooses. Every bit a upshot, attorney Bruce Fein chosen the Court of Appeals conclusion a recipe for "regime subsidized depravity" that must (if non reversed by the Supreme Courtroom) force Congress to "abolish the NEA, an ignoble experiment that, similar Prohibition, has not improved with age."³⁴ Literary critic Jonathan Yardley, writing in the Washington Mail service, alleged: "Only fools-of whom, alas, in the Ôarts community' at that place are many-would argue that the federal regime is obliged to underwrite obscene, pornographic or otherwise offensive "art."³⁵

There is no shortage of examples of indecent material supported direct or indirectly by the NEA. Notwithstanding, Jane Alexander has never criticized any of these NEA grantees publicly. And the Clinton Administration has all the same to file an appeal of the Ninth Excursion's conclusion. Moreover, no Member of Congress has yet attempted to provide a legislative gear up that would require NEA grant recipients to bide by general standards of decency in their piece of work.

On March 6, 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 press called "Fiction Collective 2," which he described as an "law-breaking to the senses." Hoekstra cited iv Fiction Collective 2 books and noted that the publisher's parent organization had received an additional $45,000 grant to establish a Www site. Co-ordinate to The Washington Times, the NEA granted $25,000 to Fiction Collective 2, which featured works containing sexual torture, incest, kid sexual activity, sadomasochism, and child sex; the "excerpts draw a scene in which a blood brother-sister team rape their younger sister, the torture of a Mexican male prostitute and oral sexual practice betwixt two women."³⁶ Pat Trueman, former Chief of the Kid Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the U.s.a. Department of Justice Criminal Sectionalization, characterized the works as "troubling" and said the NEA posed a "direct threat to the prosecution" of obscenity and child pornography because 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 nothing 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 Brand Movies," which subsidized distribution of films including:

"Ten Cents a Trip the light fantastic toe," a three-vignette video in which "2 women awkwardly discuss their mutual allure." It "depicts bearding bath sexual practice betwixt two men" and includes an "ironic episode of heterosexual phone sexual activity."
"Sex Fish" portrays a "furious montage of oral sex, public residual-room cruising and...tropical fish," the catalog 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 practice lesbians exercise in bed?"
"BloodSisters" reveals a "diverse cross-section of the lesbian [sadomasochistic] customs."

Three other films eye on the sexual or lesbian experiences of girls age 12 and under. "These listings have the appearance of a veritable taxpayer-funded peep testify," said Hoekstra in a letter to NEA Chairman Alexander. He noted that the distributor was circulating films of Annie Sprinkle, a pornographic "performance creative person" who appeared at "The Kitchen," a New York venue receiving NEA support.⁴⁰ In response, The New York Times launched an advertising 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 simple mistakes. But such "mistakes" seem office of a regular blueprint of support for indecency, repeated year subsequently year. This pattern is well-documented in the appendix to this paper.

Reason #6: The NEA Promotes Politically Correct Art

A radical virus of multiculturalism, moreover, has permanently infected the bureau, causing creative efforts to be evaluated past race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation instead of artistic 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 Perchance the almost prominent case of contrary discrimination was the cancellation of a grant to the Hudson Review, which based its selections on "literary merit."⁴⁴

More recently, January Breslauer wrote in The Washington Mail 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'south specifications" and the "fine art world'southward version of affirmative action" has had "a profoundly corrosive effect on the American arts-pigeonholing artists and pressuring them to produce work that satisfies a politically correct agenda rather than their best artistic instincts." NEA funding of "race-based politics" has encouraged ethnic separatism and Balkanization at the expense of a shared American culture. Because of federal dollars, Breslauer discovered, "Artists were routinely placed on bills, in seasons, or in exhibits considering of who they were rather than what kind of art they'd made" and "artistic directors began to push artists toward `purer' (read: stereotypical) expressions of the ethnicity they were paying them to stand for."⁴⁶ The effect, Breslauer ended, is that "most people in the arts establishment go along 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 "art" that offers little more than a incomparably left-wing agenda:

