Announcement of Episode 4 for Are You For Sale? Background is an image of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms posing with two white blond beauty pageant queens on either side of him. He is holding a large slice of watermelon, wearing a watermelon pin and a red tie with small black specks (like a watermelon). The image has been manipulated so that the image is fragmented and askew.. The image is treated with a red filter so that everyone is the same shade as the inside of a watermelon. Left top corner of the image is the podcast logo which reads “ARE YOU FOR SALE?” in white text. Logo features a small white microphone with a dollar sign on it. The logo is framed by two small white lined boxes. In the middle of the image is a banner of white text that reads “Episode 4: The NEA 4: Scandal, Hearsay and Misrepresentation...do you prefer your art censored?” and an additional banner near the top that reads “Featuring: Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Karen Finley.” Bottom left corner features icons for Spotify and Instagram and areyouforsalepodcast.com is written in white in the bottom right corner.
Episode 4: The NEA 4: Scandal, Hearsay and Misrepresentation...do you prefer your art censored?
In this episode, Miguel interviews three of the original NEA 4: Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Karen Finley. Miguel also speaks with John Frohnmayer, who was the Chairman of the NEA at the time of the infamous attack on un-censored art.
Link to full interview with Holly Hughes here and Karen Finley here.
Transcript:
[Music Strumming]
Voice 1 (Edgar Villanueva)
Philanthropy as a sector exists because of capitalism and the accumulation of wealth in the first place…
Voice 2 (Stephanie Acosta)
There is no such thing as making wealth that isn’t part of a community…
Voice 3 (Karen Finley)
Why I was so committed to non-profits or NEA or funding for the arts is because then people do not have to be dependent on only the wealthy...
Voice 4 (Sara Juli)
It’s still at the end of the day, you fighting for your work, which... we fight for our work in all sorts of other ways
MIGUEL
[Sung with playful music] Art and money and dance and money and what is the right thing to do with that? When the system's so fucked up, [gets louder and harmonizes] are you for sale?
Hello everyone. Welcome or welcome back! I’m Miguel Gutierrez and this is Are You For Sale? a podcast where we discuss the ethical entanglements between money and art/dance/performance making. We’re on Episode Four! (Feist “One Two Three Four” FOUR!!!). It’s also the second episode where we’re doing a deep dive into government funding for the arts in the place we currently refer to as the united states. This episode is EPIC!
(Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” instrumental plays in the background)
Let me start by reading to you from a report about the State of the Performing Arts in the US of A:
“From the standpoint of finance, administration, and organization, the dance world is close to chaos… there is little but toil and trouble for the choreographer as he scrimps and saves over long periods to enable himself to engage dancers, rehearse, rent a hall, and then put on a performance, the audience for which will probably consist of friends, a few admirers, a handful of aficionados of his form of the dance, and if he is lucky, one or two critics. Seldom, it might be said, has so much been done with so little for so few.”
Pretty bleak, right? Pretty accurate though. Also… pretty old…
Yeah, that was written in, ready for it? 1965! It’s from a book called The Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects, a Rockefeller Panel Report on the future of theatre, dance, and music in America. It was meant to be a blueprint for how to bring more money and support to the arts in the 60’s buuuut I gotta tell ya, when I read it, it kind of felt like it could have been written today...
[JFK Clip Plays]
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Moreover, as a great Democratic society, we have a special responsibility to the Arts. Far off is the great Democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race, or religion, or wealth, or color, the mere accumulation of wealth and power is available to the dictator and the Democrat alike. What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and spirit, which finds its greatest flowering in the free society. Last in our fulfillment of these responsibilities towards the Arts lie our unique achievement as a free society.
MIGUEL
In the early 60’s, John F. Kennedy ushered in a youthful, culturally rich vision for the country. As his special consultant on the arts he named August Heckscher, who wrote a report called The Arts and National Government. I’ve read it. It’s very boring. (Sooo boring) Most of the recommendations he makes for how the government should get involved in the arts weren’t implemented… but something that did stick was his argument that Americans were now excited about art, an excitement that was fueled by “greater prosperity and expectations.”
Around the same time of Heckscher’s report, three democratic Senators and (gasp) one Republican Senator - introduced a bill to establish a National Council on the Arts, which came to fruition in the fall of 1964.
Now, did you even know we had a National Council on the Arts? Did you know that we still do? Do you know how many people are on it or who they are? Who knew? Raise your hands! Liars! You didn’t know. (It’s true I didn’t…)
The following year on September 29, 1965 - President Johnson signed the act that established the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities!
[News Bit about President Johnson plays]
The President today signed a bill to establish a National Council on the Arts and Humanities to encourage with federal interest and federal money, about $20 million a year. All sorts of cultural efforts. The President explained some of the things he expects to happen now.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON
We will create a National Theater to bring ancient and modern classics of the theater to audiences all over America.
MIGUEL
As opposed to the 1930’s anti-poverty relief arts programs of the Works Progress Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts was a demonstration of the government’s commitment to a culturally vibrant country, one that celebrated the “exaltation of the spirit.”
Here’s another bunch of factoids that you can put in your pocket should you ever end up on Jeopardy (Alex Trebek: The Final Jeopardy category is: 20th Century Arts… MIGUEL: Funding!) (Jeopardy instrumental music plays)- the first grant the NEA gave was $100,000 to the American Ballet Theater…(100K in 1965? damn) And in those early days, choreographers who got grants were Alvin Ailey, (iconic) Merce Cunningham (aleatoric), Martha Graham (tectonic), Jose Limon (quixotic), Alwin Nikolais (elastic), Paul Taylor (symbolic) and Anna Sokolow
(Mariah Carey “I don’t know her/Die kenne ich nicht”)
She made that piece called Rooms. (Miguel Aside: Rooooooms)
The first year of NEA funding amounted to a modest 2.5 million dollars. The money went out, as it would for a long time, to both arts organizations and individual artists. By the end of the sixties, the NEA budget hovered just under 8 million dollars. But, as early as 1968, there were rumblings of protest in congress against the endowment. (The United States of America “Coming Down” plays in the background) Some thought it was a waste of money given that the Vietnam War was on, which, hellooooo, geniuses, was a massive waste of money. And some thought that the agency was full of elitists supporting too much avant-garde art. In a move that foreshadowed things to come, an amendment was passed by the House in 1968 that sought to eradicate individual grants BUT it didn’t pass in the Senate. (Hurray!)
Another element that came into play early was controversy. In 1969 Aram Saroyam’s one word poem - lighght - (Miguel Aside: How do you say that? LIGHTTTT I think-- you just look at it!) as included in the second volume of The American Literary Anthology, which being funded by the NEA, paid Saroyan for said poem. Republican Representative from Iowa, William Scherle, saw the poem and called it ridiculous and an example of how the NEA was wasting money. When the anthology editor, George Plimpton, was asked by a congressman to explain the poem, he said, “You are from the Midwest. You are culturally deprived, so you would not understand it anyway.” (Miguel Aside: Woooow.) That probably fueled the criticism of cultural and geographical elitism.
