I began to think, The endowment has had a bad reputation in the last few years, and that's unfair.

I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.

It would be difficult, in this day and age, to fund art that made racial slurs.

Most of our funding goes to organizations and is then used to leverage the private sector.

No one's conception of art is going to be acceptable to everybody.

Now, I cannot approve anything the council has rejected, but I can reject anything the council has approved.

What we do is look for high standards of excellence in the arts.

All I want to do is make sure that art is available to all Americans in a participatory way, whether you engage in the art process yourself or you're an audience member.

Senator Helms might very well do that. I would point out to him that we in the art world are not necessarily in the business of making controversial art.