March, 2000

A Future Without the NEA?  Warhol Foundation's "Creative Capital" Fund Paves the Way

by Patrick Reilly

Creative Capital, a new foundation established last year, is no advocate of traditional art. Its grantees dabble in music, dance, sculpture and design, and their creations are sometimes controversial and almost always strange.

The philanthropy is the brainchild of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, itself a controversial grantmaker that has vigorously opposed cuts in federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Indeed, the idea for Creative Capital arose in part from a 1996 meeting of artists opposed to NEA cuts of almost 40 percent that year.

So it is ironic that the new foundation gives conservatives perhaps the best argument yet for ending public funding of the arts. In 1996, Congress forced the NEA to halt almost all funding for individual artists. But now private donors have collaborated to replace a significant amount of the lost funds. This reinforces the argument of the NEA’s critics that the arts community can flourish without government support.

What’s more, Creative Capital isn’t designed to preserve the most popular or traditional artwork — the art most likely to survive cuts in government funding. To the contrary, it demonstrates the availability of private funding for some of the most arcane and controversial work.

That may not represent the best use of philanthropic dollars — Creative Capital’s giving leaves much room for criticism — but it raises important questions about the continued need for a public arts endowment.

NEA Defenders ‘Terrified’

The goal of Creative Capital is not the NEA’s demise. Indeed, the philanthropy’s founders hope it will motivate the NEA to reinstate funding for individual artists.

"We will hopefully make support for individual artists sexy in a way that it just has to be," said Creative Capital executive director Ruby Lerner prior to the fund’s establishment last May.

"It is impossible to even think that a small, privately funded entity could replace the incredible loss of support and the kind of imprimatur that the NEA gave to thousands of artists," Lerner told the Dallas Morning News last August. "I think there is a role for a federal presence in supporting creativity."

But is she aware of the conflict inherent in privately funding art and then calling for more public funds? Lerner acknowledges, "It is too possible for right-wingers to say, ‘You see, this is exactly what we said would happen. See, private sectors have taken over and isn’t that glorious? This is the way it should be.’ And that is one of the things that terrifies me the most."

Her fright is justified. Critics of the NEA did say this would happen if the NEA budget were cut: private donors and customers would support artists whose work has aesthetic or market value to them. And now the NEA’s critics are pointing to Creative Capital as evidence that their assumptions were correct.

"Private groups are stepping up to the palette to support the weirder stuff," noted the Family Research Council’s Robert Knight in his syndicated column last July. "Creative Capital Foundation has been formed with the intent to sponsor themes that the NEA may be reluctant to support." And that’s OK, Knight argued, as long as taxpayer funding ends.

"Congress would do well... to let private foundations support controversial or nonessential themes rather than force taxpayers into the role of hapless dance partners," Knight wrote.

Michele Davis, press secretary to House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), told reporters last May that Creative Capital fits neatly with the philosophy of the NEA’s opponents: "This is what we’ve been saying all along. Government has no business deciding what is and what is not art."

Armey is credited with engineering the 1996 NEA cuts. His success was determined partly by the revelation that the NEA had supported controversial artists like Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe. But since the 1996 cuts, the NEA’s budget has steadily increased, and the agency wants to reverse the cuts in grants to individual artists. Like the 1996 revelations of NEA funding for controversial artists, the example of Creative Capital may be the catalyst that the NEA’s critics need to begin a new round of budget cuts.

Not so, say the NEA’s defenders. They argue Creative Capital won’t hinder their lobbying efforts for NEA funding. Said foundation board member and art gallery owner Ronald Feldman to reporters last May, "Even with NEA funds going to individual artists, this would still be needed. It [Creative Capital] is in no way intended to replace the NEA."

As if to dispel any thought of surrender, President Clinton last month proposed a 53.7 percent increase in spending for the NEA, from $97.6 million this year to $150 million. His proposal comes on the heels of a small funding increase this year, exacted from a reluctant Congress after weeks of budget talks.

NEA chairman William J. Ivey told Knight Ridder News Service that he welcomes Creative Capital as an additional source of funding for artists: "Never are we the entire support system. The private sector needs to play a role, but the NEA provides a sense of public investment, permanence and continuity that only a federal agency can bring."

But if Creative Capital attains its goal of building a $40 million private endowment, why should the art world’s sense of permanance be threatened by the absence of taxpayer support?

In Memory of Warhol

Although Creative Capital is legally distinct from the New York-based Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, media reports commonly refer to it as related to the Warhol fund. Perhaps that is because Creative Capital is housed rent-free in the Foundation’s Greenwich Village offices, which initially were decorated with Andy Warhol paintings.

