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[[Stamped]]  PRESS RELEASE

223
West Broadway
New York NY
10013
[[black square]]
Artists
Space

Contact Roberta Sklar (212)226-3970

[[centered]]  November 16, 1989

Statement of Susan Wyatt, Executive Director of Artists Space, in response to the Mr. John Frohnmayer's decision to release funds for the exhibition [[underlined]] Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing [[/underlined]]:

I was glad to hear Mr. Frohnmayer's statement that our grant is restored. Today is a joyous occasion because it is the opening of a moving and beautiful exhibition and the publication date for a powerful and important catalogue. We are pleased to accept the grant, that the show is receiving the press attention it deserves, and the issues of free speech, free expression, public funding for the arts, censorship and self-censorship are becoming clear to the American public.

The technicality on which the restoration of this grant was based, namely the fact that it is a FY 1989 grant, does not lessen our resolve to continue to advocate and to urge the arts community, the NEA and the American people to make clear to Congress the events of the last six months. Retroactive punishment for two specific grants in the form of a $45,000 cut to the NEA's budget (those for the work of Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe for presentations at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C. for valid art work

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