LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Jane Alexander : Defending the Arts Endowment From the Left and the Right

President Bill Clinton may have had the soothing power of celebrity in mind when he nominated actress Jane Alexander to head the controversial National Endowment for the Arts. In the Washington halls of power, senators and representatives are the VIPs, but when a genuine Hollywood movie star shows up on Capitol Hill, even veteran committee chairmen have been known to swoon. Alexander plays down the importance of star power, but so far she has charmed some of the NEA’s most vocal critics. Even Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) deemed her “a straight shooter with the best of intentions.”

Alexander will need more than good intentions to rescue the NEA from the mire of controversy and neglect that characterized it during the Reagan-Bush years. The agency--which is designed to operate as an investment banker for the arts--is hobbled by a declining budget and is the target of critical sniping from both the left and the right. The vast majority of the grant money it distributes goes to mainstream symphony orchestras, regional theaters and art councils. Yet, most of the press generated about the NEA concerns its funding of a handful of artists whose work is characterized by some, like Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), as anti-family, anti-religious and obscene.

Alexander says she’s determined to defend her agency’s right to support diverse and sometimes disturbing artwork. But she’s also campaigning to change the image of the NEA, emphasizing the broad cultural contributions and even the economic impact of the agency.

Alexander is 54, the mother of four children and a respected actress who never expected to become a bureaucrat. By all accounts, she’s tackled the job with the same intensity she brought to roles in “The Great White Hope” on Broadway and to “Testament” on the movie screen. In a bid to get her message heard, she’s promised to visit all 50 states before the end of this year--she spent the past week barnstorming through California, this week she’ll be in Kentucky.

In an interview on the road between San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, she talked about redefining the role of the NEA, how she handles her critics, and the difference between legitimate and political theater.

Question: You’ve just gotten your budget approved by Congress--how did you do?

Answer: The budget was cut by 2%, which puts us at $167.4 million, down from $172 million. I would have liked to have gotten a budget at least as big as last year’s, but Sen. Byrd (chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee) wasn’t happy with some of the grants we made last year, so . . . .

Q: But you must have done something to change Sen. Byrd’s mind, because he originally wanted to cut your budget by at least 5%. What did you do to calm his concerns?

A: I sat down and talked with him. He had earmarked certain programs for cuts--programs presenting visual arts and theater--and I pointed out that it would be punitive to cut funding to so many wonderful visual artists and theaters in the country. And I think his own constituents came to the fore, as did arts advocates across the country, and he backed off.

Q: You must either have a great deal of charm or remarkable skills of persuasion to garner compliments from Jesse Helms.

A: Maybe it’s because I have a dialogue with him. I pay attention to him. He knows where I’m coming from and that I don’t see things the way he does. But at least we correspond. You know, half the time all you have to do is pick up the phone. Many times, all it takes is just answering your critics. Because there is so much distortion of the facts, it’s very important to set the record straight.

Q: Your budget works out to less than 65 cents per person in the U.S, and it’s less than the amount a much smaller country like Britain spends on the arts. Do you think it’s ironic that so much time and legislative effort is spent debating a relative drop in the bucket?

A: I think it speaks to the power of the arts in the country to move people one way or the other. People have strong feelings about what the arts should do. And the arts are very visible. In most of the agencies in the government, the American public could not tell you what’s going on. But in our case, when certain organizations or individuals choose to isolate specific works of art they don’t find appealing, or that they find offensive, then it gets picked up by the media, because it excites people. And that’s just what art should be doing--it should move people, be able to make them think and wonder. But I want to stress that at the NEA we have two criteria that our panels look at when making grants--artistic excellence and merit.

Q: Do you think that by accepting public funds an artist should be willing to modify or moderate his or her artistic vision?

A: I think that would be extremely detrimental, not only to the vision of artists, but to what the arts do for society.

You know, it may sound simplistic, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Still, what we do at the endowment is so broad, there’s something there for anybody. The critics focus on a very small piece of what we do.

I said in my confirmation hearings a year ago that the arts are as varied as the rainbow of human behavior. That’s the way the arts must be in America if they are to truly represent America. What I have been trying to explain to people over the past year is that there really is something for everyone in the arts--be you a right-winger or left-winger or whatever. And that every community will seek its own kind of art, and that at the community level is where the real discussion of what’s appropriate should take place.

Q: We’ve talked about critics on the right, but you have also been criticized by those on the left--artists primarily who think the endowment is bowing to censorship. Were you surprised at the voracity of this sort of interfamily squabbling?

