A History of the National Endowment for the Arts: Chapter 7

 

A Supplement to the Regional Theater Series

[Welcome back to Rick On Theater’s “A History of the National Endowment for the Arts” after the pause to post Kirk Woodward’s “Great Directors at Work,” published on 25 November.  Chapter 7 of the NEA report, “National Endowment for the Arts: A History, 1965-2008,” covers the chairmanship (1993-97) of actress Jane Alexander (b. 1942), spanning the Arts Endowment’s 30th anniversary as Alexander works to repair the damage incurred during the administration of John Frohnmayer. 

[As I have all along, I recommended that visitors to ROT who are just encountering this series go back first to the beginning and read Chapters 1 through 6, published on 4, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20 November, respectively.  The NEA’s history is presented chronologically, so it’ll make more sense if read in order.]

“NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS: A HISTORY, 1965-2008”
edited by Mark Bauerlein with Ellen Grantham
(National Endowment for the Arts, 2009)
 

p a r t  I 

The HISTORY of the NEA

 

chapter 7

What Is to Be Done?

In 1993 the Arts Endowment’s budget was largely intact. The scars of the previous four years were civic and political, but in financial terms the NEA had remained unaffected. In 1987, its budget had stood at $165 million [$380.4 million in 2023], and in 1992, with a Democratic majority in Congress and George H. W. Bush in the White House, the Arts Endowment’s budget was at a historic high of $176 million [$330.8 million today].

John Frohnmayer had been gone for almost a year [he resigned on 21 February 1992] when William Jefferson Clinton was inaugurated as president [20 January 1993]. From May 1992 to January 1993, Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice [previously Senior Deputy Chairman of the NEA for a year] had served as acting chairman. (Radice would go on to posts in the Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities during the presidency of George W. Bush, and would eventually become director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services [sub-agency of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities with the NEA, the NEH, and the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities (see Chapter 4, 14 November 2023)] in May 2006.) During the transition Madeleine Kunin, deputy secretary of Education, held the position of acting chairman of the Arts Endowment, while the day-to-day operations of the agency were managed by Acting Senior Deputy Chairman Ana Steele, the only NEA staffer remaining who had been employed by the agency from its inception.

On October 8, 1993, Jane Alexander was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as the Arts Endowment’s sixth chairman. The first artist to occupy the position, Jane Alexander was born in Boston in 1939 and educated at Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Edinburgh. She had never been involved in party politics, although she had been active in the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. She was an accomplished stage and screen actress who had won a Tony Award in 1969 for her performance in The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler, a production mounted at Washington’s Arena Stage [1967-70] with Arts Endowment support [and then to Broadway, 1968-70]. Alexander had also received an Oscar nomination for the movie version of the same work, released in 1970, and an Emmy in 1981 for her performance as a concentration camp prisoner in the network television movie Playing for Time [1980]. Another Emmy would come in 2005 for her performance in Warm Springs [2005].

Alexander came to the Arts Endowment at an extremely difficult point in its history. As reported in the New York Times, Alexander testified at her Senate confirmation hearing in September 1993 that her priorities would include informing the country that the great majority of the projects financed by the Arts Endowment were non-controversial. Over the next four years she traveled to all 50 states and Puerto Rico to examine the status of the arts and to improve understanding of the role of the Arts Endowment and its work. Despite her leadership, the agency underwent massive budget cuts and compulsory changes. Through this crisis, Alexander managed to keep the agency operating, and oversaw the reorganization necessitated by the reduction of appropriations. By the time she left the Endowment in 1997, the immediate threat to the agency’s existence had passed. Its budget had been drastically reduced, its regulations had been tightened, and its operating freedom had been narrowed. However, media scrutiny was still heavy, conflicts with artists were unresolved, and Congressional disapproval remained firm.

