Supreme Court studies federal funding of art

A photo of Finley performing

March 31, 1998
Web posted at: 4:50 a.m. EST (0950 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday is to consider whether art considered indecent to some Americans is entitled to taxpayer support through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The core issue: Can the government set decency standards in choosing which art it financially subsidizes?

After hearing arguments Tuesday, the nation's highest court must determine that answer. A decision is expected by July.

One person who is at the heart of the case is performance artist Karen Finley, who dramatized the plight of women by appearing on stage naked and covered with melted chocolate.

Her performance helped spur debate over how the NEA hands out money. She and three other artists were excluded from NEA grants in 1990 because the NEA holds grants to a "general standard of decency."

The four successfully attacked the decency provision passed by Congress and the NEA's use of the law. Two lower courts in California ruled for the artists, stating that "government funding does not invariably justify government control of the content of speech."

David Cole, Finley's attorney, said the artists just want fair treatment.

"What the plaintiffs are claiming is they have the right to be considered fairly for a federal grant and not disadvantaged because of the viewpoint they express with their art," he said.

Tasteful discretion or discriminatory censorship

The justices will not make any moral or artistic judgment in the case, but will instead decide if the artists were unfairly excluded from federal grants.

The ruling could carry as much political and cultural impact as legal significance. The NEA, created in 1965 to subsidize artists and art groups, has become a favorite target of some conservatives.

House Republicans pledged to kill the agency in 1997 but it won another year of money last October. Congress has prohibited most grants to individual artists.

"If people like Ms. Finley and other performance artists who do things with vegetables that you and I would find to be ... unusual, they can go and find patrons and supporters in the marketplace," said Colby May of the Center for Law and Justice.

The Clinton administration is urging the justices to let the government tie grant awards to decency standards by ruling that such strings don't violate artists' free-speech rights.

The plaintiffs are urging the opposite.

In the earlier rulings, the lower courts invalidated the law Congress had passed after public furor over the NEA's role in funding such works as the homoerotic images of Robert Mapplethorpe and an Andres Serrano photograph of a crucifix dipped in urine.

Under the law, the NEA was to judge grant applications on artistic merit, "taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public."

Sr. Washington Correspondent Charles Bierbauer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related story:

• Supreme Court to rule on arts and decency - November 26, 1998

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• National Endowment for the Arts

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