Mention the name of the National Endowment for the Arts to a staunch political conservative and that person is likely to think first of Andres Serrano’s crucifix image submerged in urine or Robert Mapplethorpe’s sadomasochistic leather photos.
But don’t go on about Serrano or Mapplethorpe to the leaders of Chicago’s arts organizations.
To them the letters NEA stand for funding that’s absolutely crucial to the presentation of a kaleidoscope of performances, concerts, exhibitions, festivals, educational and outreach programs-everything from the current Gustave Caillebotte exhibition at the Art Institute to the Chicago Jazz Festival, from Steppenwolf Theatre’s new theater building to an outdoor sculpture project by Urban Gateways at Cabrini-Green.
In sum, the myriad performances and projects that help define Chicago as a society and, at their best, proclaim our city’s cultural pre-eminence to the world.
What’s more, there seems to be a consensus in the local arts community that the political brouhaha on Capitol Hill over whether to cut back NEA funding, or eliminate the agency altogether, is dangerously detached from grass-roots reality.
Arts presenters say they are appalled that the political leaders of the world’s richest and most important power would skew the national debate toward the radical fringe of past grant decisions (parroting the well-publicized criticism of “inappropriate” standards of taste and decency) and away from legitimate issues about how, not whether, to spend.
Susan Lipman, executive director of Performing Arts Chicago, is not alone when she claims the NEA controversy has further politicized a federal agency that in her view should be above the self-interested hurly-burly of politics.
“The thing that concerns me about this debate is that the amount of money they (the NEA) give is not nearly as great as the rhetoric surrounding its operations,” Lipman says.
Henry Fogel, executive director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a former chairman of the NEA music panel, says the same mentality that makes political leaders question the value of the NEA-and, by extension, the value of the arts to American society-is the one that leads schools to cancel arts programs. “A cutting back of the NEA is a further endorsement of the point of view that this is really a frill, as opposed to a basic part of the fabric of our society,” Fogel says.
Ardis Krainik, general director of Lyric Opera and a former member of the National Council on the Arts, the NEA’s governing body, agrees the current controversy is way out of proportion to what the agency actually accomplishes.
“Having served eight years on the council and knowing the splendid job the NEA has done in giving the arts a wonderful national posture, I can’t understand how this controversy could have happened. I am disheartened because there has been such attention to a small fragment of (grants) and not enough attention to the good that’s being done across the board.”
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Many arts institutions that have traditionally looked to state and city arts agencies for financial support are concerned about the impact such cuts would exert on other government arts funding-that is, NEA money funneled through the Illinois Arts Council and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs-as well as on private philanthropy.
Both James N. Wood, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Kevin E. Consey, director and CEO of the Museum of Contemporary Art, point out that the NEA and National Endowment for the Humanities provide valuable seed money for projects that might not materialize without it.
The current exhibition of Gustave Caillebotte paintings at the Art Institute, for example, received a challenge grant of $80,000 from the NEA. (Challenge grants require one or more additional funders to match the original funding amount, usually on a three-to-one basis.) And a $117,000 challenge grant from the NEA last year for the MCA’s fund-raising campaign to endow and operate its new building and sculpture garden has helped greatly to leverage grants from private sources, Consey reports. The campaign stands $3 million short of its $55 million goal.
While cutbacks in the NEA budget would put a dent in the number and quality of services provided by larger organizations like the Art Institute and the CSO, for small and midsize groups the effect could be devastating, arts leaders agree.
Randolph Street Gallery is among the legion of smaller institutions that would find it difficult to make up the loss with private funding sources in a tight-budget economy. The gallery, located on Milwaukee Avenue, operates on a modest budget of $536,000; it reports that half of the cost of all the exhibitions it presents is funded by the NEA ($83,000 this fiscal year).
Meanwhile, for its annual downtown presentation of Dance Africa, a program of African-American dance, the Dance Center of Columbia College shares a $600,000 NEA grant with presenters in eight other cities. Such programming would be seriously affected if the NEA were to disappear, says Julie Simpson, the center’s executive director.
“Our actual, direct NEA presenting allocation is only 5 percent of our overall annual budget,” she says. “But the number of other indirect sources we tap, including the Minneapolis-based Arts Midwest, is fed by significant NEA money.” If this additional pipeline dries up, “we’d have to severely cut back,” Simpson says. “Dance is different from the other arts in that dance companies don’t have their theaters. You can’t exist without a presenter. We get NEA money as a venue and also as a presenter. Both must happen together.”