Alexander’s Beginning

In her memoir, Command Performance (2000), Alexander recalled being handed a briefing book intended to prepare her for “questions about controversy.” Shortly after being nominated, she noted that she “was fortunate that [she] had seen none of the works in question and could respond noncommittally when asked about them.” The briefing book suggested that she declare she was “not thoroughly knowledgeable about the actions taken by the former Administration . . . nor . . . about current controversies. In the future I look forward to working with the Senate on those issues and all other issues regarding the Endowment.”

In her written statement submitted at her Senate confirmation hearing, Alexander stated: “I believe strongly that the sound and fury of the past few years over [a] handful of controversial grants must end . . . I cannot promise that under my chairmanship the arts will be free of controversy. The very essence of art, after all, is to hold the mirror up to nature . . . I can, however, assure Congress that I will follow the statutory guidelines on funding to the very best of my ability to ensure that grants are given for the highest degree of artistic merit and excellence. . . . My goal for the arts is that the best reaches the most.”

Yet, disputes over content continued to bedevil the Arts Endowment. The lawsuit filed by the NEA Four had progressed through the court system and, in fact, changed its focus as changes were made in the Arts Endowment’s legislation. The initial complaints by the artists were, one, that their applications were rejected for political reasons; and two, that the contents of their applications were released to the public— a violation of the Privacy Act. When the “standard of decency” provision was included in the NEA’s 1990 legislation, however, the plaintiffs added a First Amendment count to their case. A district court found in favor of the NEA Four in 1992, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling. In June 1993, at the recommendation of the Department of Justice, the Arts Endowment settled the complaint of Finley, Hughes, Miller, and Fleck, who had claimed their rights had been abridged when Frohnmayer rejected their grants in 1990. The NEA followed the Justice Department’s recommendations on the basis that Chairman Frohnmayer had failed to follow “legal procedures” in the case [see Chapter 6, 20 November 2023]. This was only a partial resolution, however, pertaining only to their specific applications. The artists continued their lawsuit, joined by the National Association of Artists’ Organizations, challenging the constitutionality of the “decency” provision. The months-old Clinton Administration appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which would later rule in favor of the Arts Endowment in 1998.

Amid these disputes, however, Alexander found much cause for optimism in the agency’s programs. In her first annual chairman’s statement in the 1993 Annual Report, Alexander wrote with satisfaction about “the transformation of the old Office of International Activities as the full-fledged International Program . . . One of the new program’s first concrete achievements was creation of the United States/Canada/Mexico Creative Artists’ Residencies, the first trilateral exchange program of its kind.” She also reported on the expansion of ArtsLink, supporting exchange by U.S. artists and arts administrators with their peers in Eastern and Central Europe.

During Alexander’s tenure, the publication Dancemakers, a study warning of under-financing of “the very creators of America’s great cultural export, dance,” which Alexander described as “an endangered species,” was issued. Other noteworthy outcomes of her term included a new grant to the American Heritage Center and Art Museum at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and two projects supported by the Challenge Grants Program [see Chapter 3, 11 November 2023]: the expansion of Black Culture on Tour in America, run by the Carter G. Woodson Foundation, to include a Mid-Atlantic and New England touring circuit; and the establishment of a filmmaking academy at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Innovative music initiatives included Chamber Music Rural Residencies, in Georgia, Iowa, and Kansas, while a Media Arts grant supported a 26-episode radio series Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions [1994; National Public Radio (NPR) and the Smithsonian Institution].

A National Meeting

In 1994 [14-16 April], the Arts Endowment hosted in Chicago the first federally sponsored national conference on the arts, “Art-21: Art Reaches into the Twenty-first Century.” Underwritten by 18 corporations and foundations, the event brought together more than 1,000 participants to discuss national arts policy, with four topics: the artist in society, lifelong learning in the arts, the arts and technology, and expanding resources for the arts.