Last summertime, the Phoenix Art Museum, a recipient of NEA funding, presented an showroom featuring: an American flag in a toilet, an American flag made out of human being pare, and a flag on the museum flooring to be stepped upon. Fabian Montoya, an eleven-year-old boy, picked up the American flag to rescue it. Museum curators replaced it, prompting Representative Matt Salmon (R-AZ) and the Phoenix American Legion to applaud the boy'southward patriotism past presenting him with a flag that had flown over the U.South. Capitol. Whereas the American Legion, Senator Bob Dole, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich condemned the showroom, NEA Chairman Alexander remained conspicuously silent.
Creative person 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 however has not 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 $xxx,000 per twelvemonth from the NEA since the early 1980s. The reason for the inquiry was to determine what the NEA knew nearly the activities of one of the leaders of the centre, Gilberto Osorio. Osorio co-founded the center in 1977, and since had been exposed as a commandante in the FMLN guerrilla command during the civil state of war in Republic of el salvador by San Francisco journalist Stephen Schwartz.⁴⁹ One of the FMLN missions undertaken while Osorio had been main of operations was a June 19, 1985, attack on a eatery in San Salvador that killed four U.Southward. Marines and ii civilian employees of the Wang Corporation. In 1982, Osorio reportedly had ordered that any American institute in San Vicente province be executed. Schwartz concluded, "some of their [NEA] grantees may exist guilty of more just crimes confronting good taste."^fifty

Reason #7: The NEA Wastes Resource

Like any federal bureaucracy, the NEA wastes revenue enhancement dollars on authoritative overhead and bureaucracy. Anecdotes of other forms of NEA waste matter are legion. The Cato Institute'due south Sheldon Richman and David Boaz notation that "Thank you to an NEA grantee, the American taxpayers one time paid $1,500 for a poem, `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 creative activities every bit artists are lured from producing fine art to courtship federal grant dollars and even attending demonstrations in Washington, D.C.

There are other ways that the NEA wastes taxation dollars: Writer Alice Goldfarb Marquis estimates that approximately half of NEA funds get to organizations that lobby the regime for more money.⁵² Not only has the NEA politicized art, but because federal grant dollars are fungible, they can exist used for other purposes too the support of quality art. In addition, approximately 19 per centum of the NEA's total budget is spent on administrative expenses-an unusually high figure for a regime program.⁵³

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

Reason #eight: The NEA Is Across Reform

In 1990, the Presidential Commission on the NEA, headed past John Brademas and Leonard Garment, ended that the NEA had an obligation to maintain a high standard of decency and respect considering information technology distributed taxpayer dollars. The contempo tape of the agency, and the November 1996 appellate court decision in the case of the "NEA Four," make it unlikely that the Endowment will be able to e'er award that recommendation. NEA Chairman Alexander has not condemned the continued subsidies for indecent art nor explained how such grant requests managed to go through her "reorganization." Unfortunately, non a single Senator or Representative has asked her to do and then.

Contempo history shows that despite cosmetic "reorganizations" at the NEA, the Endowment is impervious to 18-carat modify 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 Assistants, or Frank Hodsoll in the Reagan Assistants, NEA administrators promise that reorganization will be bring massive change to the bureau. All these efforts have failed. Information technology was, in fact, under Mr. Hodsoll's tenure in the Reagan Assistants 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 have had little outcome. In the words of Alice Goldfarb Marquis, "All Ms. Alexander has done is, to money a phrase, re-accommodate the deckchairs on the Titanic."⁵⁵ Indeed, Alexander has retained veteran NEA executive Ana Steele in a pinnacle management position to this appointment. Steele approved the payment of over $250,000 to the "NEA Four" while serving as interim chairman in 1993.

