Former NEA director doubts nation’s commitment to arts

MOUNT DESERT – Art and creativity are so much a part of the human condition that they will survive funding shortfalls, conservative witch hunts, and today’s focus on science and technology, the woman credited with saving the National Endowment for the Arts said Monday.

“I don’t fear for the artist. Artists will find a way to create. But I do worry about institutions” that need public funding to keep their doors open, said actress Jane Alexander, who presided over the NEA during its darkest days when the 104th Congress wanted to abolish it outright in 1995.

Alexander, who helped Mount Desert Island kick off a weeklong celebration of the arts, recalled being unprepared for the “lack of civility and ignorance of the men in power,” primarily conservative Republicans, who tried to shut down the NEA when Newt Gingrich and the GOP took control of the U.S. House in 1994.

“I found they had very little understanding of what the NEA does,” Alexander said.

Congress slashed the NEA budget by 45 percent and prohibited grants to individual arts, except for writers. The momentum to gut the NEA was blunted “because people like you wrote to your congressman,” Alexander said.

She praised Maine’s two senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both Republicans, for being faithful supporters of the NEA.

But today, Alexander worries that President Bush has little understanding of or appreciation for art and its importance to the country and society. She said the administration has budgeted only $700,000 for international art programs and studies and just $2 million for arts and art exchange efforts worldwide.

“So no wonder we know so little about other cultures,” she told the audience of 130 at the Acadia Repertory Theatre.

The NEA’s budget is $115 million a year, but Alexander said it should be $400 million. The country of Finland, for example, spends $350 per capita annually on the arts, while the United States budgets 33 cents a year per capita.

Alexander said that Republicans, overall, give more money to support the arts than Democrats. They also often happen to be the vocal critics who try to mute artists and take away their public funding.

Alexander said the nation today is in a conservative mood, which historically has followed great bursts of new art and cultural success. She said the pattern emerged throughout the last century: The conservative 1940s and ’50s followed the art explosion of the 1920s; and again in the ’80s and ’90s after the 1960s cultural and art revolution.

“Some things remain the same year after year,” she said, “and art and controversy is one of them.”

Alexander quoted from myriad writers during her 30-minute keynote address, then took questions and comments from the audience for 20 minutes.

One California school principal said she has noticed that children today are less creative and imaginative than children of other generations, and she worried about the implications on art in the future.

She said children seem to be more spectators than creators, in part because of computers and other technology gains, and because of the emphasis on math and reading in school.

But Alexander said she should not be worried. She said today’s children would learn to express themselves artistically, but perhaps in a different way from in the past.

“They will find a way,” she said. “It’s part of our DNA to be creative.”