After the first chairman - George Stevens - came the era of the superpower - Nancy Hanks. (Insert The Craft - psst, You guys! Nancy (Miguel Aside: HANKS) is here… Nancy??) By many accounts, she was an amazing director with a gift for convincing the mostly white male politicians that the endowment was necessary. There’s this great story where Hanks asks Nixon what his highest priority for the Endowment was. He says that it should reach more people (P.S. he might have just been looking for a way to launder his reputation given his handling of the Vietnam War). Anyway, she says, “What you’re talking about sir, is totally impossible to accomplish without money.” And money. She. Got. During her 8 year tenure at the endowment the budget went up 1400 percent!!!! So by the time she hands it over to the next chairperson in 1977, it’s about 123 million bux! (“Nancy!”)
(Fleetwood Mac remix “Dreams” plays in the background)
But again, there were controversies - there was another kerfuffle with George Plimpton and The American Literary Anthology over a sexually explicit story, which resulted in Hanks deciding that they would no longer fund that project. (Miguel Aside:WHATT?) And then in 1973 - writer Erica Jong got a $5000 NEA fellowship to support her poetry and revise her book Fear of Flying, which gained notoriety for its frank depictions and exploration of female sexuality. (Keith Urban - female) Some were so scandalized by the book that when they saw that she thanked the NEA in it, they called to complain to their senators. Senator Jesse Helms (Miguel Aside: Already?) wrote Nancy Hanks about the quote (in Southern accent) “reportedly filthy and obscene book…” (that he had not read by the way) and demanded that Jong refund the money. Hanks responded with what would be the NEA party line: they did not control the content of their grantees’ work (mmm unless it’s The American Literary Anthology) and the whole scandal faded away.
So yeah, Nancy Hanks - incredibly savvy political player and money magnet but also a very strong hand on both sides of the issues when it came to defending the NEA. (“Nancy, come on let’s go”.)
(Culture Club “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” plays in the background)
The Endowment budget continued to grow until 1982, when it got a ten percent cut, the first cut since it started. So it went from 160 million to about 143.5. Not too bad - these were the Reagan years, though, and scrutiny of the Endowment was growing.
But hey! In 1985, its 20th anniversary year, the NEA got an honorary Emmy, and Oscar! (Sally Field - “You like me!”)
But also, in that same year, Texas politicians proposed an amendment to the 1985 NEA funding bill prohibiting artists whose work could be considered “patently offensive to the average person.” Now, that incredibly specific non-specific language doesn’t really go anywhere, but what they were able to do was get into the guidelines of both the NEA and NEH that they would only fund projects that had “significant literary, scholarly, cultural, or artistic merit; are reflective of exceptional talent; and foster excellence.”
Seems harmless enough, right? Merit and Excellence. Those are good metrics, right? But whose merit and excellence are we talking about? (Record Scratch)
Okay - so we’re finally at the part of the story that I’ve actually been trying to get us to all along, and which was my main reason for researching government funding to begin with. But I just want to give you one more bit of context that’s not directly about the NEA but I think is helpful for understanding what happened next.
(Moody music plays in the background) Under Reagan, a lot changed in the economic, social and political landscape. He was elected with enormous support from the rising, politically organized white evangelical movement who were very into his conservative, anti-abortion, limited government message. Jerry Falwell had just formed his nightmare group - The Moral Majority - and they were growing in power. Reagan slashed or eliminated a multitude of public health programs. Over 600 hospitals in the country closed. Education started to get way more expensive. The wealth gap seriously widened. Poverty rose by two percent. The AIDS crisis took hold, which, by the way, Reagan did not acknowledge publicly for years into his presidency. The crisis also increased queer visibility for better and for worse. And on top of all of that, we were still in the Cold War and anti-Communist sentiment was huge.
So what I’m trying to say is that, under Reagan, Christian conservatism is wielding a very strong hand in politics and getting any entitlements from the government is seen as a handout and deeply anti-market, anti-business, anti-pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
NEWS MAN
What do you think is the proper role, if any, of federal support of the article?
DANA ROHRABACHER
Well since getting here to Congress, and I'm a freshman, the biggest challenge we faced is bringing this high level of deficit spending down and we're struggling to find funds that are needed for things like prenatal care and health care for the elderly? And at a time like this, I don't believe that the federal government should be spending any money on the arts, federal involvement in the arts is questionable in the first place. And uh...
MIGUEL
Yeah see, so that's Republican Representative from California, Dana Rohrabacher, talking on a show in 1989 about his feelings about the endowment. So you see what we’re dealing with.
Are you ready to see how government censorship of art fully entered the picture? I’m gonna give you a break from my voice by handing it over to three of my favorite teenagers.
SOFIA
I’m Sofia.
EZRA.
I’m Ezra
LOUISE
I’m Louise.
MIGUEL
They are, respectively, my niece, my godchild, and the daughter of one of my oldest and dearest friends.
(Hooked on Classics music plays in the background)
SOFIA
1986: 36 year old Artist and photographer Andres Serrano gets a 5000 dollar Individual Artists Fellowship from the NEA.
EZRA
September 1987: Andres Serrano is selected as one of five artists to get a 15,000 dollar award from the Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art (SECCA “SEEK-uh”). One of his photos is called “Piss Christ” and depicts a crucifix immersed in a container of urine. In the hazy color photograph, the crucifix glows gold inside of orange red liquid. The five awarded artists’ work goes to three different cities, all without incident.
LOUISE
July 1988: the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) receives an NEA grant of 30,000 dollars to support a retrospective of works by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The show, called “The Perfect Moment,” is comprised of portraits, figure studies, flower photos, as well as homoerotic nudes and gay S&M images. March 1989, Mapplethorpe dies of AIDS related complications.
SOFIA
April 1989: Donald Wildmon, head of The American Family Association, catches wind of Serrano’s photograph and begins a crusade against Serrano and the NEA.
EZRA
May 1989: New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato rips up the catalog containing Serrano's "Piss Christ" on the Senate floor and demands that the NEA quote “develop new guidelines to ensure that no more ‘shocking, abhorrent and completely undeserving art’ be awarded a red dime of the noble taxpayer’s money.”
LOUISE
June 13, 1989: Out of fear of impending congressional backlash, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC cancels Robert Mapplethorpe's show.
SOFIA
July 1989: John Frohnmayer is appointed to be the new chair of the NEA.
