Arts Agency Forced to Fight Off an Armey By Richard Craig July 11, 1997

Here at the University of Michigan, we're gearing up for the annual Ann Arbor Art Fair, which will fill the streets of our campustown area with art of every kind (and with ungodly huge crowds of people). At least in this community, the arts would appear to be thriving.

Can this really be the same week in which the House of Representatives voted to kill the National Endowment for the Arts?

Thanks to the drum-beating of a few congressional cretins, America may lose an invaluable (if sometimes abused) national resource, and send a message to the private sector and other donors that art is not a valued commodity in this nation.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey and his army of, uh, followers, have led the charge to wipe out the NEA. Armey currently claims that rather than simply eliminating the agency, the government should redistribute its $90 million annual budget to individual arts agencies. Yet it is no secret that this is a ruse -- it was Armey that first proposed doing away with the NEA entirely in the name of cost-cutting. When that failed, he proposed cutting the agency's budget by a cool 90 percent. Clearly, this is not someone who values the arts in any way.

Armey now claims that he believes this is something better handled locally -- that it's just one more thing the federal government should return to the states. Yet it's no secret that many states would love to get their hands on arts money, point out some of the more bizarre displays of recent years, then announce that "in the name of decency," they were reallocating it to pay for the pet project of the week.

While local yokels may not have any great appreciation for the arts, in other countries government support of artistic projects has been a positive boon. To cite an example close to home, the National Film Board of Canada has won literally thousands of international awards for the quality of work produced under its auspices. The Film Board has helped not only independent producers, but also commercial filmmakers, resulting in a rich tradition of quality films. In fact, the Canadian government has even extended benefits to foreign filmmakers -- which is why many American producers head north of the border these days to make movies.

The outcry to banish the NEA, which festered for years as certain outlandish displays received government funding, reached its zenith with the Robert Mapplethorpe erotic photo exhibit a few years ago. While Armey and Jesse Helms targeted this show and hauled out some of the more egregious examples of exaggerated projects to support their outrage, a question remained unanswered -- just exactly what percentage of the entire NEA budget was spent on these projects? The overwhelming majority of the NEA's money was spent on work that, while it might not all be deemed "good," would offend neither Armey nor Helms.

While some might argue for an arts commissioner to make sure that approved projects did not offend "public taste," the question remains -- who would choose the commissioner, and what would the strictures be? When you start talking about enforcing standards, you're on touchy ground. None other than John F. Kennedy said that "The arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art."

The most hypocritical aspect of all of this is that the same people who are campaigning to keep artists from expressing themselves in "offensive" ways are those who argue for free markets in economic matters. In conservative economics, the market determines what will succeed and fail. Yet when it comes to art, apparently the American people are not fit to judge what is worthwhile. Apparently it's not enough to express outrage and protest when something offends you -- you have to make sure that no one else has the opportunity to judge it for themselves.

Sometimes it's awfully hard to remember we're in a land founded on freedom of thought and expression.

©1997 Richard Craig. All rights reserved.

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