The Warhol Foundation is Creative Capital’s largest contributor. The Foundation has pledged $400,000 a year for three years to the new fund. It also recruited other grantmakers — including the Eli Broad Family Foundation, the Joe & Emily Lowe Foundation, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Norton Family Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation — to contribute up to $100,000 a year. The Ford Foundation has committed $250,000 a year for four years. In all, 29 foundations and individual donors have contributed to Creative Capital’s initial endowment of more than $5 million. (See list of donors on page 3.)

Warhol Foundation president Archibald L. Gillies took the lead in establishing Creative Capital, and he has put the fund and its executive director, Ruby Lerner, under his wing. Lerner has served as executive director of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers and publisher of Independent Film and Video Monthly. She supervises a small staff of three artists-made-program directors.

Creative Capital’s board of directors includes Gillies as chairman; performance artist Laurie Anderson; James Irvine Foundation CEO Dennis A. Collins; Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation president Robert Crane; New York art dealer Ronald Feldman; film director Richard Linklater; screenwriter Jeffrey Soros, nephew of billionaire George Soros; and Catherine R. Stimpson, now dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University and former director of the MacArthur Foundation’s "genius" grants program. (See full list on page 5.)

The foundation provides small grants of $5,000 to $20,000 to individual artists. In addition to monetary support, the fund helps artists market their work, show their work in performances or at galleries, and identify other funding sources.

What is most interesting is Creative Capital’s financial relationship to the artists it supports. The foundation requires that artists share any profits they receive from their work with the foundation — a requirement that the Warhol Foundation attributes to its namesake.

Pop artist Andy Warhol wasn’t always famous. He got his start as a commercial illustrator of advertisements and window displays. One can see the influence of his commercial work in his later paintings and designs.

The Warhol Foundation’s own survival relies on the sale of his art — when Warhol died in 1987, he left many of his works to the Foundation. Today its assets include about $50 million in cash and $240 million worth of art.

So it’s no surprise that the Warhol Foundation shares its patron’s interest in the marketability of art, no matter how unusual or controversial. But Creative Capital takes an even more market-oriented approach to philanthropy and art, and its methods have attracted much media attention. Grant recipients must agree to return a portion of any profits earned from work supported by Creative Capital. According to Gillies, the foundation customizes its profit-sharing agreements with each individual artist and project. Typical returns are 10 to 15 percent of gross revenues.

Does this meet IRS requirements for nonprofit activity? Apparently so, since Creative Capital has been given tax-exempt status, and similar revenue-sharing policies are enforced by grantmakers like the National Endowment for the Humanities.

But the foundation’s profit-sharing arrangement does raise questions about the purpose of Creative Capital. The fund claims it does not consider the marketability of a project during the grant selection process. But it also admits that a portion of its planned $40 million endowment will come from its grantees’ profits. Will Creative Capital be more interested in marketable, profitable art to build its endowment than work judged by its artistic merits? The founders say no.

In the Thick of It

If marketability is a concern, avoiding controversy is not. When Creative Capital was announced last May, it was portrayed as a source of funding for the most controversial and offensive artists rejected by the NEA. This was part sensationalism by reporters, who get a rise from readers when reporting on the NEA culture wars. But it also was suggested by the foundation’s leaders.

"This is a boisterous, diverse country, and we have always had art that upsets people," Gillies told The New York Times last May. "Controversy won’t bother us at all.... The Supreme Court has ruled about pornography, but anything beyond that is fair game."

When asked by the Times if Creative Capital would shy away from artists like the nude, chocolate-smearing performer Karen Finley or famed homoerotic photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Lerner said she would seek them out.

These comments led to reports that Creative Capital would "support artists who deal with nudity, sexuality and other provocative themes" (Philanthropy Journal), as if that were the foundation’s primary focus. The New York Times declared, "Private Donors Unite to Support Art Spurned by the Government."

In hindsight, following the announcement of Creative Capital’s first round of grants last month, the media reports were exaggerated. The foundation does support artists who have produced controversial work, and at least a few funded projects will upset the same people who have criticized the NEA. But while much of the art funded by Creative Capital is nontraditional, most of the announced projects do not appear to be offensive. Of course, without seeing the final products, it is too soon to make any definite conclusions.

