Word: nea
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...soon as the dewlaps of Senator Helms' patriarchal wrath started shaking at its door, the Corcoran caved in and canceled Mapplethorpe's show. Unappeased, the ayatullah of North Carolina proposed a measure that would forbid the NEA to give money to "promote, disseminate or produce" anything "obscene or indecent" or derogatory of "the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or non-religion" -- which, taken literally, comprises any image or belief of any kind, religious or secular...
...effect, this would make the NEA hostage to every crank, ideologue and God botherer in America. A grant for an exhibition of Gothic ivories could be pulled on the grounds that the material was offensive to Jews (much medieval art is anti-Semitic), to Muslims (what about those scenes of false prophets in hell with Muhammad?) or, for that matter, to atheists offended by the intrusion of religious propaganda into a museum. A radical feminist could plausibly argue that her "nonreligious" beliefs were offended by the sexism of Rubens' nudes or Picasso's Vollard Suite. Doubtless a fire worshiper could...
...short, what the amendment proposes is a loony parody of cultural democracy in which everyone becomes his or her own Cato the Censor. Clearly, Jesse Helms has no doubt that the NEA must be punished if it strays from what he fancies to be the center line of American ethical belief. The truth is, of course, that no such line exists -- not in a society as vast, various and eclectic as the real America. Helms' amendment might have played in Papua, where a Government spokesman defended the banning of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ on the grounds...
...problem is compounded by the fact that the NEA is not a ministry of culture. It does not commission large works to reflect glory on the state, or set firm policy for other institutions. Its $169 million budget is tiny -- less than one-third the projected price of one Stealth bomber, or, to put it another way, only ten times the recent cost of a single painting by Jasper Johns. The French government spends three times the NEA's budget each year on music, theater and dance alone ($560 million in 1989). German government spending on culture runs at around...
...fetish of supply-side culture was one of the worst legacies of the Reagan years. Though the Great Communicator was frustrated in his attempt to abolish the Endowment in 1981, he made sure that more Government money went to military bands than to the entire budget of the NEA. Oom-pah-pah culture to , fit a time of oom-pah-pah politics. After all, who could say that the arts needed support outside the marketplace at a time when star orchestra conductors were treated like sacred elephants and the art market was turning into a freakish potlatch for new money...