The NEA claims to have changed, no doubt in hopes of mollifying congressional critics. Yet the NEA has continued to fund organizations that have subsidized materials offensive to ordinary citizens while attempting to recast its public paradigm as a friend of children, families, and instruction. It is a "two-rails" ploy, speaking of family values to the general public and privately of another agenda to the arts lobby. For example, Chairman Alexander has defended NEA fellowships to individual artists, prohibited past Congress after years of scandals. In her congressional testimony of March 13, 1997, she declared: "I ask you again in the strongest terms to lift the ban on support to individual artists."⁵⁶

To transport its signal to the avant garde arts constituency, the NEA continues to fund a handful of "cutting-edge" organizations in each grantmaking wheel. The NEA has even maintained its peer-review panel process used to review grants, by changing its name to "discipline review"; The Heritage Foundation cited this procedure in 1991 every bit ridden with corruption and conflicts of interest, and every bit a major factor in the Endowment's pick of offensive and indecent proposals.⁵⁷

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

Reason #9: Abolishing the NEA Will Prove to the American Public that Congress Is Willing to Eliminate Wasteful Spending

President Clinton proposes to spend $ane.7 trillion in his FY 1998 upkeep. Over the next five years, the Assistants seeks to increase federal spending by $249 billion.⁵⁸ Farther, Clinton also proposes to increase the NEA'due south funding to $119,240,000, a rise of 20 per centum.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 monetary constraint, in which the demand to reduce the federal deficit is forcing fundamental choices about vital needs-such as housing and medical care for the elderly-such boondoggles as the NEA should be among the starting time programs to be eliminated. Representative Wally Herger (R-CA), citing a recent NEA grant to his own constituents (the California Indian Basket Weavers Association), pointedly said that he "does non believe that in an era of tight federal dollars, basket weaving should have a elevation priority in Congress."⁶⁰ Whenever American families have to cut make cuts in their spending, nonessential spending-such every bit amusement expenses-are the offset to become. If Congress cannot stand and eliminate the $99.5 million FY 1997 appropriation for the NEA, how will it exist able to make the example for far more fundamental budget cuts?

Reason #10: Funding the NEA Disturbs the U.S. Tradition of Limited Government

In retrospect, turmoil over the NEA was anticipated, due to the long tradition in the U.s.a. of opposing the use of federal taxation dollars to fund the arts. During the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, delegate Charles Pinckney introduced a movement 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'south suggestion considering of their belief in express, constitutional government. Appropriately, nowhere in its list of powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government does the Constitution specify a ability to subsidize the arts.

Moreover, equally David Boaz of the Cato Institute argues, federal arts subsidies pose the danger of federal control over expression: "Government funding of annihilation 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 about innovative creators discover it more difficult to rise to the tiptop.... But the truthful costs of government funding do not bear witness up on our tax bill. The NEA and other government arts agencies politicize art and jeopardize the principles of democratic government."⁶² The French government, for example, tried to suppress Impressionism through its control of the Academy.

The deep-seated American belief against public support of artists continues today. Public opinion polls, moreover, testify that a majority of Americans favor emptying of the NEA when the agency is mentioned by name.⁶³ A June 1995 Wall Street Journal-Peter Hart poll showed 54 percentage of Americans favored eliminating the NEA entirely versus 38 percentage in favor of maintaining it at any level of funding. An earlier Jan 19, 1995, Los Angeles Times poll found 69 percent of the American people favored cutting the NEA upkeep.⁶⁴ More recently, a poll performed past The Polling Visitor in March 1997 demonstrated that 57 percent of Americans favor the suggestion that "Congress should end funding the NEA with federal taxpayer dollars and instead exit funding decisions with country government and private groups."

