Word: nea
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...NEA's record is long and honorable. It has fostered innumerable works, shows and performances that would never have had a chance without its modest underwriting but were of real value. And some of its money is wasted. Some NEA grants help produce lousy or ephemeral art because lots of art is ephemeral or lousy, subsidized or not. If Congress cannot be sure whether a new bomber or missile will work before committing billions to it, how can some arts panel be sure that Anna Anybody, recipient of $15,000 for a photographic project, will go on to become...
There is, as is always the case when money is being handed out anywhere, a certain amount of logrolling and favoritism among the peer groups that review applications, and a peevish sense of entitlement among many applicants on the basis of class or race or gender. But the NEA's peer-group system has at least the merit of being a tad more democratic and informed than the fiats of a minister...
...NEA advocates who claim that conservative assaults constitute censorship of free speech are both wrong and right. They are wrong because Government refusal to pay for a work of art is not censorship but a withdrawal of favor: the artist is still free to do whatever he/she wants, only not on public money...
...wider sense, the advocates are right. Helms' record of opposition to free expression is shameful. The direct-mail attacks, plus the restrictive anti-obscenity pledge, coming just as the NEA charter is up for renewal, have caused immense nervousness in the endowment. Its new director, John Frohnmayer, has wavered under right-wing pressure; one cannot imagine the formidable Nancy Hanks, who ran the NEA from 1969 to 1977, quailing before the likes of Helms and Rohrabacher. The chill makes the NEA much more circumspect about awards, especially to performance artists. And the NEA has limply allowed the opposition to frame...
Support for the NEA is stronger in the Senate than in the House, probably because the whole House is up for re-election this year, whereas only a third of the Senate is. Plenty of folk on Capitol Hill have been sandbagged into acting as though a vote for the NEA is a vote for blasphemy, pederasty and buggery. They should think again. And so should those who imagine support of the arts would be better served by putting the NEA's budget in the hands of the states, an alternative Republican proposal that would trivialize arts funding...