Or consider the case of Urban Gateways, long cited as a national model for an arts education organization. Urban Gateways brings artists into the public schools to work with students and teachers; it also offers free services to 30 Chicago public schools in the poorest neighborhoods. One of the first small arts organizations in the nation to receive a challenge grant, Urban Gateways received a $700,000 NEA challenge grant this year, the largest single grant in the Chicago organization’s 34-year history.
Should that money evaporate, the ripple effect could be felt for generations to come, executive director Sandra Furey says. “NEA funding . . . allows us to invest in the artist community that is in turn investing in our children. Take that away and the whole construct would be diminished.”
Another community-oriented organization that has staked its life on NEA support is the Beacon Street Gallery and Theatre/Hull House, which this year received a $15,500 grant from the agency, enabling it to present visual art and theater exhibitions in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood and in various cities of Kane County. (Beacon Street Gallery began life in Uptown but opened a branch in Kane County last year because so many immigrants who formerly were concentrated in Uptown have moved to the Geneva area, where no similar program had existed.)
“At this point, I don’t think we could make up the money with other fund-raising, because there have been so many cutbacks (with other sources),” says director-curator Pat Murphy. “It’s not only about money, it’s about cross-cultural understanding. With so little money we can change lives.”
Theater groups report that NEA funding is important, if not critical, to their survival. The Goodman Theatre received nearly $154,000 from the NEA last year, representing only 2 percent of its $7.3 million budget and 6 percent of its overall unearned income. Steppenwolf Theatre reports even smaller percentages for 1994-95, about $25,000 in NEA funds, as part of a budget of $4.5 million.
“The most important thing about the NEA money is the leverage we gain to go to other sources to raise additional funds,” says Steve Eich, Steppenwolf’s outgoing managing director. “Every little bit helps in the theater, but I wouldn’t call the loss of NEA money crippling,” says a spokesman for the Chicago Theater Company. “On the other hand,” says a spokesman for the Goodman, “the money is sizable enough to be difficult to replace; it ain’t chump change.”
Just as it is true that challenge or matching grants from the federal arts endowment motivate other donors, the elimination or crippling of the NEA would put increased pressure on the private sector. But everyone agrees the private sector won’t be able to pick up the slack. Rachel Bellow of the Mellon Foundation predicts that corporations will be more likely to give money to social-service causes than the arts, which are now seen as “the privilege of a class.” She feels that even if the funds were available, “it would be a mistake for the private sector to make up for the failures of the public sector.”
The consensus seems to be that if there turns out to be less NEA money to go around, the demands on other sources will increase. So there will be less money to go around-particularly for the groups and artists that need it the most.
Ironically, a radical downsizing of the NEA also could give further ammunition to those politicians who have attacked the NEA for its allegedly “elitist” bias in grants disbursal. So claims Mary Jo Deysach, general manager of the Chicago String Ensemble. Her organization, operating on a budget of $180,000, depends on funding from both the NEA ($4,300) and the Illinois Arts Council (nearly $10,000).
“If NEA cutbacks force a group to raise ticket prices or admission fees, then they are cutting back further on any broad-based audience participation in their activities, but crucially the building of new audiences,” Deysach says. Arts presenters thus would price themselves beyond the reach of only the privileged few, and that, she added, “is really going against everything (the anti-NEA politicians) are talking about.”
What, then, if the NEA were eliminated as a federal agency?
“That would make me feel embarrassed and even ashamed that our political process has deteriorated to (such a) point,” Performing Arts Chicago’s Lipman says. “Our government leaders make the point that there are immediate social priorities that need to be addressed-hunger, poverty, crime, drugs, homelessness. I agree. But I would add: There is also the nation’s cultural health to be considered.
“Our artists and arts groups are providers of cultural health; we feed the soul and spirit. We have the most interesting artistic stories to tell, because we are such a vast nation of such diverse traditions. The $170 million it costs to operate the NEA is allowing all the people of our country to participate in expressing their cultural traditions.”
It’s only a symbolic amount, Lipman points out, not at all commensurate with the size and wealth of the U.S.
“But if that symbolic amount were removed,” she says, “it would be a sad, sad state of affairs.”