Special Goings On

as one of the original six targeted performance artists... I ask, if you go along with the Decency Clause, can you do meaningful work as an artist!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

* * * * *

To: "'Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.'"
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 10:11 AM
Subject: [goingson1] Special Goings On


Holly Hughes, Carolee Schneemann, Martha Wilson, FF Alumns, at The New School, Manhattan, TONIGHT!

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20

On the 20th anniversary of the Congressional decision to require the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to consider "general standards of decency and respect" in awarding grants, the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School collaborate on two panel discussions and a video interview project evaluating censorship and arts funding today.

Prominent artists, non-profit arts organization directors, art dealers, and founders of alternative spaces examine issues related to how the introduction of the decency clause in particular, and the culture wars in general, have affected funding, free speech and self-censorship, and how attitudes towards notions of decency and respect for the values and beliefs of the American public have changed over the past twenty years.

Panel Discussion I
Survival vs. Autonomy: Public Funding of the Arts, Free Speech and Self Censorship
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
The New School, Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
Admission: Free

Have arts organizations modified their programming in the aftermath of the culture wars? What alternative funding sources and strategies have they had to employ? How does the commercial market relate to the issue of decency and community standards? What is the future of government funding for arts institutions and individual artists?

The panel examines how the introduction of the decency clause and culture wars over arts funding in general have contributed to a growing distinction between conservative and avant-garde institutions. A number of alternative organizations have sprung up that simply forfeit - or are prepared to forfeit - government funding. Panelists include founders of new alternative spaces that seek autonomy from government funding, leaders of art projects that have been supported by the NEA, and key figures in public art funding.

Moderator:
Laura Flanders, GritTV

Participants:
Beka Economopoulos, Founder of Not an Alternative and No-Space Gallery, Brooklyn
Bill Ivey, Former Chair of the NEA (1998-2001) and Director of the Curb
Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy
Magdalena Sawon, Owner and Director, Postmasters Gallery
Nato Thompson, Chief Curator at Creative Time, author of Seeing Power:
Socially Engaged Art in the Age of Cultural Production
Martha Wilson, Founding Director, Franklin Furnace


Panel Discussion II
Decency, Respect and Community Standards: What Offends Us Now?
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
The New School, Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
Admission: Free

This panel looks at changing attitudes towards notions of decency over the past twenty years. It addresses how representations of nudity and sexuality have changed in contemporary art, and proposes a redefinition of what is considered offensive or inappropriate under our current political climate. The panel brings together artists whose work provoked the culture wars twenty years ago and those who deal with taboo topics today.

Moderator:
Laura Flanders, GritTV

Participants
Wafaa Bilal, censored in Iraq and the U.S.
Holly Hughes, one of the NEA4
Trevor Paglen, provocateur and experimental geographer
Carolee Schneemann, pioneering feminist artist



Background
In 1989, Senator Jesse Helms introduced legislation to ban federal funding of "obscene or indecent art." Adopted in October 1989, the Helms Amendment bestowed onto the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) the responsibility to define obscenity. To enforce the new amendment, the NEA established an "obscenity pledge," requiring artists to promise they would not use government money to create works of an obscene nature.

Now referred to as the Culture Wars, a heated debate burst out within and outside the art world. (Among the organizations resisting the new legislation was The New School of Social Research, which turned down a NEA grant*.) In November 1990, Congress amended the obscenity pledge by replacing it with the decency clause, stating that the works sponsored by the NEA must meet "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs of the American public." Under this clause, the NEA withdrew funding to award recipients whose work did not comply with this standard.

In 1992, four artists who later became known as the NEA Four, Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes and Tim Miller, sued in federal court in response to the withdrawal of their Performance Artists Fellowships. In June 1993, the NEA settled out of court with the artists by awarding them the grant money in question. The artists, however, decided to continue litigation against the clause after the settlement and the case made its way to the United States Supreme Court in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley. The 9th Circuit determined the decency clause was void because it violated the First Amendment's general prohibition against content- and viewpoint-based discrimination. On June 25, 1998, the Supreme Court announced its decision and upheld the clause while declaring the language "advisory" and meaningless.

As a consequence of the Culture Wars, the NEA eliminated funding for individual artists, passing on the responsibility to comply with standards of decency to the exhibiting institutions.

* The New School's case was based on the claim that the pledge acted as prior restraint and therefore breached the university's First Amendment rights. Before the constitutionality of the prior restraint argument was decided in New School v. Frohnmayer, the NEA released the university from its obligation to sign the pledge.