3/17/2017 Trump's proposal to end arts endowment is latest chapter in a fraught history | Culture | The Guardian

Trump's proposal to end arts endowment is

latest chapter in a fraught history
The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded more than $4bn to arts initiatives since it was created
in 1965, but has faced threats since the Reagan era

A cameraman lms broken glass from Piss Christ, a controversial piece of art by Andres Serrano, after its partial destruction by two
Catholic activists. Photograph: Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images

Amanda Holpuch in New York

Thursday 16 March 2017 18.04GMT

The White Houses proposal to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is the latest
in a string of threats against an agency that has sparked furore for sponsoring controversial art.

Donald Trumps proposed budget published on Thursday will bolster opponents of the NEA,
which has awarded more than $4bn to arts initiatives since it was created in 1965.

Ronald Reagan led the rst serious presidential eort to abolish the agency in 1981, but his
conservative advisers on arts and humanities warned against the plan and it was abandoned.

The NEA has been on the budget chopping block since, with opponents citing myriad issues
with the agency, most prominently: the governments decision to spend money on arts when
the country is in debt and the controversial nature of some of the works it has funded.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/mar/16/national-endowment-for-the-arts-trump-budget-nea 1/4
3/17/2017 Trump's proposal to end arts endowment is latest chapter in a fraught history | Culture | The Guardian

In the battle over artistic freedom and government censorship, the NEA does not always come
out on top. A look back at its biggest artistic controversies:

The NEA Four. Photograph: @NEA4InResidence/Facebook

The NEA four

The most famous controversy to hit the agency was in 1990, when a group of artists that
became known as the NEA four received individual grants that were then rescinded by the
NEA.

The four performance artists Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, Tim Miller and John Fleck led
suit against the agency in a high-prole case that raised questions about government
censorship.

The group won in a lower court, but lost in the supreme court giving NEA the power to
consider decency standards when allocating funds.

So what made these artists so controversial?

Finleys most notorious work at that time involved her naked and smothered in food; Hughes
had written, directed and performed in the dyke noir Dress Suits to Hire; Millers work
focused on gay life and activism; and Flecks 1989 peace Blessed Are All the Little Fishes
grappled with alcoholism and Catholicism.

Piss Christ
The National Endowment for the Arts helped fund Andres Serranos 1987 photograph with a
$5,000 grant. The photograph shows a plastic crucix submerged in Serranos urine and has
angered people around the world ever since.

It has been attacked by hammer-wielding French Catholic fundamentalists, who destroyed the
photograph in 2011, but remains. Shortly after the hammer attack, the image was resurrected
at a heavily protested September 2012 exhibition in New York City.

In April 2016, Serrano insisted the work was not blasphemous.

What it symbolises is the way Christ died: the blood came out of him but so did the piss and
the shit, Serrano told the Guardian. Maybe if Piss Christ upsets you, its because it gives some
sense of what the crucixion actually was like.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/mar/16/national-endowment-for-the-arts-trump-budget-nea 2/4