EZRA
July 12, 1989: Three competing amendments are introduced regarding the NEA. One to abolish it, one to reduce its budget by 10 percent and one to cut 45,000 dollars, the amount of the Serrano award and ICA grant combined. (I’m sorry that’s just petty)
LOUISE
July 26, 1989 (July was spicy!): Jesse Helms introduces an amendment to cut 400,000 dollars from the NEA’s visual arts programs and prohibit SECCA from getting any grants for five years. He also proposes new guidelines that say you can’t use this money to make obscene art (obscene to him, that is).
This amendment is defeated.
EVERYONE: HURRAY!
SOFIA
September 29, 1989: Helms re-introduces his amendment aka the obscenity clause into the Senate with different language. This time, just two months later, it passes.
EVERYONE: BOOO
SOFIA
Frohnmayer, a former lawyer, makes the obscenity clause very visible in the grant guidelines, hoping that it will provoke a lawsuit to overturn it.
EZRA
October/November 1989: Frohnmayer attempts to restrict 10,000 dollars to Artists Space, a gallery in New York, for a show that deals with artists’ response to the AIDS crisis. After a big meeting between Frohnmayer and Artists Space, he decides to “allow” the grant to be paid out. This flip-flopping affects his credibility with everyone from the start of his tenure.
LOUISE
February 1990: The NEA Solo Performance peer panel unanimously recommends funding 18 artists, including Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, and John Fleck.
SOFIA
April 7, 1990: "The Perfect Moment" opens in Cincinnati. Museum director Dennis Barrie is indicted for pandering obscenity and quote "illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material.''
EZRA
May 11, 1990: Evans and Novak publish a column in the Washington Post saying that Frohnmayer has been advised to veto several theater grants, including one to Karen Finley, whom they label quote "the chocolate-smeared woman."
LOUISE
May 13, 1990: The National Council on the Arts convenes to discuss the grants. Frohnmayer tells them there are problems. He states, quote "Holly Hughes is a lesbian and her work is very heavily of that genre." The council decides to table discussion till the August meeting.
SOFIA
June 1990: Congress passes the decency clause which says the NEA must consider not just artistic merit but quote "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public."
EZRA
June 29, 1990: The agency announces the defunding of Finley, Hughes, Miller, and Fleck, who are henceforth called the “NEA 4.”
LOUISE
July 12, 1990: Choreographer Bella Lewitzky, whose company has received $75,000 from an NEA grant, refuses to sign the decency clause and instead, sues the NEA.
BELLA LEWITZKY AUDIO
I decided, it is not going to do me any good to just turn down the money in a private act. Because what prevented me from signing this was my recognition that this is dangerous.
SOFIA
August 1990 At the National Council for the Arts meeting, 14 of the 18 theater grants are recommended for funding. The four who are not funded are Finley, Hughes, Miller and Fleck - henceforth known as the NEA Four. Wait, didn't we already say that?
MIGUEL
Yeah- I read two different things- one said it was July, one said it was August. I think it was probably August.
SOFIA: Ok.
EZRA
September 27, 1990: The Four file suit against the NEA and Frohnmayer charging that their grants were denied for political not artistic reasons.
SOFIA
February 1992: Frohnmayer, who has pissed off the government and the artists, is forced to resign.
EZRA
May 1, 1992: Anne-Imelda Radice is appointed acting chair of the NEA. She had been installed during Frohnmayer’s tenure basically to put the reins on the agency around all this controversial art and act as an informant to the Bush 1 administration. P.S. She was a closeted lesbian at the time. Wait, why is that important?
MIGUEL
Because it’s sad that a gay person was instrumental in trying to restrict the work of gay artists.
EZRA: Ok.
LOUISE
June 1992: A district judge in LA declares the decency clause unconstitutional. Thank you, Bella Lewitzky!
EVERYONE: HURRAY!
SOFIA
March 1993: The Clinton administration appeals the federal court decision striking down the decency clause, saying that content restrictions of federally funded art are actually legal.
EVERYONE: BOO.
EZRA
June 1993: The NEA settles out of court with The Four who got the grants denied them in 1990 --- but they decide to litigate against the decency clause.
LOUISE
October 1993: Actress Jane Alexander is appointed as the new chairperson of the NEA.
SOFIA
1996: The NEA’s budget is cut by forty percent, and the individual artists fellowships are eliminated.
EVERYONE: BOOOO
EZRA
April 1998: Arguments begin before the Supreme Court case of the NEA versus Finley, which is about the decency clause.
LOUISE
June 25, 1998: The Supreme Court upholds the decency clause while declaring the language advisory and meaningless. Souter, in his dissenting opinion, writes, quote
MIGUEL
“One need do nothing more than read the text of the statute to conclude that Congress’s purpose in imposing the decency and respect criteria was to prevent the funding of art that conveys an offensive message.”
Oh my god I’m crying I love all those children so much…. (Whitney “I believe the children are the future.”) - Yes, Whitney, technically, that is always true.
And just so you understand the procedure of how you get money from the NEA. You apply for money - a fellowship if you were an individual (up until 1995) or a grant if you’re an organization. Your application is reviewed by a panel which includes experts in your discipline, and, post 1990, someone who’s familiar with the field but not necessarily embedded in it. The panel’s review criteria is to support that which demonstrates artistic merit and artistic excellence. Yes, again, discuss amongst yourselves about how you would define that! The panel makes recommendations about who should get the money and those go on to be reviewed by the National Council on the Arts, who more often than not agree with the panel’s recommendations. And then the Chair is the final person to sign-off. The chair can’t approve something that was already rejected, but they can reject something that was approved.
So. That’s the facts on paper.
But I wanted to know more. I wanted to talk to the people most directly affected by these events. So I reached out and spoke to three of the NEA 4: Karen Finley, Holly Hughes and John Fleck. I interviewed them individually but you’ll hear some of their audio alongside each other. In general, we’ll hear mostly from Karen and Holly and just a note, these were some of the first interviews I did for the podcast so they’re actually from last year and some references may appear anachronistic.
I started my interviews with Karen and Holly asking how they identified themselves as artists…
KAREN FINLEY
Karen Finley, and I'm an artist, a provocateur, and I work in a variety of mediums. And I think that, I participate in the mediums as a visual artist or as a social critic. And I use music, theater performance, visual art installation and engagement, too. Oh, and also education. I am an educator. And that's an important part of me and a writer. That’s it.
HOLLY HUGHES
Hi, yes, I'm Holly Hughes, I’m a - on some days, I'm a performance artist. And other days, I'm a solo theatre artist. I think you're a performance artist, because you said you are, I mean, there's like no entrance exam. Most of my work is solo, most of it's about questions of sexual identity, questions of gender, trying to locate personal narratives and the larger political landscape , so it is through a filter through my lens as being now an older, queer slash lesbian artist who grew up in the Midwest, lived in New York for a long time-- but always trying to think about like, where does my story sit inside a larger context and at least trying to gesture to it.
