The Instrumentalization of the Arts: Congressional Aesthetics and the NEA in the 1990s

• In Event: 365 - Regular Session. Sociology of Culture

Abstract

The struggles of the National Endowment for Arts (NEA) in the 1990s can be traced to the failed implementation of “congressional aesthetics,” or a particular brand of arts-instrumentalization adopted and preferred by the U.S. Congress for post-WWII federal projects involving art. Failed congressional aesthetics results largely from postmodernist cultural production of the 1980s. The cultural production of American art in the 1950s lent itself to instrumentalization for government purposes, such as the utilization of Abstract Expressionism in Cold War cultural diplomacy. By contrast, the “subversive complicity” of 1980s art threatened mainstream culture, preferred new media like photography, and invoked social activism, identity politics, homosexuality, and AIDS – all of which defied government instrumentalization of the arts. The controversial works of Serrano and Mapplethorpe reveal the problem posed by postmodernist cultural production to congressional aesthetics. Coinciding with the cultural production in the 1980s, the NEA controversies of the 1990s can be traced to the agency’s failure to implement congressional aesthetics.

Authors

• Gordon Shockley, Arizona State University

• Connie L. McNeely, George Mason University