What is clear, however, is that Creative Capital is not simply a rebellion against the NEA and critics like the Christian Coalition. Instead it reflects the amoral and non-representational tenor of modern art. As Gillies explained, "In this organization’s absolute principles, one comes first and that is funding experimental, challenging art on its merits. Then after selecting it, we see what the marketing potential is. The nature of the content is not a factor."

As paraphrased by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Gillies and Lerner said "the big challenge for Creative Capital... will be to support work that is daring, but not so extreme that it proves to be greatly offensive."

The foundation appears to have come close to meeting that challenge in its first year. It did not, as widely anticipated, fund well-known offensive artists like Finley, Mapplethorpe or Andres Serrano, creator of the infamous "Piss Christ." But it invested heavily in projects that will be challenged by critics as homoerotic or pushing a homosexual rights agenda, a surefire way to attract controversy and offend religious conservatives. Other projects are intended to make political statements that could be characterized as rebellious and, in at least one case, downright anarchistic.

If the grantees’ histories are any indication of how controversial their funded projects will be, there is additional reason to expect criticism. Several grant recipients have not shied away from controversy in the past.

Some of the grantees include:

l Allison Cornyn, who was awarded a $5,000 grant for "360 Degrees," an interactive web site designed to "tackle" issues including immigration, welfare reform, "class bias" and the workplace. The Creative Capital grant will support a year-long project on the American criminal justice system, including a panoramic "room" where vistors can experience being in a prison cell. The project will utilize a classist perspective on crime, encouraging visitors to type in personal data like their age, race and income to calculate their chances of becoming a crime victim or a criminal, their chances of being incarcerated, and the likely length of their prison sentence.

Cornyn is a founding partner in Picture Projects, a New York-based effort to combine discussion of public affairs with filmmaking and website design. Her work can be found at www.advanix.com/~nmahl/, the site of "Genderplex," an exhibition of art questioning the traditional concept of gender. Cornyn’s "Man/Woman" video features men and women expressing their male and feminine "sides." For example, one man says, "I’m a dog man." And then, "I’m a salamander woman."

l Sandi DuBowski was awarded a $5,000 grant for "Trembling Before G-d," a documentary about the difficulties of Hasidic and orthodox Jews who come out as gays and lesbians. The film is also funded by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, a creation of producer Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation.

A gay activist, DuBowski’s previous film "Tomboychick" explores the "gender-bending" memories of his 88-year-old grandmother. While studying gay independent film at Harvard University under two Ford Undergraduate research fellowships, DuBowski served as a co-chair of the Harvard Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay Student Association.

After Harvard, DuBowski worked two years researching the conservative "opposition" for the Clinic Defense Fund of Planned Parenthood. In 1994, his research targeted the U.S. Taxpayers Party, founded by Howard Phillips, former head of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity in the Nixon Administration. DuBowski described the Party as a "convergence of anti-abortion leaders, elements of the violent and racist right, members of the John Birch Society and Far Right politicians" (Front Lines Research, Nov. 1994).

l Zoe Leonard was awarded an $8,000 grant for a 3,000-photograph archive documenting the demise of small businesses in New York and other cities. It is not clear how this project might be controversial, but Leonard never seems to stray far from controversy.

A gay-rights activist, Leonard worked with the militant AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in a 1990 illegal effort to distribute clean syringes to drug addicts inNew York. Her activism has spilled over into her art, including her photography for "The Watermelon Woman," a mock documentary of a lesbian filmmaker that was funded by the NEA. The 1996 film, which one reviewer said features "the hottest dyke sex scene ever recorded on celluloid," ignited controversy over NEA grants made under the Clinton Administration.

Leonard’s past work includes "Keep Your Laws Off My Body," which pairs a bed, draped with sheets and pillowcases imprinted with legal statutes pertaining to women’s rights, and a video of a lesbian couple making love and police restraining AIDS demonstrators.

Leonard’s other work builds on the theme of sexuality hidden behind the facade of glamour. Her photographs of fashion shows include voyeur shots up the skirts of models. In "Jennifer Miller: Pinup No. 1," Leonard photographed a naked bearded transvestite. Her shows include a display of black-and-white photos of female genitalia, exhibited on a wall between paintings of fashionable 19th-century women.

l Mary Ellen Strom was awarded a $10,000 grant for "Girls &," a project involving sculpture, video and performance to share the experiences of girls in the Boys & Girls Clubs of Atlanta. It sounds tame, but Strom’s past presentations with teenage girls and boys have been quite controversial. In "School’s Out: The Naming Project," one girl removes her clothes and says, "I’m obsessed with my body, and I’m obsessed with your body." The show includes teenage, minority homosexuals addressing themes such as coming out, homophobia, racism and AIDS.

l Ray Thomas was awarded a grant of $5,000 for an organization called rtmark and its website rtmark.com. Creative Capital’s grant description says, "Rtmark is a multimedia project that began as a funding system for creative subversion and blacklisted cultural production. It has now evolved into a publicity engine and nexus wherein creative opposition to dominant commercial and informational structures is discussed and developed."