The conference opened with an address by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, who spoke about expanding resources for the arts and concentrated on an issue the Arts Endowment had made central to its work for decades: outreach to distressed communities. “The arts can help fight violence, crime, and gang problems in our inner cities,” Cisneros affirmed. The Washington Post described Art-21 as a convocation that “wrestled with doing innovative programs with less funding.” Noting that the “buying power” of the agency had declined 46 percent in the previous decade, the Post noted that for “Cisneros and others . . . the only way to justify increased arts funding is to broaden the role of arts in society.” Addressing the gathering by video broadcast, President Clinton said that the mission of the NEA was “to enliven creative expression and to make the arts more accessible to Americans of all walks of life.”

Art-21 was one of the significant projects of Alexander’s chairmanship. She defined federal policy as chiefly about guidance and assistance, emphasizing that art starts at the local level. She stated, “Open up the doors to your institutions and to your workshops . . . We then begin person by person, child by child, to build a new America.”

The sentiment was ambitious. One logical place for making such a great change, especially at a time of political crisis, was in the field of education. In 1994, with the support of the Endowment, the National Standards for Education in the Arts, which detailed basic requirements for “what every young American should know and be able to do in dance, music, theater, and the visual arts,” was published. The report, which included benchmarks for each major arts field from kindergarten through high school, appeared simultaneously with other Clinton Administration reforms in education. Later it helped educators at the state level to draft content and skill standards for curricula for grades K through 12.

At the same time, the Arts Endowment Research Division released Trends in Artist Occupations: 1970 to 1990, which described the rising popularity of the arts as a career path. The report analyzed data from the U.S. Census to reveal a 127 percent increase in people identifying themselves as artists over the two decades.

In her second chairman’s statement, in 1994, Alexander quoted Walt Whitman, who had declared, “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Among other things, she stressed the emerging use of technology to “share art and ideas” and linkages between donors, arts organizations, and communities. The federal government was already beginning to plan Millennium Projects in anticipation of 2000, and Alexander endorsed a statement by President Clinton that “our dedication to the arts today will shape our civilization tomorrow.”

Thirtieth Anniversary—and a Decisive Budget Battle

In 1995, the Arts Endowment celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. In the two previous fiscal years, Congress had trimmed the NEA’s budget from $174 million to $170 million [$321 to $313.7 million today], and then from $170 to $162 million [$313.1 to $298.4 million]. Agency staff was also reduced. These small cuts, however, reflected only the beginning of a shift in Congressional support. A major restructuring of the NEA had begun, and the most severe and debilitating cuts would come in 1996.

The budget and staff cutbacks reflected the impact of an aggressive strategy directed against the very existence of the Arts Endowment by a group of Republican legislators under the leadership of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich [R-GA]. During the 1994 [Congressional] election campaign, many Republicans ran on a political platform called the “Contract with America” that included a call for the elimination of the Arts Endowment. The Republicans had won and were now in the majority in both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. As part of the new political reality, chairmanship of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee—with authority over funding of the Arts and Humanities Endowments—transferred from Sid Yates (D-IL) to Ralph Regula (R-OH).

In a January 8, 1995, op-ed in the Washington Post, columnist George Will exhorted Republican legislators to “Give Them the Ax,” referring to the two Endowments and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Will wrote, “Because government breeds more government and develops a lobbying infrastructure to defend itself, every state now has a humanities council.” While leaders in the arts regarded it as the expansion of public support for culture throughout the land, Will labeled the Arts Endowment a pork-barrel scheme. Will concluded, “If Republicans merely trim rather than terminate these three agencies, they will affirm that all three perform appropriate federal functions and will prove that the Republican ‘revolution’ is not even serious reform.”

The threat facing the Arts Endowment was no longer simply more budget cuts, but the threat of total elimination. The agency had not been authorized since 1993, leaving it vulnerable. Authorization committees gave advocates and critics an additional playing field in both chambers. In May 1995, Representatives William Goodling (R-PA) and Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) introduced legislation that would reduce appropriations for the Arts Endowment and its sister agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities for fiscal years 1996, 1997, and 1998 with complete elimination of funds by October 1998. Although the authorization bill was voted out of the House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, it was never voted upon by the full House. A similar bill introduced by Representative Phil Crane (R-IL) gained 33 co-sponsors but failed to be considered by a committee.