Conclusion

Later on more than three decades, the National Endowment for the Arts has failed in its mission to raise cultural life in the Us. Despite numerous attempts to reinvent information technology, the NEA continues to promote the worst excesses of multiculturalism and political correctness, subsidizing fine art that demeans the values of ordinary Americans. As the federal debt soars to over $5 trillion, it is time to terminate the NEA as a wasteful, unjustified, unnecessary, and unpopular federal expenditure. Ending the NEA would be skilful for the arts and adept 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 Man" festival in Santa Monica, California. The festival featured a program actually called "Not for Republicans" in which a operation artist ruminated on "Sex with Newt'southward Mom." The artistic director was Tim Miller (of the "NEA Iv"). Former Clinton adviser Paul Begala agreed that items in the published schedule were obscene.⁶⁵
NEA grants announced in December 1996 included $twenty,000 to the "Woolly Mammoth Theater" venue for Tim Miller, ane of the "NEA Four" performance artists. He had stripped twice, talked well-nigh picking up homosexual prostitutes, and asked members of the audience to blow on his genitals in a 1995 product entitled "Naked Breath." The NEA also awarded $25,000 to "Camera News, Inc.," also known as "Tertiary World Newsreel," a New York distributor of Marxist revolutionary propaganda films.⁶⁶
In June 1996, Representative Hoekstra raised questions well-nigh "The Watermelon Woman." The film was funded by a $31,500 NEA grant. It contained what one review described as the "hottest dyke sex scene ever recorded on celluloid." "I had loftier hopes that Jane Alexander would foreclose further outrages by the NEA, but apparently fifty-fifty she-nice lady that she is-lacks the power and the will to put an finish to the NEA'south obsession with handing out the taxpayers' money to self-proclaimed `artists' whose mentality is simply and then much flotsam floating effectually 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 "it near goes without maxim that this America-as-a merde [French for excrement] show is supported past 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 Sunday Maine-Telegram, reported on March 3, 1996, that William L. Pope, a Professor at Bates College, received $20,000 grant in the final round of NEA grants to individual performance artists. He intended to use the money for at to the lowest degree two projects. In one, he would chain himself to an ATM machine in New York Urban center wearing only his underwear. In the other, he "plans to walk the streets of New York wearing a half dozen-foot-long white tube like a codpiece. He's rigged information technology upwardly so he can put an egg in one cease, and it volition roll out the faux, white penis." The Maine-Telegram noted that the NEA private fellowship program "will become out with a bang, at least with this grant."
"Sex Is," a pornographic video displaying the NEA credit, is still in distribution.
Bob Flanagan'due south "Super Masochist," featuring sexual torture, and an Andres Serrano exhibit featuring "Piss Christ" were shown at the NEA-funded New Museum in New York City. Flanagan (now deceased) was recently the star of a film at the Sundance Motion picture Festival entitled "Sick," which showed him nailing his male organs to a wooden plank. "Sick" is likewise on the 1997 schedule of the New Directors/New Films series co-sponsored by the Lincoln Eye for the Performing Arts and the Museum of Modern Art in New York Metropolis. Both institutions have been NEA grant recipients, and Lincoln Center principal Nathan Leventhal is one of President Clinton's nominees for the National Quango on the Arts. His nomination is awaiting in the Senate.
Ron Athey'southward video of his ritual torture and bloodletting, subsidized indirectly through tour promotion at NEA venues like Walker Art Gallery and PS 122 in New York. (Walker Art Eye grants actually increased in the twelvemonth later the museum booked Athey.)
Joel-Peter Witkin, a four-time recipient of NEA individual fellowships whose photograph of severed heads and chopped up bodies were displayed past Senator Helms on the Senate floor 2 years ago as show of the moral corruption of the NEA (Helms discussed i featuring a man's caput existence 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 show as "gruesome."
Karen Finley, besides of the "NEA Four," brought her new "functioning slice" to an NEA-funded venue in Boston.
Holly Hughes, another of the "NEA 4" (and recipient of a 1994 private fellowship), brought her act to an NEA-funded institution in suburban Virginia.
New York Urban center's New Museum, an NEA-funded operation, hosted a retrospective of the work of Andres Serrano, which once more included an showroom of "Piss Christ."
New York'south Museum of Modernistic Fine art, funded by the NEA, hosted an NEA-funded exhibit of Bruce Nauman's piece of work, also displayed at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, which included neon signs reading "Southward- and Die" and "F- and Dice."
The NEA literature program subsidized the author of a book entitled The Gay 100, which claims that such historical figures as Saint Augustine were homosexuals.