MIGUEL
I wanted to know about the community they found when they went to New York… Holly stumbled into and became part of a very significant place in queer women’s history.
HOLLY HUGHES
I got to New York City in the late 70s. And there was still like, a very happening, feminist art movement at that time. And I went to a short lived feminist pedagogical experiment in Soho called the New York Feminist Art Institute. And then later I joined this feminist cooperative of non cooperative queerdos. The Wow Cafe.
MIGUEL
The Wow Cafe had been founded by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, whose theater project goes by the name of Split Britches. They were not exactly on the hunt for government funding…
HOLLY HUGHES
As queer women, both working class queer women, they really, you know, their experiences of getting funding and support and getting anything positive from the government were pretty much zero. It was like, we're just gonna do the work, and we're gonna find out a way to do it. We're going to dream as big as we want to. And then of course, we're not going to be making money and we're just going to-- we're just going to do it anyways. I mean, you didn't make money on your work, but you also really didn't lose money on your work.
MIGUEL
I asked Karen how she felt about being in the downtown community in the 80s…
KAREN FINLEY
I love that feeling of being around people that are creating and engaging and looking and being. But this community… that's a very big word. And I think that this word of community, I'd like to just take a moment. And let's have some accountability here, which is...I'm talking about coming into New York,City, into the East Village, where there were probably thousands of primarily white boomers coming to this area. I feel it was a form of colonialism, I feel that it was a form of… not even a form, but it is of cultural, more than cultural appropriation. It was about a cultural erasure. And that I participated naively because of many different conditions going on. But now, I’m looking back. I really feel that I would, that the participation was about whiteness, a certain form of whiteness that was building on the economy, and the poverty and the tenements, even if I had family that hadn't lived there at some time. And, you know, it was using and exploiting the conditions of that neighborhood. And when you see what downtown art is, it is not, it wouldn't be written on that it owes so much to the cultures that were present.
MIGUEL
I wondered about how they were thinking about career and money at this time, and how others in their community thought about it…
HOLLY HUGHES
I think people really... I think having a space where you could make queer women's work, and not having to pay for it felt like enough, and you can have your crap jobs. I think none of us thought, and as it turned out correctly, I think that you know, that we thought we would get funding for our work. And a lot of us were just like, I mean, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I mean, I'm not sure that I do now either, (Miguel laughter) but I really enjoyed what I was doing. So I would have had no idea how to put the grant application together. What worked in that moment is that you made a show, there was like, no reflection on it. You just went into the next show. Yeah, you know, there were good things about it, there were bad things about it, but you learned from just, you know, you're working all the time and seeing other people's work. Of course, people wanted to get paid for their work. Of course, that was a goal-- and wanted to pay other people too. And we're gonna help each other but I think also, it came out of a feminist ethos (dog barking in the background) at that time of collectivity.
KAREN FINLEY
And I was interested also in performance of disrupting the economy, disrupting society. So I was interested in disrupting the market or disrupting the world in that way. Not being part of it. My work was in resistance or in a rebellion. So the body was in rebellion against being an ingenue or being in rebellion towards a desire that was, you know, the male gaze. So that's what my work was. And so I looked at my--- my purpose is to be a guerrilla artist and to work from revenge. Use that as the fuel that, that emotion or that rebellion is the place that was moving me. That... I'd like to just backtrack in a moment, because part of my disruption was also about who has access, where can art be up and disrupting, who eyes the art? Who makes the art, where is that and at that time, a woman was not in the picture. That is not happening now. When I'm talking about these issues, I was coming up in this time of feminism. And my work was about that.
MIGUEL
Meanwhile on the other side of the country, John Fleck had a different trajectory into his work...
JOHN FLECK
I came out to California, you know, I'm an old fellow here, I came out in the mid 70s, to go to acting school, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which I did, and then, you know, I started doing a little theater, but that was going nowhere, you know, so I started getting in with the whole punk scene and doing, you know, kind of bar performances. So making money with performance, I never even thought that I would ever get paid. You know, I'd be doing these cabarets, I never even thought to ask for money, you know. But that's when people started suggesting, well, John, why don't you apply for you know, you get $2,000 from the LA Cultural Affairs grant, you know, and I go, okay, so I did and, and, you know, I, by that time, I'd started getting a little press and a little attention. And so I started getting funding, you know.
MIGUEL
I asked Holly how she thought her career was going to play out...
HOLLY HUGHES
In the late 80s, I started to... be getting, you know, paid work and getting grants and being able to pay people, I kind of didn't know, where it was going to go. And there weren't a lot of models. But I did start to get, in the late 80s and early 90s, I started to get work and started to be able to basically support myself as an artist touring, doing residencies, things like that. And I guess I thought, "Well, maybe that'll continue." But there is that problem that you, if you're always in the self producing model - It's completely exhausting. Sure there's, there's opportunities, and it’s fun, but like, the support to really develop something, and any sort of sense of stability, I don’t know if any independent artists have stability, but it felt like... I saw a lot of artists, sort of my generation I think, really run out of steam because there's a physical limit of how long you can be-- even if you're having a career, but you're producing yourself, you're having to really do everything for yourself. And maybe you get grants that cover 75% of your expenses in doing a show. And the pace of-- of doing that is really punishing.
MIGUEL
And then…. the NEA drama started to happen -
JOHN FLECK
Yeah, it was kind of it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times when it happened in 1990. You know, I just started getting funding, you know, in the late 80s, I, you know, I, I got a Franklin Furnace, you know, for emerging artists, that was nice. And then I apply for something else, which I got. And then I applied for an LA Cultural Affairs grant, which I got to perform in an AIDS hospice. And then I had also applied for-- a friend said, “Oh, you should apply for an NEA grant!” you know, real simple to apply back then, I'm working on a show called Blessed Are all the Little Fishes. So I applied, hadn't heard from them. And I got the LA Cultural Affairs grant. And I performed at the Chris Brownlie AIDS hospice. And I remember getting home, this was June of 1999. You know, we had voice answering machines by then and I had like 45 messages, and it was, you know, the CNN and other, you know, “Are you aware of what happened?” I had no idea. I didn't know I received the grant. Well, it happened so fast. I guess I received the funding, and then they rescinded the funding, you know, so… and then that was the roller coaster ride that began, you know, and it was really intense.
MIGUEL
For Karen, part of the point of applying to the NEA was part of an ethic of participation and access
KAREN FINLEY
I was making work. I was performing at Lincoln Center. I had music out. I was an emerging artist before this happened. And that is why I was so committed to nonprofits or NEA or funding for the arts is because then people do not have to be dependent on only the wealthy, or inherited wealth as access. So what happens is that with this funding on a positive level, is that you were creating these spaces that weren't dependent on a form of capitalism. Feminist artists, and queer artists, their voices were being-- we're being allowed to have a space for. And I applied for a grant in 1990. And it was my solo performance, We Keep our Victims Ready. It was very, very present about what issues are today. It was about politics. It was also about AIDS, it was about government indifference. It was talking about immigration, borders, talking about women's right to choose, and about race. That's what the, one of the central parts of what the performance was about. And that was the performance then that was denied granting.