Meanwhile in the Senate, the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, chaired by Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-KS) took up reauthorization supported by Senators James Jeffords (R-VT), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), and Al Simpson (R-WY). At one of four hearings, Chair Kassebaum declared, “There is support for the work of the National Endowment for the Arts” and added “Clearly we have to answer some constituent concerns that really do still question whether this is a function of federal government.” Kassebaum was among several Republican lawmakers to offer legislative proposals in the debate over the NEA. She introduced an amendment that would trim NEA money by 5 percent per year and used the opportunity to speak out against a grant to a California arts center that ran performances on sexual themes.

The NEA remained intact but with lower funding levels. The House Appropriations Committee had slashed the agency’s FY 1996 budget by 39 percent from $162 million to $99 million [$287.6 to $175.8 million]. A thorough reorganization followed, which required severe cuts in staffing. Eighty-nine employees were let go through the Reduction in Force (RIF) process, and 11 who were eligible chose to retire. In total the Arts Endowment’s staff shrunk by more than half.

Michael Faubion, later to become NEA’s director of Council Operations and deputy director of Government Affairs, recalled the difficulties of the drastic downsizing, “During this time, there were constant rumors of what would happen if the agency’s budget was cut in half, or worse. The potential for layoffs was very troublesome. A few staff members left before this could happen to them, knowing that the last to have begun work would be the first to go. Once the decision was made about who had to go and who had to stay, all of us still had to work side by side for three months—very uncomfortable.” The reductions took effect in late 1995 and early 1996. Simultaneously, the federal government was shut down for the month of January. Faubion remembers, “Those of us who still had jobs were instructed not to come into work. Then, the worst snowstorm to hit Washington in years came at the same time [Blizzard of 1996, 6-7 January, with up to 30" of snow]. When we finally returned to work, we had completely different offices and jobs, and different people to work with. It was a surreal experience.”

Surviving the Budget Cut and Congressional Reforms

The budget cut was much larger than any previously imposed, but at the same time the agency earned national honors. January 1995 saw the premiere of American Cinema, a new series on public television, supported by the Arts Endowment as part of the millennium celebration of twentieth-century American art. Chairman Alexander accepted a Tony Award on behalf of the agency, which recognized the significant work of the Arts Endowment in the expansion of American regional theater. Further, in 1995, for the first time, the NEA National Heritage Fellowships were presented at the White House with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton presiding.

In her Congressional testimony that year, Alexander defended the Arts Endowment. She declared, “A great nation supports and encourages the education of all its people. A great nation recognizes that the life of the spirit, of the human mind, is what endures through the passing on from generation to generation of a heritage that says: this is who we are, this is who we were, and this is who we will be in days to come. That heritage is manifested through the arts, the humanities and the sciences. That heritage is what we seek to keep alive at the Endowment for the Arts.” Later, in the NEA’s 1995 Annual Report, Alexander stated “the most poignant of all our partnerships came about in response to tragedy.” Following the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, the Arts Endowment led a design initiative to foster community reconstruction. A design workshop convened entitled “We Will Be Back: Oklahoma City Rebuilds.” In 1996, a Rockefeller Foundation report showed that, notwithstanding the cuts, the Arts Endowment remained the largest single financial supporter of the arts in America. Still, the chairman was forced to face the new reality that “with fewer dollars, we must become more resourceful.” And so Alexander instituted several “sweeping changes” to restructure the agency:

• Reduction of 17 discipline-based grant programs to four funding divisions: Heritage and Preservation, Education and Access, Creation and Presentation, Planning and Stabilization;

• Addition of combined arts panels—a new layer of review—over the new four funding divisions;

• Establishment of Leadership Initiatives to give the agency programmatic flexibility.

