NEA alive

That the National Endowment for the Arts lives for another year with only a modest cut in funding is good for two reasons: Congressional lowbrows got the whipping they deserved; and the conditions accompanying the funding could result in a better NEA.

The $98 million arts appropriation included in the final Interior Department bill isn’t much by federal budget standards, but it is a vast improvement upon the goose egg House Republicans forced through last spring. All their tough talk about routing the effete elite vanished when confronted with bipartisan support in the Senate. The Neanderthals caved.

The NEA deserved to be criticized, it needed reform. The relatively few grants to projects many perceived as obscene or anti-religious were bad decisions made worse when the agency frequently denied funding such projects only to find out it had. The piling on of grants for upscale audiences in cities already arts-rich — roughly half go to New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — was contrary to the NEA’s mission of bringing the arts to underserved regions, such as rural states and the inner cities, and it was politically dumb.

But the NEA did not deserve to die. Civilized societies nurture their artists and government grants can prime the pump for private support. Those without access to the arts, as a result of geography or economics, deserve a glimpse of the human spirit at its creative best.

The conditions Congress attached to the money can help. One provision caps awards to individual states at 15 percent of the NEA’s total budget. Hardest hit will be New York, which last year got 23 percent, more than $17 million. Although the trickle-down effect won’t be enormous, rural states, including Maine (less than $700,000 last year), should see modest gains.

Congress also increased the portion of NEA funds distributed directly to state arts agencies in block grants, from 35 to 40 percent, moving that much more of the decision-making to the local level. Those two provisions could hike Maine’s take by $15,000 or so. Not a fortune, but enough to put one of our regional orchestras or theater groups on the backroads a few times. Further, the NEA now will be allowed to solicit private money, giving it a chance to prove it has the public support it claims to have.

The last major condition cuts the size of the NEA board from 26 to 20. No problem there, but here’s the scary part — for the first time, members of Congress will be on the board, three each from the House and Senate.

The question remains whether Congressional leadership will appoint as board members knuckle-draggers bent on destroying the agency or persons of good will truly interested in elevating society. The question also remains whether the NEA will use this close call as a learning experience and rededicate itself to serving the public.