Anxiety spread throughout the cultural world as the current lame-duck session of Congress moved toward its close in recent days. The Republicans who will dominate Congress have cast cold eyes on federal arts spending in the past.
"It's the calm before the storm," one arts advocate said. "The issue is bigger than the arts endowment. . . . The next leadership is questioning whether there should be national support for the arts at all."
The National Endowment for the Arts, the federal government's largest supporter of diverse arts activities across the country, has seen its budget and its image battered for years by critics who, by and large, come from the Republican Party's conservative wing.
Rep. Dick Armey, a Texas Republican who will be the new majority leader, has supported abolishing the arts endowment. Newt Gingrich, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, on the other hand, has not been a particularly prominent arts critic.
The NEA, with its $167 million budget, is not in the main text of the Contract with America, the Republican campaign document that Mr. Gingrich and others have vowed to press in Congress; but the contract claims that $531 million can be saved over five years by reducing arts and humanities spending.
The arts endowment, however, is not the only cultural agency being scrutinized by the new majority. Every federal dollar headed for museums, scholarly activities and performances is up for grabs. The National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds scholarly work across the country, is under the microscope. So is the Institute for Museum Services, which provides funds for institutions. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a prime candidate for the budget ax.
"I think the arts community should plan for the worst," said a glum Democratic staffer. "Whatever is going to happen is going to happen very fast. There isn't much time to organize, and the arts community doesn't organize well to begin with."
For the arts and humanities endowments, as well as the Institute for Museum Services, the budget picture is more complicated than it might initially appear. Congress has not officially extended the lives of these agencies and approved expenditure levels for them. This process of reauthorization caused an uproar the last time the NEA came up for consideration in 1990, when several grants induced outrage among conservative religious and political leaders.
Rep. Ralph Regula, an Ohio Republican who will likely head the appropriations subcommittee in charge of the endowment's budget, said last week that reauthorization would have to come before any appropriations.
"The scenario is that people who are proponents of the NEA must get the agency authorized," Mr. Regula said. "It won't be protected . . . as has happened in the past. Things are different now."