Of the grant-making changes undertaken during her tenure, none was more painful for Chairman Alexander than the Congressional mandate to eliminate all individual artist grants, with the exception of the Literature Fellowships. This change would remain an ongoing point of controversy in the artistic community for the next decade.

Over the next three years (1996-1998), Congress instituted a series of dramatic reforms affecting the agency’s operations and grantmaking policies including:

• Elimination of grants to individuals with the exceptions of the field of literature and honorific fellowships for jazz musicians and folk and traditional artists;

• Elimination of grants to organizations for the purpose of sub-granting to other organizations or artists, except for regional, state, and local arts agencies;

• Elimination of seasonal or general operating support grants to organizations;

• Authority for the NEA to solicit, accept, receive, and invest gifts or bequests of money, property, and services;

• Capping of agency funding to any one particular state at 15 percent (excluding multi-state projects);

• Reduction of the National Council on the Arts from 26 to 14 private members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and the addition of six ex-officio seats for members of Congress appointed by the House and Senate leadership;

• Increased percentage of program funds allocated to state arts agencies from 35 percent to 40 percent.

The Congressional reforms strengthened language contained in the agency’s 1990 authorization that funding priority be given to underserved populations. Congress also required that the NEA establish a separate grant category for projects that are national in scope, or that provide access to the arts in communities in underserved states.

The Arts Endowment had previously functioned as a compartmentalized grant-making body, with financing awarded through specific arts disciplines. Under the old structure, for example, symphony orchestras competed with each other for grants from the NEA’s symphony budget. Under the new reforms, a symphony orchestra would compete against a dance company or a literary magazine, whose project fell in the same division, such as Education and Access.

According to Alexander, the new structure would ensure equitable opportunities for support, but would be more rigorous. In addition, the new structure would more accurately reflect cross-fertilization among disciplines. She pointed out that “contemporary art often marries genres—poetry and song, digital art with film, design and drama,” adding that “one of the outcomes that we hope for is collaboration among arts organizations, not only for fiduciary reasons, but for aesthetic growth and experimentation.” (This new arrangement proved temporary, however, and by 2005 grants were awarded again for projects in specific disciplines.

As the severe cutbacks were implemented, the Arts Endowment continued generating fresh and exciting projects. In 1996, the American Canvas project began, with meetings in cities such as Charlotte, North Carolina; Columbus, Ohio; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; Rock Hill, South Carolina; Salt Lake City, Utah; and San Antonio, Texas. American Canvas hosted discussions of arts support in these cities and improved strategies for arts integration into communities. Open Studio, a project for free Internet access to arts organizations in all 50 states, along with a mentoring program for ten sites to be used by artists on the World Wide Web, also began in 1996 in partnership with the Benton Foundation [nonprofit organization focused on using media for the public good, particularly for educational purposes].

The Battle Continues

In 1997, the NEA faced multiple efforts to abolish it. Although Congress had imposed enormous budget cuts, House Speaker Gingrich once again targeted the Arts Endowment for liquidation. In April, Gingrich told a Washington news conference that rich celebrities and entertainment executives should donate their own funds to establish a private endowment, or “tax-deductible private trust.” Hollywood personalities including actor Alec Baldwin, speaking for the Creative Coalition, an entertainment industry lobby, rebuffed the suggestion. Baldwin commented, “Arts belong at the national table.” But public intellectuals of a free-market bent, such as economics professor Tyler Cowen of George Mason University [state university in Fairfax County, Virginia], backed the proposal for a private arts endowment, which Cowen argued would “decentralize taste and promote diversity.”

On June 26, 1997, the FY 1998 appropriations bill for the Interior and related agencies was voted out of the House Appropriations Committee with $10 million [$17.5 million (from 1997 dollars)] for the NEA, just enough money to shut the agency down. Before the House floor debate on the bill occurred, a rule was passed, by a vote of 217-216 that allowed both a point of order against the unauthorized agency and for the presentation of an amendment to provide block grants to the states for arts education. The deciding vote was cast when Representative John McHugh (R-NY) switched sides. McHugh insisted that while he “always felt the government has a role in arts funding,” he was “looking for a way to do it more effectively.”