[We Keep Our Victims Ready clip plays]
KAREN
Sure! I get my share of love letters, too!
I’m writing to tell you that I love you
I love you even more than anyone else in the entire world but I want you to get the fuck out of my life
I love you more than anyone but I never want to see you again
I never want to smell you
I never want to hear you
And I want you to get the fuck out of my life
And I wanted to tell you I love you but I’m sleeping with your best friend… (fades out)
MIGUEL
If you haven’t experienced Karen Finley’s work from that time, I really recommend that you do. It is riveting and complex. Not that you would know from the way that it was talked about in the media:
[Charlie Rose interview clip with Karen plays]
CHARLIE ROSE
And we're now back live. And I want to talk about Karen Finley. She gained national attention as part of the debate on what art should be federally funded with her graphic, angry performances in which she smeared her breast with chocolate. She joins me now to talk about our new show, at The Kitchen Memento Mori, and the latest round in her war with the National Endowment for the Arts. Welcome.
KAREN FINLEY
Thank you. I also smeared my elbows with chocolate,
CHARLIE ROSE
But they didn't complain about that did they
KAREN
No..
CHARLIE ROSE
Yeah, let me, tell me, let me just start from the… (fades out)
MIGUEL
I asked Karen how she experienced this sudden jump to very public, very disrespectful notoriety:
KAREN FINLEY
Well, it was, it was painful and glorious at the same time. I mean, it was very painful to be having your work and to be where I did feel that I had been very supported, and trained as if I was a trained artist, educated and so that I felt my profession had been shamed. And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to participate in the lawsuit as well, because it was a way to describe artists, and that was intentional by the government, because the artists became the scapegoat. The artists became the space to put all of this venom and the culture wars. And those culture wars, I think that we continue to see this day with Trump, and even the way with, in sexuality. So it hasn't, it hasn't changed. That is the, you know, the pain of being denied, to have my work stopped. So that's what was difficult for me on a personal issue, level that you've been working in, you can see… and that then, when I had so many places stop completely. So I haven't really, I mean, I've been supported in different ways, and there are places, but I have never really been receiving funding in that same way or within that support. But I think that I, what I realized is that I as a straight woman, white woman, is that I was given an opportunity to even be looked at that what I was saying was worth censoring.
And there was a commodification involved in utilizing me and my work for a certain purpose and once I understood that, I had to then find my own joy. And I had to realize that you have to think about these… creating work as a part of a staircase, or political work that you make one step on a staircase. And that's why I teach other artists that are continuing and making work, that someone is getting funded, someone is having their artwork happening.
MIGUEL
And the gloriousness?
KAREN FINLEY
The gloriousness is that there was a lot of support for me. There is all the support that I was even able to be, the people that I met in that what goes beyond one's own life, for one's own career, it goes beyond this idea of that, and what is of creating work, and bringing in joy. And that's what I had to return to, the joy of making art. And where that essence is, on a spiritual level, that's not necessarily dependent on the government. It's not dependent on anyone, but it's really just the space within one's own being. And I had to come back to that, or to understand that because I mean, now this is probably maybe getting deeper than what your conversation is people looking at politically, but I don't need the government to be making my work or who I am, you know. They're not going to be owning me or doing that. And I say that in terms of my own joy in my being, because that's what I had to-- I had to go to.
MIGUEL
I think what Karen said there about not needing the government to make her work is so interesting, but I also want to pause for a moment to point something out here. In our last episode, we learned how artists whose work was seen as too far left were part of why the arts programs in the 30s shut down. Then later in the century, artists were held up by the government as examples of how diverse its citizens were and how great democracy in the U.S. was, including artists who weren’t being treated so well by this country and the queer artists, artists of color and women were under a ton of pressure to be on their best behavior when touring abroad. But then, a generation of artists grows up witnessing and participating in the struggle for civil rights, the anti war movement, the 2nd and 3rd waves of the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, all of the incredible AIDS activism that was going on in the 80s, and some of them apply for NEA funding - suddenly it’s a problem again to be a loud, critical member of society. Are you following this? The government’s like a dysfunctional parent who expects you to be on call for them to do whatever they need, but then acts aloof and resentful the moment you’re like, um, actually can I tell you what I need from you? Then the government’s like, Oh you’re so needy, you’re such a baby, you should be able to just love yourself!
Holly talked about the money itself and what the NEA grant even meant to artists, why it was an enviable grant to get...
HOLLY HUGHES
I feel like the NEA. I mean, most of the grants you got you know, like the famous one that got taken away was $5,000. That was 30 years ago, almost exactly. So that was, more, but it's still like was not, you know, it wasn't like, you're gonna live for any great amount of time on $5,000.
MIGUEL
Holly commended that, in a way, the NEA fellowships were seen as more fair. Unlike other grants, the NEA sent people to look at artist’s work, so you didn’t have to worry about not having enough money to put a good video together. The panels were diverse, not perfect, but better than other funders… and then there was something else specific to NEA funding…
HOLLY HUGHES
It felt like a big deal to get an NEA grant, like it was legitimizing. But it was also like, it's not like a one time thing like a Guggenheim or a Creative Capital. It's like, "Okay, so here's one pot of money that I can never go back to again." It's like you could keep applying… Yeah, you can get, you know, annual funding. I mean, it wasn't a guarantee if you were an individual, but people might get annual funding.
MIGUEL
OKAY.
OKAY.
OKAY.
Big moment of pause. That’s pretty different. The possibility of annual funding. That is not something we have now.
(moody, spacey background music plays)
Holly mentioned there that this wasn’t necessarily a ton of money. $5000. I mean, again, in 1990, $5000 is not exactly chump change, but like Holly said, you weren’t gonna live on that, right? Right? And so you could say, “Hey Miguel, what’s the big deal? So what that the government killed Artists Fellowships? It’s not a big deal. It wasn’t that much money anyway.”
But, and this is the biggest butt yet, this is like way bigger than my own butt - (which is very big)
It was a lot of money.
It was a TON of money in fact.
Just a few days ago, as I was putting the final touches on the script I was fact checking something and I came across the NEA funding report for 1986, ten years before they killed individual artist fellowships… And I went to the section on dance. And I was shocked. Are you sitting down?
It wasn’t ten fellowships that were given out. It wasn’t even like, just like twenty. IT WAS NINETY FUCKING INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIPS. NINETY. And on top of that. Not all 90 folks got the base level of dance fellowship grant amounts, which was, at the time, $5000. Nope. 60 artists got $5000, 24 artists got $8000, 3 artists got $12,000, and three artists got a 3 year fellowship, meaning money each year for three years! that amounted to $36,000. For each artist. IN NINETEEN EIGHTY SIX. That’s 35 years ago.
