Texas senator warns Obama against 'politicization of the NEA'*

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) issued an open letter Wednesday asking President Obama to "take the necessary steps to ensure that the NEA and the American arts community it supports remain independent from political manipulation by the White House."

Cornyn's letter followed a blogger's critical report about a telephone conference last month in which the National Endowment for the Arts combined with the White House Office of Public Engagement to enlist artists on behalf of the administration's "United We Serve" volunteer service initiative.

Posting the letter on his official website, Cornyn said that "steering the arts community toward a pro-Administration political message" would violate the NEA's nonpartisan mandate. The endowment's main purpose is disbursing federal grants to nonprofit arts organizations.

Cornyn cautioned that NEA involvement in recruiting artists for a presidential initiative could suggest that "NEA grant opportunities ... may be tied to artists' willingness to use their creative talents to advance your administration's policies." He added: "this episode appears to merit congressional hearings and sustained oversight."

Responding by e-mail Wednesday, White House spokesman Shin Inouye said the Aug. 10 teleconference "was not meant to promote any legislative agenda -- it was a discussion on the United We Serve effort and how all Americans can participate."

The NEA issued a statement saying that it took part in the conference to help inform arts organizations about opportunities to sponsor volunteer service projects themselves, or have their members take part in other volunteer efforts. "This call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda, and any suggestions to that end are simply false," the statement said. "The NEA regularly does outreach to various organizations to inform them of the work we are doing and the resources available to them."

Cornyn said his concerns rose from an Aug. 25 posting on the Big Hollywood blog by Patrick Courrielche, who owns an L.A. marketing and entertainment company. Courrielche wrote that he was invited by the NEA to take part in the conference call.

 The invitation, Courrielche wrote, said the meeting's agenda was for "a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civicly engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change," and "to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda -- health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal."

According to Courrielche, Yosi Sergant, who is listed on the NEA's website as communications director, was among those in charge of the teleconference. During the discussion, Courrielche said, the group of about 75 invitees was congratulated for having "played a key role in the election and now Obama was putting out the call of service to help create change."

Sergant did not return phone calls or an e-mailed request for comment on Wednesday and Thursday. Sally Gifford, a spokeswoman for the NEA, said Thursday that Sergant is a staff member, but not the communications director. Asked whether he had been demoted in connection with the controversy over the teleconference, Gifford said she couldn't comment on "personnel matters."

According to a September 2008 story in the L.A. Weekly, Sergant was instrumental in organizing and publicizing artist Shepard Fairey's "Obama Hope" poster campaign during the presidential election.

Lee Rosenbaum, who blogs about visual arts as CultureGrrl, also reported her misgivings as she listened in on a second White House teleconference, Aug. 27, in which arts folk were asked to help with the United We Serve initiative. In that instance, Rosenbaum said, an official from the White House Office of Public Engagement presided and noted that representatives from the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities who'd been scheduled to participate were unavailable. Rosenbaum wrote that she was "creeped out" by the idea of the government trying to enlist artists for a "political adventure....even though, like many on the call, I supported and (with reservations) still support the agenda of the new president."

Ben Donenberg, an L.A. theater director who serves on the National Council on the Arts, the 15-member panel of presidential appointees that advises the NEA, said it's important for the endowment to avoid the appearance of partisanship, but that Cornyn's letter to Obama smacks of "grandstanding," with a political agenda of its own.

Donenberg, the founder and producing artistic director of Shakespeare Festival/L.A., noted that the NEA has strong safeguards that should lay to rest any concerns that grants could go to arts organizations pushing a political agenda (less than $2 million a year in NEA money, out of an expected grants budget of about $133 million, goes to individual artists, through literary fellowships and $25,000 individual lifetime achievement honors for jazz, opera and folk arts). *Update: An earlier version of this post referred to Donenberg as producing director, rather than producing artistic director of Shakespeare Festival/L.A.

The process, he said, calls for panels of outside experts to review and rank  applicants in each discipline; then it's up to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman to consider those recommendations and make funding decisions. The chairman's picks are then reviewed by the other members of the National Council on the Arts.

"No funds have been distributed to support anything aligned with any political agenda, and there won't be," Donenberg said.

-- Mike Boehm

Related coverage:

Solis helps kick off United We Serve in L.A.

