2/01/01 10:40 a.m.
Time for Change at the NEA
The case against Bill Ivey.

By Melissa Seckora, NR editorial associate

ational Endowment for the Arts Chairman Bill Ivey and a handful of his staffers — appointed by ex-president Bill Clinton — continue to occupy their government jobs when the majority of Clinton appointees vacated their posts.

Mr. Ivey, who is two and a half years through a four-year term, was not required to resign, but his staffers were. A memo issued by the Clinton administration to all independent agencies stated that one person appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate was to remain on board until the new administration delivered replacements.

As chairman of the NEA, Bill Ivey, has moved funding away from the traditional arts, such as painting and sculpture, to post-modernist visual and performance arts. On January 11, the NEA awarded $20,452,500 through 825 grants in the first funding round of FY 2001 — the first increase in funding (blindly allocated by Congress) since 1992. The NEA says that the awards constitute 24 percent of the Endowment's grant funds for the year and will be distributed to non-profit, national, regional, state, and local organizations across the country. Here are just a few examples of what our tax money is funding this year:

To support a residency and traveling exhibition by San Francisco artist Enrique Chagoya, $27,400 was awarded to the Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, Mo., for an exhibition called The Adventures of the Reverse Anthropologist. A Los Angeles Times review of a recent Chagoya show found that "Chagoya's paintings, altered prints and books includes works from 1994 to the present, and faces familiar as Mickey Mouse's and Sen. Jesse Helms'….Conquest is the enemy here — conquest through force or abuse of power, the takeover of land, culture and consciousness. Cannibalism is one of its central metaphors — the consuming or subsuming of like by like. Whether Chagoya is targeting Spanish conquerors of Mexico or Helms' stranglehold on government funding of the arts, he has impeccable aim."

Several grants went to "artist-in-residence" projects which give residency to artists for various creative projects. One such award of $30,000 went to the Hallwalls Artist-in-Residence Project, Buffalo, N.Y. Performance artist Karen Finley (famous for spreading chocolate all over her body) performed her new show, "Shut Up and Love Me," at Hallwalls earlier this month. A Buffalo News critic described her performance: "Honey is the key ingredient in the riotous and visually fantastic denouement in which Finley — after considerable hesitation — flops her nude body down into a pool of the golden goo poured out on a spread canvas. Triumphantly carrying on a theme started with the show's opening comic lap dance (complete with audience participation), Finley transforms herself into some kind of glistening, slippery, flipping sea creature doing an insane imitation of cliched erotic floor gyrations."

$50,000 was awarded to Bill T. Jones/Arnie Dance Company, New York City, to support the creation of two works performed by choreographer Bill T. Jones to live music in an evening of chamber works. The Detroit News describes Jones's work: "In the dance world, Bill T. Jones, who is HIV-positive and lost his lover and partner Arnie Zane to the disease, created a much-publicized controversy with his Still/Here, a work that mixed spoken recordings of people confronting fatal illnesses with Jones' physical interpretation of their statements. Jones was attacked by New Yorker critic Arlene Croce for perpetuating what she called 'victim art,' sparking a nationwide discussion on how to represent death and dying in the arts."

The Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Inc., of Staten Island, N.Y., was awarded $35,000 to support an exhibition of new work by artists responding to issues surrounding the closing of the world's largest landfill, Fresh Kills, Staten Island. "Fresh Kills," the exhibition, and related events will "investigate and celebrate the landfill as it exists today, the future deposition of garbage once the dump closes, and the adaptation of the landfill public green space in New York City."

In a recent speech on an "American Cultural Bill of Rights," Ivey admitted that art in America is auditioned around the world; that it is a part of our diplomacy. "Our bill of rights must connect many players, many partners, to assemble the material, legal, spiritual, and moral resources required to bring art and art-making, cultural heritage and creativity, in from the margins to the center of community and family life," writes Ivey.

The NEA's latest awards do nothing of the sort. It's time for the Bush administration to do something about it.