My head started spinning. I started frantically downloading the NEA Funding report for the next year - 1987 - 110 individual choreographer’s fellowships given out. 1988 - 97 given out (at that point, the starting fellowship amount was $7000, with 10K and 15K fellowships also available). In 1989 - 85 fellowships given out. 1990- 91 fellowships given out. 1991 - 52 fellowships, ok, that’s a big drop, but some of the fellowships are now $20,000. 1992 - 47 fellowships. 1993 - almost holding steady at 46 fellowships. 1994 - ok moving up again to 49 fellowships at amounts of 7K and 20K 1995 - Kapow! We’re back baby! It’s 93 fellowships given out and 34 of those are at the $20,000 amount (THIRTY FOUR) and then 1996…….
Poof
(background music ends)
Gone.
Now, if you’re a dance-maker, or for that matter, a theater maker, performance artist, visual artist, composer, playwright, or you identify as a folk artist, I want you to just take a moment and survey the economic conditions of your life as it is. And then imagine that you get 5000, 7000, maybe even 10 thousand dollars or more from the federal government. Just so that you can do your work. Money to support yourself as an artist, because the government wants you to be fulfilled, to thrive even. When I listen to Karen, John and Holly, I don’t get that they were avaricious, blindly ambitious people who wanted to step on other people to rise to the top. I hear that they were embedded in communities of passionate, creative, political people. They didn’t fit the mold of what was normally considered artistically excellent. They were doing something else, they wanted a different world with different standards, because they knew that the ones that were in place sucked for a lot of people. So when the money went to the weirdos who actually talked about this stuff rather than to artists who could be labeled high art geniuses… that’s when the censorship hit hard. Why did the government turn its back so easily on them, on us?
HOLLY HUGHES
Right. And it's just... I mean, one of the funny things about that whole NEA Four experience... it was so much about being an out queer person, in a time when there was explicit content restrictions, about funding for homoerotic art. And... so I felt like it was part and parcel of what was going on with the AIDS crisis at that time, which was not just about erasing AIDS and HIV and ignoring it, but like, kind of, erasing queer people and making it an impossible... so difficult to get any kind of like LGBTQ experience into mainstream media at all. So I remember like, you know, The New York Times would only reluctantly refer to like, sexual identity, and the word at the time was homosexual. And in like 1990--- I mean no one wanted to be a “homosexual.” I'd have an interview with someone and I’d say, “But you have to say, I'm a lesbian or gay or whatever,” you know, whatever. And they were just like, they would have these incredible fights… you would think I was like, the Queen Diva, you know, wanted nothing but green m&ms, and, you know, have a jacuzzi filled with Evian water. You know? It was just, “She’s so difficult!” This thing makes no sense. It allowed the right to just define it. These are offensive artists. And they had no trouble defining it. We were homosexuals and homosexual at that time also meant pedophile. That’s what we did...when we weren’t sticking bottles up our ass. Nothing against that...
[Holly Hughes show Preaching to the Perverted audio plays]
March 30 1998. Today, the Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of Karen Finley and the three homosexuals versus the National Endowment. (audience laughter)
A week before the case is heard, my lawyer calls to say, if I want to go to the hearing, I have to let them know right away because tickets are going fast. (Audience laughter)... And I’m like… Tickets??
MIGUEL
That was from Holly’s show Preaching to the Perverted, which she made after the whole ordeal ended… That was one way she could process what had gone down. But there was lasting damage.. Karen Finley was scheduled to be featured in a show at The Whitney Museum in 1998. Ten days after the Supreme Court ruling, they canceled it. That wasn’t the only fallout.
KAREN FINLEY
Yes. So I had a museum that returned my work from a collection. So it had an impact in terms of the art market in that way. There's a certain way how things move in terms of, you know, art market or even in all of the arts where there's certain institutions that receive funding, and if that is going to be threatened, and then you're not being able to be part of that system, it's very, very difficult.
MIGUEL
Because you were seen as a liability.
KAREN FINLEY
I wasn't seen as a liability, I was a liability.
The other fallout, then, was personal protection. If you have threats on your life-- well you're having threats, or you're going place and that is happening, institutions or spaces only have a certain amount of ability to support or castle. It's great, like in the moment to be part of that scene and to be doing it but you know, when it comes out to it, there-- there were a lot of spaces that did support me, I have to say. There were-- I had-- you know, what supported me I say is that nightclubs, I had to work in nightclubs, I did teaching institutions, I did still create artwork, television, I had to do different types of way of thinking. And I think what is so interesting about what I went through is why does every person have to be-- have so many-- wear so many hats? You know, and why do people have to be so tested in that way. And there are many artists that, you know, emotionally go through it so the paying for it was the fact that I feel that I lost about 10 years of my life having devoted to it. And I was offered that after I lost the show at the Whitney, that if I wanted to have another lawsuit. And at that point, I did it. I couldn't go and have another 10 years, I probably should have but I just didn't have-- things that were going on in my life at that time. I just couldn't… I couldn't do it.
JOHN FLECK
And you know, after that NEA grant, god that was the last time I applied for funding after that, you know. Well, first of all, they eliminated, you know, the certain genre, you know, of NEA after that. No, I lied, I applied for like, they have a thing called Durfee funding, they give you 1500 bucks I did for the Redcat show. But after that I never applied for any big funding after that.
MIGUEL
In preparing for those interviews, I read Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior, written by John Frohnmayer who was the Chairperson during the first chapter of the NEA 4 situation… I have to say, it’s a very interesting read because it lays out all of the politicking that happened behind closed doors and how by trying to appease everyone, he satisfied no one. I looked him up and wrote him to see if he’d be game to talk to me and to my surprise he responded almost immediately. I started by pointing out how in the book, he mentioned that when we started the position, he felt like it was the perfect job. So, what happened?
JOHN FROHNMAYER
The NEA job was the perfect job for me, at least I thought so when I applied for it. And when I got it. And in a lot of ways, I still feel that way. Because really all my life I've been involved with culture at close range. Two of my siblings were professional singers, all of us in our family have sung professionally in one way or another. I've now written six books and am hard into another one. But what happened is really that politics and the arts met head on in a way that they hadn't before in the United States. And that's an uncomfortable companionship because the government really wants some return and some control over its money. When I was at the NEA, there had been some pretty obvious and notorious arts projects, which had gotten then gotten a hold of by some of the religious right, who were making a thing about them, even though they hadn't seen them and probably had only been taught told about them by somebody who hadn't seen it either. But that really started off the debate and, and the debate lasts to this day because I do think that there is an ongoing chilling effect on the First Amendment. From artists wondering whether it's A) worth applying to the NEA and B) If I do and I get a grant, is it going to control or or cast some sort of shadow over what my artistic vision is? I think any artist making a proposal to the NEA or getting an NEA grant is going to be thinking, Well, you know, how's this going to be received? Am I going to be, you know, the next person who is attacked by a political figure? Or will I somehow, you know, dirty my skirts by, you know, making what I want to make. And that's-- that is the classical definition of it, of the First Amendment chilling effect.
