Federal support of arts needed

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Jan. 24, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

In an age when there is a popular cry for smaller government, and the Republican-led Congress has the National Endowment for the Arts on its hit list, former NEA Chairman John Frohnmayer said he still sees the benefits of federally supported art work.

Frohnmayer, NEA chairman from 1989-92, told a Bemidji State University crowd Thursday that even though he was "fired for defending controversial, federally funded art work," there is a need for the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Campus-Community Breakfast he spoke at is a morning lecture series that BSU sponsors to bring residents of the Bemidji community and BSU employees together.

It is true, he said, that art and politics are inherently different because it is the job of the politicians to be answerable to the public, while the artist's primary task is to ask questions and interpret the human condition. This situation produces tension between the two.

"When you have art that is federally supported, then you get a number of crises," he said. "People begin to say, 'I don't like that art. Why should I pay for it?'"

He said that if the art crises during his administration -- such as the Maplethorpe incident -- had not touched on morality, there would not have been such a frenzied debate.

"It's not a question of money," he said. "It is a question of hot button issues."

To put things into perspective, Frohnmayer said it has cost every taxpaying U.S. resident $2,000 to bail out the failed savings and loans industry, but on the other hand, the NEA has cost each person 60 cents a year. And to fund the two controversial art projects that got him fired, it cost each taxpayer 1 cent.

"Congress received more mail about the controversial art work than the savings and loan crisis," he said. "And the (savings and loan) buyout cost everybody $2,000."

A discussion about where art fits into politics does not have to begin from scratch, Frohnmayer said, because there are two founding institutions that provide a basis of discussion -- the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the long-practiced system of American law.

"The First Amendment is the primary protection from the government," he said. "Those five things -- the right to assemble, free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press and freedom to petition the government -- are the guts of a democratic government. And a democratic government keeps us from turning over in violent revolution."

Frohnmayer said since the First Amendment is the right to freedom of expression and because art is personal expression, it should have a place in government.

To name a few good reasons for federally supported art, he said, art lends itself to better political orators; art is full of symbolism as is politics; art and politics are both dramatic; and art contributes to history and to how society understands the human journey.

"Art and politics can be helpful to each other. Yet we seem to be in an era when the chance that the NEA will survive is slim," he said. "But I have optimism that we can overcome this problem. This year will be a telling year for the NEA."