In 1990, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) – the US governmental agency founded in 1965 as a means of supporting culture and the arts – refused to pay out already assigned grants to four artists on the grounds of the alleged indecency of their art. The NEA based their decision on the “Decency Clause” that had been approved of by the Congress and which in result obliged the agency to take into consideration not just the artistic merits of the applicants but also the supposed “moral” dimension of their work. In this particular case, what was deemed “indecent” was everything that was feminist and queer. Holly Hughes, Karen Finley, John Fleck and Tim Miller were denied their rightful grants despite the fact that their projects had been positively evaluated by NEA pundits. The artists in question lodged an official complaint: their appeal at a district court was favourably reviewed, however, the Supreme Court asserted the legality of the disputed “Decency Clause”. The 1990 ruling has had long-term consequences as far as US art is concerned: since then, due to the influence of the Congress, the NEA has ceased to bestow grants on individuals.

 

Holly Hughes, one of the “NEA Four” will visit Lublin as the Confrontations Festival’s guest of honour. This New York-based performer, Professor at the University of Michigan and an icon of the North American feminist and queer movement will present her own “Clit Notes”, which she created in direct response to the NEA-related events of the early 1990s.

Together with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw, Holly Hughes established the legendary Women’s One World (WOW) Café in the 1980s, a cooperative of artists in New York’s East Village, which later became one of the centres of avant-garde art; it is at the WOW Café that leading female practitioners of experimental theatre, women’s underground and queer performing arts made their debut and/or made a name for themselves.