MIGUEL
Chilling effect indeed. Most of us aren’t applying for an NEA fellowship because we can’t. Wasn’t what happened in the 90’s just plain old misogyny and homophobia?
JOHN FROHNMAYER
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that homophobia and sexism were driving that and there wasn't really any secret about that from Jesse Helms, or Donald Wildmon or any of the others who were fomenting these attacks on artists. But I mean, the thing that they ran head into, in as far as the NEA was concerned was the First Amendment because the First Amendment tells us that if the government has a tandem, it definitely did, because it's money that's coming from the government, then the government has to have hands off as far as the product, and particularly the thoughts and exposition of the artists. So what Jesse Helms and Donald Wildmon and the rest of them were asking for was a violation of the First Amendment.
MIGUEL
I had to ask him about the whole artistic merit and artistic excellence thing. Like, how do you reconcile those metrics when the applicants and the places they’re from are so varied?
JOHN FROHNMAYER
That's a problem that we struggled with on the Oregon Arts Commission, years before I got to the NEA, that is exactly what you said, Miguel. And that is, you know, if, if you're comparing something that's happening in Portland, where there's a lot of artistic activity, with something that's happened out in Baker City in Oregon, which it has, you know, virtually no art funding at all, then it isn't the same standard, you can't apply the standards of excellence and professionalism out there that you can in an urban setting. That being said, the panels are supposed to be diverse, and that diversity is supposed to bring to it, the viewpoints that will sort of level the playing field. And quite frankly, the NEA was constructed as a counter market kind of institution. And we really struggled to find the ones that were not supported, and in a lot of ways not supportable, because the market wouldn't, wouldn't pay for them. But nonetheless, we're worthy, and that's a real struggle. And it's a struggle that the panels in every genre, every funding area, are faced with. But I have always thought that if the-- if the NEA could find a couple of geniuses every year who nobody had really acknowledged before, then no matter what else we did, we would have earned our keep.
MIGUEL
Oh John.. that tired trope of the genius… I had to ask him if he wished he had done anything differently as the chairperson…
JOHN FROHNMAYER
Well, certainly I wouldn't have suspended the grant to Art Space (he means Artists’ Space), which I did about the first week I was on the job, absolutely shot myself in the foot and then spent the rest of the time I was there trying to recover from that. But you know, frankly, in a Republican administration, such as I was, my primary job as I saw it was to keep the lights on, because we were really threatened. And we were threatened from every corner. And so, you know, as I look back on it, I feel not proud but least confident that I did my job and the fact that the NEA is still there, if we had been abolished, which was very much possible, it's highly unlikely that the institution would ever have reemerged. So there's that part of it. And as I wrote in the book, I knew after about nine months that I was ultimately going to get fired. And that really liberated me to to really speak much more my mind and not have to feel as if I needed to run everything past the White House who would totally say no, to anything that I wanted to do. So you know, if I can catalogue the mistakes, and there were plenty of them, and I think I mentioned probably most of them in the book. On the other hand, you know, I look back on it and think, “Well, you know, that wasn't so bad. You didn't disgrace yourself.” And you know, ultimately the results were pretty good.
MIGUEL
In what way were they good?
JOHN FROHNMAYER
Well, in the sense that we gave a lot of grants that were really extraordinary. And we started some programs, which may have gotten trashed by the sisters of darkness immediately after I left, but-- but I mean, we started an international program, we started some literary programs that hadn't happened before. And we really, I think, found some extraordinary art and made it accessible to the American people. And that's what NEA is all about.
MIGUEL
Ok. That strangely positive self-assessment aside, he has no love for party politics.
JOHN FROHNMAYER
George Washington, John Adams, both said the same thing that political parties are the bane of a democracy, because they elevate loyalty to the party over good to the citizenry. And there's no time that I have experienced in my life that that's more true than right now. I mean, it's clearly more important to be a Republican than it is to think about the good of the country. The Democrats are better, but they're still a political party. My view is that we ought to be issue driven as opposed to party driven.
MIGUEL
I pointed out to him that in his book about his experience at the NEA, there are no photos of the NEA 4. And he was like, “Oh, my God, no one has ever pointed that out to me.” I brought up that John Fleck never really applied for a grant again, and that Holly and Karen experienced death threats to see what he would say about that. And this is what he said.
JOHN FROHNMAYER
Well, and I actually, I had a conversation with David Souter of the Supreme Court Justice who filed the only dissent on the Finley case and told him he got it right. He was the only one who got it, right. I mean, because there certainly was political pressure. There's no question about that. And, in fact, I sat across the table from Karen, while my deposition was being taken in her case. And I was handing her case to her lawyer on a silver platter, and you know, basically saying, all these… and all he could do is try to insult me. And I’m thinking, Jesus, why are you doing this because I am really telling you that you're right. And you should win.
MIGUEL
Hmm. Ok. I told him that almost no one I know in my peer group of artists applies to the NEA, even for project grants..
JOHN FROHNMAYER
That is absolutely the worst result. And, and that's why throughout the jurisprudence of the First Amendment, the chilling effect has been one of the most insidious because it's the effect that you exercise on yourself, as opposed to the government, you know, coming down with this heavy hand.
MIGUEL
We ended our conversation by talking about the value of the NEA and the value of art in the country and what needs to change…
JOHN FROHNMAYER
It's a test of how strong a democracy is, if it can support art, which is essentially critical of the Democratic process. Because if we can do that, then we know that we have got a ongoing concern here. If we're so timid, that we can't do that, then look out on all sorts of other ways because the society is starting to crumble in on itself. I think that we need a time when we're less at each other's throats. And again, I would say that the NEA is one of the ways that we can bridge that gap, because we really need a new national story. I mean, you know, the national story that we've depended upon, land of the free, home of the brave, all that sort of stuff is pretty worn out. And what we're looking at now, in terms of a lot of the movements, Black Lives Matter movement, #MeToo movement, the, the broadening of our societal definition of marriage, all those kinds of things are a new ethic. And-- and the politicians are not capable of writing our new story, we have to give the artists and the dancers and the singers and the poets the opportunity to write our new national story. And then we have to listen to it and, and... and adopt it.
