IDLE SPECULATIONS AND FILLER ABOUT THE NEA
Submitted by Tommer on July 23, 2009
Big breaking news from the New York Times. Must be vacation season or something. Maybe the interns took over.
Although it may be hard to remember now, there was a time when the National Endowment for the Arts seemed to be on solid footing, both financially and politically, and could spend its days quietly financing artists and arts groups at its discretion.
Then came the controversies — Robert Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic photographs, Karen Finley’s chocolate-smeared performance pieces, Andres Serrano’s urine-immersed crucifix and others — and from the late 1980s onward, the endowment seemed to be constantly under siege.