Arts Appropriations Disputes: The Musical!

By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post, Friday, April 18, 2008; Page C03

If you followed the culture wars circa 1990 -- the angry battles over federal funding for sexually charged works by artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Karen Finley-- you probably thought at some point, "Hey, this would make a great musical comedy!"

Well, so did the man at the center of it all -- John Frohnmayer, the National Endowment for the Arts chairman forced to quit in 1992 in the crossfire between conservative pols like Sen. Jesse Helms and liberal-learning arts advocates.

And the retired lawyer actually wrote that musical, a fictionalized and heavily satirical take called "Spin," which debuts at Oregon State University next month. It features a Helmsian senator (played by David Ogden Stiers, Maj. Winchester from "M*A*S*H") and a wacky performance artist-provocateur whose flash-point artwork is "a vomit flag" on the Mall. ...

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