[Miguel’s “Do you worry about the future” plays in the background]
MIGUEL
I want to speak to something that came up for me as I was assembling this episode because I’m sensitive to what it is to bear witness to a story that was manipulated. I edit these interviews because I want to highlight the issues that I feel that are useful to the thematics of the episode. But doing that this time around, especially with Holly and Karen, created an ethical question for me of how I, also, was manipulating their words to certain ends, though not in the service of condemnation or titillation. So, for that reason, I just wanna let you know that if you want to listen to the whole interviews that I did with Holly and Karen, you can access that through our website - areyouforsalepodcast.com. I hope you’ll take the time to listen.
When I got started on this topic, I was unapologetically for the government funding of art. I still am (?) but it has gotten real complicated for me. The more that I’ve learned the more confused and doubtful I feel.
Maybe you noticed earlier that each time the president changed, the NEA director changed too - so each new person comes in and has to learn the lay of the political land at that moment, assess what’s been done right or wrong at the agency, what to change, what to keep going… etc etc. And then aside from presidential changes, you have representatives and senators changing in staggered, uneven cycles, so like, if you’re lucky to get a bunch of these people on your side, you’re back to zero if they lose their next election. The opposite is also true. You could get a politician in power for decades - an advocate like Ted Kennedy or Sidney Yates who went to bat for the NEA over and over but you can also end up with a motherfucker like Jesse Helms, or Mitch McConnell, politicians who bloviate, censor and block one progressive issue after another for thirty years or more.
Aside from these bureaucratic logistics, I’m brought to larger questions regarding art and its role in the public sphere. I can’t help but notice the irony in certain politicians claiming to be concerned for individual’s rights when it comes to who gets offended but when it comes to funding individuals, well suddenly there’s all this gaslighting and second guessing. Some people’s points of view are honored while others’ are not just disagreed with, but vilified. Throughout the NEA 4 situation, the artists were depicted as extremists but I think the real extremists here, the true purveyors of the obscene, were all of the politicians who demonized whole swaths of the population that were their duty to protect.
So, I have to ask - Is art meant to be community sanctioned? Which community should sanction it? And what’s the role of offense in moving culture forward? I’m not talking about offensive shit that punches down, I’m talking about art that rattles dominant or mainstream culture, or that speaks up about white supremacy, patriarchy, religious hegemonies, all the phobias, all the isms. I’m talking about art that uses being offensive as a way of satirizing or revealing the cruelty of unjust systems and the hypocrisies within culture. I’m also talking about art that does this within an economy that’s not geared toward mass consumption or consumer goals. Art that isn’t necessarily going to get a million Twitter followers to rally behind it. And, of course, I’m talking about a country that isn’t afraid of its own critics.
In the 90s, the one discipline of individual fellowships that did survive was literary arts and why? Because apparently like a gazillion writers wrote letters in support of the fellowship. What would happen if those of us who got x’d out rose up today and demanded our fellowships back? At 2021 levels yo! The government has the money. While critics of the NEA trotted out arguments around decency and “fiscal responsibility,” the two year Gulf War in 1990-91, “Operation Desert Storm,” cost $61.1 Billion dollars. And to bring it into the now, that war in Afghanistan that allegedly just ended? It cost $300 million dollars a day. Lemme repeat. $300 million dollars. a. day. The highest the budget for the NEA has ever been in one year was $175 million. And that was back in 1992.
Deep breath.
Maybe one of the most telling signs of the direction the country’s relationship to culture headed is told in the fate of the Old Post Office, a grand structure built in the 1800s that served as home of the NEA from 1983 to 2014. Starting in 2016 the building served a new purpose. Any guesses about what that was? (“Anyone? Anyone?” from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)
[News Bit plays]
“Just yesterday Donald Trump spoke at the grand opening and ribbon cutting of his new hotel in Washington D.C., just blocks from the White House…”
MIGUEL
Yep - It became the Trump International Hotel.
[Que Viva la cultura! plays]
MIGUEL
In our next episode we’ll turn the spotlight outward to conversations with artists working in other countries to see what their experiences are like with funding and what we could stand to learn from them. I hope you’ll come back and listen. (Jonas Brothers’ “Comeback to me baby I’ll come back to youuuu”)
And a reminder that for an upcoming episode on how dance artists in the area we currently refer to as the u.s. are making it work, we’re soliciting audio messages at our special voicemail hotline 347-559-5099 or you can write us with that info at areyouforsalepodcast@gmail.com
and I will be my version of you! (Stella Adler: “Only you can be you!”)
This episode included research from the books Arts In Crisis written by Joseph Wesley Zeigler, The National Endowment for the Arts a history 1965-2008 edited by Mark Bauerlein with Ellen Grantham, Command Performance, an Actress in the Theater of Politics written by Jane Alexander, an online post called Timeline of NEA 4 Events that was written by C. Carr, an article written by Peggy Phelan in 1989 about the NEA troubles of that year, an article about Aram Saroyan by Ian Daly, and an article on Timeline.com about Reagan by Olivia Campbell.
Are You For Sale? is supported by the National Performance Network’s Storytelling fund, Brown University Arts Initiative, Dance NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund and Creating New Futures.
This episode was recorded and produced on Lenape land in the area currently called Brooklyn and in Seminole, Taino and Tequesta land in the area currently called Florida.
Our managing producer is Michelle Fletcher, our production assistants are Jake Cedar, Camryn Stafford and Kirsten Pardo. Thank you again to our amazing youth chorus of Sofia Gutierrez-Blood, Ezra Azrieli-Holzman, and Louise Fitzsimmons.
I record the interviews and I produce and edit the whole damn thing, and I made the theme song plus any music you heard that wasn’t made by someone else.
The title of this podcast comes from a line in Morgan Parker’s poem Welcome to the Jungle.
You can learn more about who you heard from today and read a transcript of the episode at our website areyouforsalepodcast.com.
Please subscribe to this podcast on whatever platform you got to us from, and follow us on Instagram @Areyouforsalepodcast
Until next time, Amurrica and I need you to stay weird, make art, stay blessed, not stressed. Adios everyone!
[Outtake]
MIGUEL
Louise, give me your best “Hooray.”
LOUISE
[Low energy] Hoorayyy….
MIGUEL
That's your best Hooray??
LOUISE
HOORAY!
KAREN FINLEY
Well I never imagined that I would, could possibly have, you know, a career in the arts. But what I could imagine was making art. And that, to me, making art was a joyful experience-- making art, being around other people that made art, people looking at art, people thinking about art. And when I say art that's very wide, right? Because it can be literature, politics, but just reflective thinking, reflective response, a creative response to the world around you and your inner world and reflective. And that's… that's what I was going to be doing. And if I was going to have to be a waitress even though you know, I did have my education, that's what I was committed to be doing. So it was a commitment to the art itself, not necessarily a commitment to the career.
MIGUEL
Karen also pointed out to me that joining things the way they were at the time wasn’t a goal…