A: No. I come from their community and I know what they are thinking. When money is short and there is not enough work around, we all become a little paranoid. Artists have a right to express their dissatisfaction just like anyone else. But there’s something bigger that’s going on in the country that no one really talks about much. There is a discussion about the democratization of art. People want to begin to talk about art. When they don’t understand some kind of new art, it can anger them. They wish they understood it better, and when it’s inaccessible, they begin to resent it, and to undervalue art in general.

But, overall, I think it’s healthy, because it represents a sort of populist movement about art--that every citizen can feel engaged, can be a participant in the arts in one way or another.

Q: You’ve been chairman of the NEA for a year now--how have you evolved in your understanding of what the endowment does, or should do?

A: I think one of the most important things I decided to do was to go on the road. The public has had a misconception about what the NEA is--that needed to be righted. And once I’m able to talk to people, they begin to put a face with the endowment and the arts become more human and less fearful. They see that the 65 cents they are shelling out each year is, in fact, a terrific investment. I was just in Wyoming last week, and every dollar we award in that state leverages $26 dollars--that’s a pretty good return on investment!

Until I started traveling, I never understood the breadth of artistic endeavor in this country, and the breadth of what the endowment supports. For instance, in Alaska, there’s the Indigenous Broadcast Center, which we started with a grant from our Media Arts program some years ago. It beams programs to tribal people in Alaska and the lower 48 states. Programs are broadcast in native languages, and it has caused a revival in these tongues. That’s an astonishing ripple effect.

In Abilene, Tex., I met a group of women painters who had formed a collective, and they were doing outstanding work. In Ft. Gibson, Miss., there’s a place that started as a quilting center and grew to become the art center for the whole community--so that when I dropped in, I saw teen-agers hanging out there and little kids running around.

Q: The NEA was conceived as a kind of venture capitalist for the arts. How does that work, and how much of an economic force are your grants?

A: It’s seed money. We award grants, and people then have the federal imprimatur. They can say, “Look, the NEA believes in us,” and use that to raise money from other sources. And then these arts organizations create ancillary jobs--for instance, at restaurants that cater to people who are going to the theater or an art opening. The entire nonprofit art community returns $3.4 billion to the federal government each year in taxes. Art and art centers are a sound investment in any community.

Q: There are those who think that the NEA budget has become so tight that the organization has become irrelevant. The Times art critic Christopher Knight described it as approaching “functional oblivion.” Do you take issue with that?

A: I do. Just tell him to hit the road with me, and he’ll find it’s just not true. He must be thinking of some of the big institutions where we are only a tiny, tiny part of their overall budget--something like Lincoln Center in New York or the Music Center in Los Angeles. But I’ve sat down with the people who run those organizations and asked them if they don’t need the endowment any more and they say, “No, no, no.” They need the endowment because they say it’s the only organization that can convene panels of experts in their fields, that can judge projects in a way that lets them know what is the best.

So if the big institutions say they need us, I know the small ones do. Sometimes, our $5,000 is providing a third of a small group’s budget. And I can’t tell you how many small arts organizations there are like that in the country.

I can’t pretend that $167.4 million can adequately address the needs of every arts organization in the nation. Nevertheless, the NEA is the most important endowment organization in this country. That is because of our leadership. For instance, we just convened a meeting of health-care people from all over the country because fully 30% of the artists in this country have no health care. That’s the kind of thing the endowment can do--that we do do.

Q: How would you grade the Clinton Administration on their commitment to the arts?

A: Oh, very high. People sometimes don’t understand that this is a very busy President. But he has been highly supportive of me, of the NEA and of arts in general. On Oct. 14, we’ll have the Medal of Arts ceremony at the White House, and the First Lady was with me just last week at the National Heritage Awards for folk and traditional artists. I think the President is quite eloquent in his support for the arts.

Q: Last winter, George Will wrote a piece blasting the NEA--he said it dispenses pork for the elite. What was your response to that fairly common criticism?

A: You know, again, go out on the road with me. I sat down with George Will for a couple of hours before he wrote that article and the last thing I said to him was, “Please, come on the road with me, just to one state. Come see what we do.” But he didn’t pay any attention. He comes from a very privileged background, and like lots of people of his background, he has this perception of art as being elitist--because he grew up with it. But I can’t tell you how many people in this country do not have art in their lives, and who want it in their lives.

Q: What’s your vision of art and of the artist in the 21st Century?

A: That the artist is valued in society. That the arts are available to all members of society at every age and every level. That the arts institutions are stable in their funding and that arts education is a part of the core curriculum. And that there is an understanding of what art means, both as individuals and as a collective society.