Up from Mapplethorpe: but far from a conservative darling: the arts endowment today.

THE day after Janet Jackson's peep show at the Super Bowl, a joke made its way around the offices of the National Endowment for the Arts: Did we fund that?

It's a fair question for a federal agency that has underwritten exhibitions far more revealing than Jackson's striptease. Over the years, the NEA has bankrolled provocateurs such as the S&M photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and "performance artist" Annie Sprinkle. Had it financed Jackson's performance as well, that would be outrageous--but hardly surprising, given all that has come before.

The NEA, of course, had nothing to do with the CBS halftime show. But that same week, conservatives nevertheless received a shock in its behalf, when First Lady Laura Bush declared that the agency would receive an $18 million funding boost in the White House budget proposal for 2005--nearly 15 percent above current levels. "I'm proud that this is the largest annual increase in more than 20 years," she said.

That announcement undercuts the message of fiscal austerity the Bush administration has been trying to convey amid rising conservative complaints about the rapid growth of government, from the escalating cost of the new prescription-drug benefit to the forthcoming highway bill. To be sure, the arts endowment is small beans in an era of multi-trillion-dollar allocations. The proposal to spend $140 million next year represents a microscopic sliver of the federal pie; removing it completely would, for example, cover American expenses in Iraq for about half a day. Yet much of the Right's fiscal frustration has zeroed in on the arts endowment. Conservatives wonder why the agency wasn't zeroed out years ago, when it served as a stock villain in soapbox tales of federal excess.

The NEA is no stranger to budget battles; its first one started before it was even created. When the builders of LBJ's Great Society were pushing for an arts endowment in 1965, the penny-pinching Iowa congressman H. R. Gross--who once questioned whether taxes should pay for the gas fueling the eternal flame at JFK's gravesite--mocked the notion that federal dollars ought to finance paintings and ballets. He tried to derail the bill establishing the NEA by offering an amendment permitting government sponsorship of belly dancing, which he defined as "jactitations and/or rhythmic contractions and coordinated relaxations of the serrati, obliques, and abdominis recti group[s] of muscles--accompanied by rotary undulations, tiles, and turns." Gross didn't get his way, but perhaps he would have if Congress had known the NEA eventually would pay for Karen Finley to smear her naked body with chocolate sauce and pepper it with bean sprouts in an attempt to make some kind of point about sexism.

Although the first round of NEA grants was of generally defensible quality--recipients included the likes of sculptor Mark di Suvero--many in Washington understood that the spending wasn't really about aesthetics. Shortly after the Kennedy assassination, presidential aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. lobbied President Johnson on the political merits of cultural pork. Arts funding, he said, "can strengthen the connections between the administration and the intellectual and artistic community--something not to be dismissed when victory or defeat next fall will probably depend on who carries New York, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, and Michigan." Years later Richard Nixon received similar advice from his own team, and the NEA budget increased eightfold on his watch.

As the number of NEA handouts grew, the debate shifted away from the root question of whether it is the federal government's job to subsidize art, and toward the specific matter of what grant recipients were actually producing. In 1970, the agency awarded $500 to support the composition of a one-word poem: "lighght." That was merely silly. Grants in the 1980s occasionally sustained flamboyant obscenity, such as when the NEA subsidized Andres Serrano, who then submerged a crucifix in his own urine, snapped a photo, and named it Piss Christ. That image became a powerful icon of the culture wars and helped make it possible for Republicans to slash NEA funding by 39 percent after they captured Congress in 1994. Conservatives were disappointed that they didn't achieve more--i.e., the complete elimination of the agency--but it was better than nothing. After holding steady for several years, however, the NEA's budget started to grow again in 2001; if the Bush administration's proposed increase goes through, most of the work of GOP budget-trimmers will be undone.

The quality of American artistry did not noticeably suffer in the wake of those cuts, and it certainly hasn't improved since the recent funding upticks. That's because NEA money constitutes less than 0.4 percent of what Americans spend each year on non-profit arts. In fact, most people are completely unaffected by the agency's spending: A significant chunk of its largesse goes to New York and other major cities, leaving vast swathes of America untouched.

The NEA's uselessness continues to irritate many members of Congress. "It's a topic that really unites social and fiscal conservatives," says Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona. Yet the agency's congressional critics have suffered from exhaustion in recent years: Who wants to fight that same old battle again, especially when the financial stakes are puny in the context of the whole federal budget? Over the last four years, NEA spending has grown by 20 percent; it took the recent budget announcement to ignite the Right once more. The new approach to the NEA, though, isn't to push for a budget reduction or outright elimination, but to block a proposed funding increase. It's a war of attrition, and the agency's critics are losing.

To complicate matters, current NEA chairman Dana Gioia gives the NEA's foes a challenge they've never encountered before: a cultural traditionalist running the agency. (Gioia is a poet who has written for such publications as The New Criterion.) "I don't know how you create art unless you love the past," he says. Many conservatives regard Gioia as one of Bush's finest appointments: "If there's going to be an NEA, we definitely want someone like him in charge," says Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation. Gioia may be an advocate of federal arts funding, but he also recognizes his agency's history of missteps: "I don't think the NEA has done a very good job of serving Americans." His favorite NEA programs today are the ones that support touring Shakespeare companies and accomplished jazz musicians. Almost all of the NEA's new funding for 2005 would go toward an educational initiative called "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius." It's a safe bet that Piss Christ won't be featured. If Congress approves the White House spending proposal, Gioia will be responsible for making not only a larger NEA but a better one--at least until someone else takes over.

Which isn't to say that the NEA has exorcised all of its demons. Under the Bush administration, the agency has channeled $42,000 to the Manhattan Theatre Club, which turned heads several years ago when it sponsored the play Corpus Christi, about a gay messiah. Last year it gave $10,000 for the preservation of the "Beer Can House," a Houston home decorated with nearly 40,000 trimmed beer cans. In certain circles, that's known as "folk art." Another recipient is the La Jolla Playhouse, which is developing a musical about Andrew Cunanan, the serial killer who murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace. Its take is $35,000.

"That's absolutely ridiculous," says Republican congressman Gary Miller of California. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder: "It's absurd to get riled up about a nascent production simply because it's about a murderer," commented the Los Angeles Times's Don Shirley in January. "The list of acclaimed plays about murderers includes Macbeth, Othello, and Richard III."

The NEA itself has adopted this line in defending La Jolla's forthcoming production. "Meaningful works of art can address crime, evil, and violence," says Felicia Knight, the endowment's communications director. Nobody disputes that, of course--and perhaps we can all agree that meaningful works of art also can teach us a thing or two about federal arts funding. If so, let's give the Bard the last word: "The art of our necessities is strange," he wrote, "That can make vile things precious."