Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior - Hardcover

Frohnmayer, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395655714 ISBN 13: 9780395655719

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1993

Synopsis

Brimming with optimism, John Frohnmayer journeyed to Washington, D.C., in 1989 to serve a cause he believed in deeply: the arts in America. Appointed by President Bush to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, he was abruptly fired two and a half years later in a storm of front-page controversy.
Leaving Town Alive is Frohnmayer's lively and startlingly candid account of his trial by fire in the brutal world of power politics. Taking over the NEA amid the uproar about Robert Mapplethorpe's sexually explicit photographs, Frohnmayer stood at the center of the emotional debate over public funding for the arts. On the left were staunch defenders of free speech and the artists whose confrontational works came under attack. On the right were Jesse Helms and the fundamentalist proponents of traditional values.
At first Frohnmayer assumed that he could negotiate anything and that everyone had the best interests of the country at heart. He was wrong: the White House, for instance, just wanted the problem of "offensive art" to go away, while right-wing fund-raisers wanted to keep the issue alive as long as possible. In the end, Frohnmayer's harrowing education changed him. He entered the fray a First Amendment moderate; he emerged a free-speech radical.
John Frohnmayer had an insider's view of Washington during the Bush years, and he writes with remarkable frankness about the bitter battles over the government's involvement in the arts. Passionate, witty, and wonderfully readable, Leaving Town Alive is, finally, an eloquent plea for the liberation of American culture from the narrow concerns of partisan politics.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

The controversial former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts emerges here as a true public servant--albeit one who, admittedly, lost his moral bearings at times in a world dominated by political manipulation. Tapped in 1989--after active behind-the-scenes lobbying--to chair the NEA, Republican trial-attorney Frohnmayer found the agency embattled: ``cultural terrorists'' like Jesse Helms (wielding a portfolio of Mapplethorpe photos) wanted to end the NEA's existence, or at least to put ``content restrictions'' on government-funded art. Meanwhile, some artists, decrying state involvement in culture, also wanted to see the agency disbanded. During the author's tenure, right-wing fundamentalists kept the ``porn'' issue alive with--Frohnmayer says--lies and distortions. (The conservative Heritage Foundation criticized only 32 grants out of 90,000 given out over the course of 25 years, but the outcry over tax-funds for so-called smut made, the author says, a great fund-raiser.) Artists blamed Frohnmayer for putting restrictions on grants (which he did hoping to provoke litigation that would find the restrictions unconstitutional), but threatened censorship seemed to have less of a ``chilling effect'' than a ``heating effect'': Artists reacted strongly, with explicit sexual material and confrontational rhetoric, keeping the controversy on the front pages. Frohnmayer (an arts lover with a master's degree in Christian ethics who evinces a firm commitment to the First Amendment) thought that he could mediate the argument--but, instead, he was caught in the cross-fire, sabotaged by right-wing operatives placed in his agency by the White House, and disillusioned by a mostly spineless Congress. The author was fired in 1992, before the Republican Convention. Frohnmayer defends not only his own role but the role of art in society: a classic Washington-insider's memoir that may reach beyond the usual politics-hungry readership. (Eight-page b&w photo insert) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal

With candor and wit, Frohmayer recalls the events of his stormy two and a half years as the fifth chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). A former head of the Oregon Arts Commission, seasoned trial lawyer and accomplished singer Frohnmayer sought the chairmanship because he believed in the arts in America. Here he reveals his own errors in judgment, painting a disturbing picture of the politics of art during the Bush administration. Forced into the impossible position of dodging criticisms "from the right for his permissiveness and from the left for seeming to espouse conservative prohibitions," he saw his attempts at the NEA finally fail. Reminding us that "contemporary art deals with contemporary issues, and therein lies the rub," he has become a free-speech radical at the hands of these modern cultural terrorists. Recommended for academic libraries and large public libraries with an interest in art, cultural politics, and issues of censorship. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/92.
- Vicki Gadberry, Mars Hill Coll. Lib., N.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0395655714
• ISBN 13: 9780395655719
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360