Jesse Alexander Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms was a prominent North Carolina senator known for his strong conservative stance on arts funding and censorship during his tenure from 1973 to 2001. He gained notoriety for leading legislative efforts to restrict federal grants for art deemed offensive, particularly targeting works that he and his supporters considered pornographic or blasphemous. Helms played a significant role in controversial debates surrounding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, where he opposed funding for artists like Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe, whose works sparked national outcry due to their explicit content and themes. He advocated for legislation that would define and limit what constituted acceptable art, which critics argued could infringe upon First Amendment rights. Helms's actions culminated in a series of legal battles that challenged the NEA's funding practices. Despite facing backlash from the art community, his efforts contributed to a lasting impact on how cultural institutions engage with public funding, leading many to opt for private support to avoid potential censorship issues. Helms passed away in 2008 at the age of 86, leaving behind a complicated legacy within American arts and politics.
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Jesse Alexander Helms
Identification: American politician
Significance: Helms sought to restrict public funding of the arts by creating grant guidelines aimed at eliminating controversial awards.
As a senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms consistently favored legislation to restrict arts award grants. A modern-day Anthony Comstock, he believed it to be his Christian duty to fight pornography and religious blasphemy. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s he led congressional attempts to suppress the work of artists, photographers, and performance artists. In 1984 he was instrumental in having obscenity added as a predicate act under a federal law that would require book and video store owners convicted of selling two or three adult books or videotapes to forfeit their entire inventories.
In 1986, Helms, along with other conservative politicians and businesspeople, attempted to gain control of the broadcast network CBS Inc. through a hostile takeover bid. The group felt the network's reporting showed liberal bias and encouraged like-minded investors to buy up CBS stock.
In 1989 Helms was involved in two major campaigns to clean up the art world. These campaigns involved works by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe that appeared in exhibitions funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Helms singled out their work to advocate legislation aimed at denying federal grants to arts projects and exhibits deemed to be offensive. He called Serrano’s photograph Piss Christ, depicting a crucifix immersed in urine, a “sickening, abhorrent, and shocking act by an arrogant blasphemer.” He then proposed legislation banning NEA funding for certain types of art, including “obscene or indecent” portrayals and those that are derogatory of “the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or nonreligion.”
Helms sought to bring his measure to a voice vote in the Senate “so that whoever votes against it would be on record as favoring taxpayer funding for pornography.” His bill, which was attached to the NEA’s 1990 funding measure, stated that no NEA funds could be used to produce or disseminate art which in the judgment of NEA was determined to be obscene. The bill defined obscenity as “including but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homo-eroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts and which, when taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
Critics argued that such legislation would turn the NEA into a ministry of culture, dictating to the American public what is morally acceptable art. In January 1991, as a result of lawsuits filed by New York’s New School for Social Research, the Newport Harbor Art Museum, and others, several federal judges simultaneously ruled the that the bill’s NEA restrictions violated the First Amendment rights of grant recipients.
Another significant national arts controversy emerged in 1989 over the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. The Mapplethorpe exhibit itself—which included photographs featuring nudity of adults and children, homoeroticism, and sadomasochism—was canceled in 1989 by a Washington, DC, art gallery because of the controversy. This was the direct result of pressure by Helms. Helms wrote to Patrick Trueman, head of the Justice Department obscenity unit created after the report of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, asking whether Trueman would consider prosecuting the Mapplethorpe photographs. His letter included copies of seven Mapplethorpe photographs (including four of African American men with erections) that Helms found objectionable. Helms’s outrage appeared to focus particularly on images with interracial and homoerotic themes. As Helms stated: “There’s a big difference between Merchant of Venice and a photograph of two males of different races on a marble table top.”
After its cancellation in Washington, the Mapplethorpe exhibit traveled to seven other sites without incident until it arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, a stronghold of the antipornography movement. Citizens for Community Values and other local antipornography groups put pressure on the local Contemporary Arts Center’s board members to cancel the exhibit, but curator Dennis Barrie prevailed and the show opened as scheduled. Barrie was arrested on the day the exhibit opened, and a trial resulted after seven of the exhibit’s 175 photographs were singled out for indictment. When the defense requested to enter the entire 175 photographs into evidence so that the artist’s work could be considered as a whole and in context, the judge ruled that each photograph was a whole. Barrie was acquitted.
In 1990 Helms asked the government’s General Accounting Office to investigate NEA funds spent on performance art after finding out about Annie Sprinkle’s performance. The former pornographic film actress had asked audience members to point at her cervix with a flashlight. Four other performance artists, all known for incorporating strong sexual themes into their work also were investigated. As a result of his efforts, Helms became one of the frequently criticized and depicted political leaders within the art world.
Helms retired from the Senate in 2001 and died at the age of eighty-six, in 2008. One enduring legacy of his signature crusade is that in the twenty-first century, far fewer cultural institutions accept public funding in order to maintain discretion in their choices of what to curate.
Bibliography
Capps, Kriston. "Jesse Helms: The Intimidation of Art and the Art of Intimidation." HuffPost Politics. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 25 May 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
"Former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms Dies at 86." Fox News. Fox News Network, 5 July 2008. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
Holmes, Steven A. "Jesse Helms Dies at 86; Conservative Force in the Senate." New York Times. New York Times, 5 July 2008. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
Lane, Frederick S. The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture. Amherst: Prometheus, 2006. Print.
Meyer, Richard. "The Jesse Helms Theory of Art." October 104 (2003): 131–48. PDF file.
Wallis, Roger, and Stanley Baran. The Known World of Broadcast News: International News and the Electronic Media. 1990. New York: Taylor, 2005. Digital file.