GOVERNMENTAL PATRONAGE          

The National Endowment for the Arts, established by Congress in 1965, is the largest single supporter of the Visual Arts in the United States. It distributes grants to museums arts organizations and individual artists.  Since 1989 The N.E.A. has come under fire and is now in danger of being discontinued.

The controversy over the NEA began in Summer 1989, when a retrospective art exhibit was organized after the death of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Included in the exhibit were several examples of his "X Portfolio" with sadomasochistic and homoerotic images. The exhibit was to open at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, a publicly funded space, when Senator Jesse Helms (R.N.C.) caught wind of it, and deemed it "obscene." Part of the funding for the exhibit came from the NEA - Fax dollars.  The Corcoran canceled the Mapplethorpe exhibit and it opened instead in Washington's Project for the arts - to critical acclaim.  (In 1990 Mapplethorpe's retrospective opened in Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center. On opening day, director Dennis Barrie was arrested on charges of obscenity. The case went to trial and Barrie was found not guilty.)

Besides the National Endowment for the Arts, there are also state endowments - for example -the Ohio Arts Council, which also gives grants to museums, galleries, organizations and Artists'. The Ohio Arts Council also administers projects such as the mural in building 13 at Sinclair, which was funded through the "Percent for Art" program through which one half of one percent of the cost of governmentally funded buildings goes toward the purchase of art.