We believe that it is important to raise the level of funding and the priority in the community's mind from year to year about the arts so as to better serve the community.

Representative BRADEMAS. How can you best do that?

Miss HANKS. It is the Council's view that you can make that step with a challenge grant, for example, to a community or to an institution.

I will give the example of the Metropolitan Opera in which we used the challenge grant 2 years ago to attempt to enable them to better reach their radio audience. It is not only that the Metropolitan Opera raised a million dollars more of new and increased money from that radio audience but they obtained 20,000 new contributors.

This, you see, Mr. Chairman, is important for the long run. In other words, we are not talking about raising money on just an annual basis but to have a permanent long-run effect.

Representative BRADEMAS. Let me interrupt you at that point, Miss Hanks, to put my question more specifically.

I really was more concerned, and I did not make my question clear enough, with the purpose to which the challenge grant can be put.

Is there any limitation on the purposes for which the moneys that would be provided under a challenge grant can be used by the recipient institution?

Miss HANKS. In our history, to date, when we have used the challenge grant, there are two different answers.

To the Metropolitan Opera, there was no limitation on the use of

moneys.

In the case of the city of Detroit, at the grantee's request they were for particular projects.

It would depend on the institution's desire.

Representative BRADEMAS. The reason I put that question is, of course, that it is an important public policy judgment there, or implication, and that runs to a problem with which I know you have been. concerned, as have we, especially in recent years, for which there is no easy answer, given the shortage of money, and that is this:

Does the legislation impede your giving money for operating expenses as distinguished from expenses for a particular project?

I think you have said in response to my question on the challenge grant that there is no limitation on the use for which the moneys given to the Metropolitan Opera could be expended and, therefore, I take it they could use the money for operating expenses; is that correct?

Miss HANKS. In the challenge grant to the Metropolitan.

This was also true in the challenge grants to the American Ballet Theater which was one of the first grants made by the endowment 10 years ago.

In the legislation, there is no question that there is the emphasis on projects. The thrust is on projects.

I might remind the members of the committees that in January of 1970 on the advice of counselors the endowment position on projects was changed. Before it had been emphasized that the projects had to be new or innovative and, therefore, institutions were making up new and innovative projects just to get Federal money, which is totally against any concept of good funding for the future encouragement in the country.

So, it does not have to be new.

Representative BRADEMAS. My question does not so much run to the question of new projects or innovative projects but, rather, to the question which I think you have answered, and I don't want to put words in your mouth that, so far as you are concerned, the legislation permits your making grants for operating expenses, that is, basic institutional expenses, as distinguished from project expenses, to use the two categories we commonly use. Is that accurate?

Miss HANKS. Yes; in the challenge grant situation, we viewed the challenge as a project.

Representative BRADEMAS. I don't want to get into some antagonistic game here. I am not trying to trap you; I am just trying to understand.

Miss HANKS. I know, but I did not understand the question.

Representative BRADEMAS. You have said that, so far as you have been concerned, the moneys provided in the challenge grant to the Metropolitan Opera could be used by the Metropolitan Opera for any purpose they see fit, including, I take it, a basic institutional expenditure.

Miss HANKS. That is correct.

Representative BRADEMAS. So, it must be clear, therefore, that the legislation permits you to make grants, whether you call them challenge grants or any other kind of grants, I take it, that at least in terms of the law there is no obstacle to your being able to make grants to institutions to pay the light bills. Is that correct?

Miss HANKS. That is correct.

In terms of the guidelines that have been developed by the council, based on the emphasis in the legislation, there is no emphasis on that type of support.

Representative BRADEMAS. That, I understand.

I am not talking about the council's guidelines. I am talking about what the law says. The law gives you greater flexibility.

Miss HANKS. Yes; in terms of the description of projects, it is very broad.