What does that mean? In layman’s terms, rtmark is a vehicle for anarch-istic attacks on big business. Rtmark spokesman Frank Guerrero told the Dallas Morning News, "Our bottom line is trying to agitate socially in order to enact, hopefully, some legislation to limit the actions of corporations." National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu also has served as an rtmark spokesman.

In 1993, rtmark gave $3,000 to the Barbie Liberation Organization, a protest against mass-produced toys in which protesters purchased Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, switched their voice boxes and then returned them to stores. The result was Barbie dolls that growled, "Dead men tell no lies!" and G.I. Joe dolls that said sweetly, "I love school, don’t you?" Rtmark also is responsible for posting gatt.org, a parody of the World Trade Organization’s web site, prior to the WTO’s chaotic Seattle meeting last year.

Thomas and his compatriots at rtmark aren’t afraid of the law. Last year, rtmark created etoy.com, a web site to draw customers away from the site of toy-seller eToys, which rtmark accused of wanting "to turn the World Wide Web into their own private home-shopping network." A Los Angeles judge forced rtmark to dismantle its site during the Christmas holiday shopping season. In retaliation, rtmark joined forces with the hacker group Electronic Disturbance Theater to flood the eToys site with bogus e-mail requests in an unsuccessful attempt to crash the site.

Rtmark also has entered into politics with its gwbush.com web site, a satire of Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s political views. The Bush campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, calling the site "malicious" and in violation of federal campaign laws. Also recently, rtmark retaliated against New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his campaign web site HillaryNo.com, which ridicules his Senate-race opponent First Lady Hillary Clinton. Rtmark posted an anti-Giuliani site called YesRudy.com.

Is it Art?

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Creative Capital — more controversial than its grantees, more questionable than its impact on the NEA — is its definition of art. Indeed, it is difficult to find the artistic value of rtmark’s anti-corporate web activism or Cornyn’s issue-oriented website.

But even the use of traditional art forms like painting or dancing can be so distorted that its value as art is questionable. For example, Creative Capital’s largest grant of $20,000 went to Wendy Jacob for her "Squeeze Chair," an overstuffed chair with inflatable arms that gently hug the sitter. The grant will help Jacob design a prototype to be manufactured.

Is it art? Creative Capital deems it "sculpture." But the chair’s biggest fans are not artists, but parents who hope it will help their autistic children become comfortable with gentle touching, a sensation that disturbs many autistics. They probably don’t care if the chair looks like a 1970s loveseat with a paisley cover.

Mel Ziegler and his late wife Kate Ericson developed "Eminent Domain," a chart of paint colors allegedly related to the history of public housing in the United States. According to Creative Capital, "The chart is meant to serve as a subversive alternative to the conventional ‘clean’ histories that are so often presented in such a format and to point out the many ironies and contradictions in the perceptions of public housing and suburban housing issues."

Is a "subversive" paint chart art? Maybe, but True Value Hardware sees something else in Ziegler’s work. Creative Capital gave Ziegler $10,000 to print 150,000 copies of the paint chart, which will be distributed to True Value customers. The colors are mixable, so interested customers could paint the color "Robert Taylor Homes Brick" in their living rooms.

Another Creative Capital grantee is Elizabeth Streb, whose "Action Heroes" performance will feature "extreme" action stunts in an effort to relate "the physical history of stunts to culture and class." It should be quite a show, if it resembles Streb’s past work. She is best known for her experiments in defying gravity — in which performers remain in the air with the use of pulleys, trapezes and trampolines — and making unique body sounds — performers repeatedly fling themselves against aluminum walls.

Will Creative Capital be one more reason why legislators attempt to defund the NEA and turn arts funding over to the private sector? That remains to be seen.

As more attention is paid to the projects funded by Creative Capital, its greatest influence may be on private — not public — funding for the arts. Increasingly, as the private sector boldly funds the type of controversial projects that drew criticism to the NEA, questions will be raised about whether private arts funding should have its proper limits, too. Common sense may be a good start.

Patrick Reilly is editor of Foundation Watch and a research associate at the Capital Research Center.