When the House took up the appropriations bill on July 11, Congressman Phil Crane (R-IL) raised the point of order against the NEA and it was automatically accepted, leaving the agency with zero funding. Congressman Vern Ehlers (R-MI) offered the block grant amendment giving $80 million [$139.8 million] to state arts agencies, as well as local school boards to subsidize arts education. The Ehlers amendment was defeated by a vote of 191 to 238, leaving zero funding for the NEA.

As the bill moved to the Senate, President Clinton came to the Arts Endowment’s defense, promising to veto the appropriations bill if it did not contain at least $99.5 million [$173.8 million] for the Arts Endowment. But the fight had just shifted to a different chamber. Champions of the NEA appeared on both sides of the aisle in the Senate, including the Chairman of the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, Slade Gorton (R-WA). Senator Gorton kept his pledge to defend the agency and restored $100 million [$174.7 million] for the NEA in the Interior bill.

More attempts were made in the Senate to abolish the NEA. One attack focused on sexual content in artistic expression led by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and by a new proponent of eliminating the agency, Senator John Ashcroft (R-MO). Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) put forth a plan to privatize both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities over a five-year period declaring the Endowments were “out of touch with the public.” Other Senators registered objections to the non-democratic distribution of federal funding. Senator Tim Hutchinson (R-AR) assailed what he perceived as the centralization of federal arts grants in six cities to the exclusion of the rest of America, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) attempted to redirect more funds to the states.

Finally on October 18, the Senate passed by a vote of 93 to 3 an appropriations bill containing $100 million [$174.7 million] for the NEA and a new provision for the agency to solicit and accept private funds. When the bill moved to conference, Interior Appropriations Chairmen Senator Gorton and Representative Ralph Regula (R-OH) brokered a compromise that successfully assuaged Congressional critics. For FY 1998, the National Endowment for the Arts would receive $98 million [$169.5 million] and instructions from Congress that permanently altered the agency’s mission and operations well into the next decade.

The Alexander Legacy

The number of total grants awarded by the NEA dropped from 4,000 in 1995 to 1,100 in 1997. Yet the Arts Endowment had survived, despite strong Congressional opposition. Alexander had completed four years in the chairmanship, and she remained a strong advocate for federal funding of the arts. Soon after her swearing-in, she began touring the country, reintroducing the Arts Endowment and its mission to communities large and small. No previous chair had traveled so extensively across America. Alexander became a nationally visible spokesperson for public support of the arts—something none of her predecessors had ever attempted. In House testimony in 1997, she had declared, “We are the engine that drives other public and private investment in the arts, and we are not a drain on the economy by any standard of measurement.”

During Alexander’s chairmanship, the NEA suffered severe budget cuts as well as reductions in staff, programs, and resources. Interest groups and political leaders of diverse ideologies continued to target the Arts Endowment for elimination. According to the Washington Post, Alexander had “regained solid support from a broad swath of political moderates.” She announced that she would leave the chairmanship at the end of her four-year term in October 1997. She called the respite “a chance to breathe,” and the Post concluded that she also had “won that for the Arts Endowment.” In her final judgment she said, “It is a testament to the citizens of America who love the arts in their community that the Endowment is alive. . . . These citizens are a pure force in an impure world and our society needs more of them.”

[The next installment of “A History of the National Endowment for the Arts,” Chapters 8, “Broadening the Agency’s Reach,” and Chapter 9, “In Dark Hours,” will cover the administrations of folklorist and author Bill Ivey (b. 1944), NEA chairman from 1998 to 2001, and musician and educator Michael Hammond (1932-2002), chairman in 2002.  Please come back to ROT for the continuation of the serialization of “National Endowment for the Arts: A History, 1965-2008,” which will be posted on Sunday. 3 December.]