Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992 TAG: 9202220239
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
ARTS ENDOWMENT CHIEF ENDS EMBATTLED TENURE
John Frohnmayer, long a target of conservative attacks for his funding of sexually explicit art, resigned under pressure Friday as chairman of the Frohnmayer National Endowment for the Arts.Both Frohnmayer and the White House officially portrayed his departure as voluntary, but a senior administration source said that Frohnmayer was fired by White House Chief of Staff Samuel Skinner in a meeting Thursday.
The firing was viewed by both critics and supporters of Frohnmayer as a response to Patrick Buchanan's strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. In a speech Thursday, Buchanan reiterated his intent to thrash the agency for "subsidizing both filthy and blasphemous art" in his upcoming campaign swing through the South.
In a letter to Frohnmayer, President Bush said the NEA chairman had expressed a desire to leave last October. He thanked Frohnmayer for bringing "integrity and decency" to the job for the past 2 1/2 years, but added, "some of the art funded by the NEA does not have my enthusiastic approval."
A senior administration official said Bush had suggested at the October meeting that Frohnmayer "might want to think about" leaving the NEA. The meeting was meant to be "the nice way" of getting Frohnmayer to seek another job, the official said. On Thursday, Skinner suggested to Frohnmayer that "enough time had gone by for this to be done the nice way," according to the official.
Frohnmayer called a staff meeting Friday morning to announce his May 1 departure. In an emotional session, he sang a Shaker hymn, "Simple Gifts," and read a poem by William Stafford as well as a "credo" reiterating his support for government funding of the arts without congressionally imposed restrictions on content.
"I leave with the belief that this eclipse of the soul will soon pass and with it the lunacy that sees artists as enemies and ideas as demons," he told the staff.
"The firing of Chairman Frohnmayer is long overdue," said Rep. Dick Armey, R-Tex. "The NEA has been the most poorly managed agency of the Bush administration."
But Rep. Sidney Yates, D-Ill., one of the endowment's most ardent supporters, said Frohnmayer is "a casualty of the New Hampshire election . . . a victim on the altar of Pat Buchanan and the conservative wing of the Republican Party."