N.Y. Group Receives Demand to Refund NEA Funding

A New York-based group which publishes “Performance Journal,” a quarterly magazine about the arts, is the latest grant recipient to square off with the National Endowment for the Arts over allegedly improper use of federal NEA funds.

Movement Research, which received a $4,400 general operating support grant from the NEA last year, has received a demand that it return $1,400 to the NEA by Oct. 10, according to the organization’s board of directors. In its demand for the refund, NEA officials cited a summer issue of “Performance Journal” devoted to transvestites and gender issues in the arts as a reason for the demand. The journal has a circulation of about 12,000.

According to David Mendoza of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, the NEA sent an auditor to New York to examine Movement Research’s books. He said the NCFE, which joined the American Civil Liberties Union a year ago in a widely publicized case to force the NEA to fund four prominent performance artists, will represent Movement Research legally if need be.