Endnotes

^one Laurence Jarvik is an Offshoot Scholar at The Heritage Foundation, Editor of The National Endowments: A Disquisitional Symposium (Second Thoughts Books, 1995), and author of PBS: Backside the Screen (Prima, 1997).

² Alvin Toffler, The Culture Consumers: A Study of Art and Affluence in America (New York: Random Business firm, 1973), p. 188.

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

^iv Artistic America: Report of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, Washington, D.C., February 1997

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

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

⁷ Judith Miller, "Big Arts Groups Starting Drives for New Funds," The New York Times, February iii, 1997, p. 1

⁸ Ibid.

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

¹⁰ William Craig Rice, "I Hear America Singing: The Arts Volition Flower Without the NEA," Policy Review, March/Apr 1997, pp. 37-45.

¹¹ Derrick Max, "Staff Briefing on the National Endowment for the Arts," U.S. House of Representatives Commission on Pedagogy and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, p. 29.

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

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

¹⁴ Heritage Tabulations from 1993 IRS Public Apply File.

¹⁵ Jane Alexander, Testimony to the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, March 13, 1997.

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

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

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

¹⁹ 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 Press, pp. 22-31.

²¹ Ibid.

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

²³ Reuven Brenner, "Culture By Committee," The Wall Street Periodical, 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 Benchmark, November 1983, pp. ane-5.

²⁶ James K. Glassman, "No Money for the Arts," The Washington Postal service, April 1, 1997, p. A17.

²⁷ Cowen, "Market Liberalization vs. Government Reaction," pp. two-22.

²⁸ William Craig Rice, The NewsHour, debate moderated by Elizabeth Farnsworth, March ten, 1997.

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

³⁰ Pankratz, Multiculturalism and Public Arts Policy, p. 55.

³¹ Toffler, The Civilisation Consumers, p. 200.

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

³³ Affirming opinion of Judge James R. Browning, U.S. Ninth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals, filed November 5, 1996, in Karen Finley et al., five. 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 offense to the Senses,' Lawmakers Lip Arts Agency for Aiding Prurient Publications," The Washington Times, March 8, 1997, p. A2.

³⁷ Patrick A. Trueman, Director of Governmental Affairs, American Family unit Association, Testimony before the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, March 5, 1997.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Representative Pete Hoekstra, letter to NEA Chairman Jane Alexander, November 16, 1996.

^xl Ibid.

⁴¹ Frank Rich, "Lesbian Lookout," The New York Times, March xiii, 1997, p. A27.

⁴² Run into 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 Real Law-breaking: 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 Near Public Media, Vol. 5, No. i (Jump 1996), p. 44.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 46

^l 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: Basic Books, 1995).

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

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

⁵⁵ Alice Goldfarb Marquis, letter to writer, Feb 7, 1997.

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

⁵⁷ Robert Knight, "The National Endowment for the Arts: Misusing Taxpayer's Money," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 803, January 18, 1991; Robert Knight, "The National Endowment: It's Time to Free the Arts," Family unit Inquiry Council Insight, January 1995, p. i.

⁵⁸ "The Era of Large Government is Dorsum: Talking Points on President Clinton's Fiscal Yr 1998 Budget," Heritage Foundation Talking Points No. 17, February 24, 1997, p. 1.

⁵⁹ Appendix to the Budget of the United states of america, p. 1080.

^lx Judith Miller, "Federal Arts Bureau Slices its Smaller Pie," The New York Times, April 10, 1997, p. B6.

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

⁶² Cowen, "Market Liberalization vs. Regime 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 every bit usual' with its selections," The Washington Times, December 19, 1996.

⁶⁷ Julia Duin, "Black lesbian film likely to rekindle arts-funding furor NEA defends graphic one-act," The Washington Times, June 14, 1996.

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

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