Tying Down Federal Funds for the Arts

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Overview

Will new strings be attached to federal grants to artists, musicians, actors and writers? It's beginning to look that way.

Although the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and its companion agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), are barred by their charters from funding obscenity, last year Congress strengthened the prohibition by approving a measure that specifically barred federal funding for works that “may be considered obscene.” But because the law left it up to the NEA and the NEH to judge whether works were obscene and whether they lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value,” some conservative members of Congress felt the measure did not go nearly far enough.