Photo: Sen. John Cornyn. Credit: Chris Kleponis / Bloomberg News

Comments

[CHARLES PRUITT]

DEAR KYLE
SINCE YOU WANT TO ATTACK TEXAS IN THIS ARGUMENT FOR THE ARTS. THE STATE DOES SUFFER HIGH POVERTY LEVELS AND LOW EDUCATION SCORES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. THE STATE ALSO RANKS VERY HIGH IN ILLEGAL REPRESENTATION WHICH SKEWS ALL STANDARDIZED MEASUREMENTS, SOME 27% OF THE POPULATION. THE STATE ALSO CONTAINS SOME 250,000 SQUARE MILES OF VERY RURAL COUNTRY AND BY FAR THE LONGEST LINEAR BORDER WITH MEXICO. IT IS ONE OF THE ONLY STATES IN THE UNION WITH A BALANCED BUDGET. SOME OF THE BEST UNIVERSITIES AND HOSPITALS IN THE WORLD. AT LEAST FIVE OF THE FASTEST GROWING CITIES IN THE COUNTRY.
JUST HOW MANY WELL KNOWN "ARTISTS" ARE NATIVE TEXANS?
DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS, AS WE DO PRACTICE WHAT WE PREACH. AS HARD AS IT MAY BE, AND FOR YOU TO ACCEPT.

[jahlen]

Cornyn's just mad because all the artists he knows -- those who create large sculptures of Confederate generals on horseback -- weren't invited to the teleconference.

[frank burns]

Artists banding together to promote: "health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal" -- the GOP must be hopping mad about that.

[Jorge]

The claim that all artists are liberal is ridiculous. I say shut down the NEA and tax the churches.

[Felix]

How dare him! What's wrong with the NEA telling artists to create political propaganda? People in Texas are so backward. They probably think that there are actual artistic standards. Or a higher purpose to art beyond propaganda.

Thanks goodness the LA Times knows better! That's why I go to the Times for my news.

And the Times has been especially good at its EXTENSIVE COVERAGE of this whole issue.

[Rachel]

Politics and art is like a fly in perfume.

[Mike Boehm]

Mike Boehm here. Thanks for the compliment, Kevin -- but we did address the possible grantmaking ramifications in our first post on this controversy on Sept. 10, in the form of this explanation from Ben Donenberg, a member of the National Council on the Arts, which advises the NEA chairman on grants and policy:

"Donenberg, the founder and producing artistic director of Shakespeare Festival/L.A., noted that the NEA has strong safeguards that should lay to rest any concerns that grants could go to arts organizations pushing a political agenda (less than $2 million a year in NEA money, out of an expected grants budget of about $133 million, goes to individual artists, through literary fellowships and $25,000 individual lifetime achievement honors for jazz, opera and folk arts).
...The process, he said, calls for panels of outside experts to review and rank applicants in each discipline; then it's up to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman to consider those recommendations and make funding decisions. The chairman's picks are then reviewed by the other members of the National Council on the Arts.
"No funds have been distributed to support anything aligned with any political agenda, and there won't be," Donenberg said."

[Bruce Richardson]

Natty Dread, so what you are advocating is that "the Arts and Artists" should be left alone to use taxpayer monies illegally to promote their own radical left-wing agenda.

How about this? Let's let "all great artists" spend their own money to promote their own agenda by totally eliminating public funding to the NEA.
.
At one time, I was ambivalent about public funding for the "Arts." I realized that it was in general a radical left-wing enclave but maybe the Arts had intrinsic value that outweighed that. What harm could a bunch of artists do? As it turns out, they can do a lot of harm. That's apparently why the "progressives" attempted to take over the Screen Actor's Guild many years ago. They realized how powerful the Arts could be when "properly channeled" into left-wing propaganda and also assumed that the percentage of critical thinkers in the artistic community was low. Many artists tend to be driven by emotion rather than common sense or logic.
.
I never understood public funding for ACORN. Is there a public funded radical right-wing equivalent of ACORN receiving comparable public funding?

[DFC]

Please.

This Senator and his GOP brethern stood by passively while Obama's predecessor politicized science, religion, finance, and law. Now he's worried about the NEA?

Hypocrite.