AVOIDING THE ACADEMIC GHETTO

A decade ago, public support for the agency was at an all-time low, after the uproar over its funding of works such as Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" and photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. Work by an artist who took off her clothes and smeared herself in chocolate, Karen Finley, was nearly funded. In 1996, Congress slashed the agency's budget to less than $100 million, and a large bloc of congressmen regularly voted to abolish the NEA altogether.Today, as a result of Mr. Gioia's leadership, the NEA is not just surviving but thriving. As chairman, Mr. Gioia put into practice the same philosophy of the arts he advanced in "Can Poetry Matter?", his widely discussed 1991 essay in the Atlantic Monthly. "The most serious question for the future of American culture," he wrote back then, "is whether the arts will continue to exist in isolation and decline into subsidized academic specialties or whether some possibility of rapprochement with the educated public remains."

New York Sun
Sept 11 2008