Representative BRADEMAS. It seems to me that is an important point, that at some stage, given the 10th anniversary of the Endowment, it is my own judgment, especially in view of the hearings we have had in respect to museums, to take a concern that occupies us at the moment, that we may be having, and we should take a look at this, to move in the direction in which the New York State's Arts Council has already moved. That is to say, the State of New York, I guess, has moved legislatively to make it possible to subsidize basic operating expenses. For example, in the field of museums, I saw in the paper this morning, that Mayor Beame has had to impose a very substantial cutback in funds on cultural institutions in New York City, including museums, including the museum in which this subcommittee held hearings on Monday morning, the American Museum of Natural History, which gets, I think, about 40 percent of its operating expenses from the city of New York, got an 8-percent cut yesterday added to a 10-percent cut and another 8-percent cut earlier, which means about a 25-percent cut for that great institution.

It is very clear from the testimony that we heard in New York City from Douglas Dillon and Dr. Nicholson and others, that the over

riding concern of the directors of museums and of museum trustees was the matter of basic operating expenses which. I think it is fair to say, was a concern of theirs even before these very severe cuts came along.

I would therefore suggest, Miss Hanks, that it would be very useful if your council would address itself to this whole basic public policy question, give us the benefit of your thinking, and hopefully perhaps next year even we could have some hearings on that question which, it seems to me, going into the Endowment's second decade, has to be a major one.

I now turn to talk just a little about the question of museums.

You made the statement that you felt that the National Endowment for the Arts would be able to handle the kind of program contemplated by the bill introduced by Senator Pell, Senator Javits, and me, as well as the analagous bill introduced by Senator Hathaway.

One of the problems which has come up in our hearings which has preoccupied me is, in effect, a logical one as well as a political one. Sometimes the two are related, not always, and that has to do with the fact that as your own excellent "Museums U.S.A." study indicated, there are other kinds of museums in this country than art museums. Indeed, if one wants to use the measure of visits according to your survey, many more people in the United States go to museums of science and history than go to museums of art. Or, if one wants to use the measure of operating expenditures, science museums are clearly spending much more money than museums of art which are the second category.

My logical question would be, and you may not have an answer for this but if you do I will be glad to hear it, if we were to provide more support for museums through the kind of program represented in the bill, how does the arts endowment appropriately, logically, putting the politics to one side for the moment, administer a program that goes beyond museums of art?

If you are going to do it on the grounds of how much money is spent or how many people go, you could give it to the National Science Foundation.

Do you have any light on that problem?

Miss HANKS. I can only speak to our experience and our action in the past.

We have always assumed that the museums of science, history, and art, are museums and cultural institutions serving their country. This is not only the case of the National Endowment for the Arts. This is true, although our figures are not in, of 50 percent of the States. In other words, State arts councils, at least 50 percent of them, which are about the number supporting museums today, view museums in their totality as cultural institutions.

In New York where you have just come from, those institutions are not broken out between arts, science, and history. They are all served by the New York State Council on the Arts.

This is true in our estimates of about, well, most of the councils that support the museums of art on a State basis.

Representative BRADEMAS. If you will allow me to interrupt, I believe I recall from your testimony that you are giving under your own museum support program aid to about 500 museums. I think

you said that support increased tenfold from fiscal 1971 when it was $1 million to now when I suppose it must be $10 million, but that 80 percent of the museums receiving support under your museum support are art museums with the remaining 20 percent divided between science and history.

That very statistic, in effect, dramatizes my point.

I would invite you to tell me as well what is the money involved. You have told us how many museums are involved, but how much money is involved as among museums of art, museums of science, museums of history?

Miss HANKS. I will have to provide that figure for the record.

The new figures on 1975 support are about 27 percent of the grants go to history, science, and children's museums, which is a change from about the 20 percent.

I, myself, don't have the figures in terms of total moneys but I will be very happy to provide them. [Information follows:]

We also have to consider, it seems to me, in our discussions for the future where the money is coming from.

Already, for the science and history museums, in comparison with the arts, most of the art museums are privately supported, whereas there has always been a tradition of State or municipal support for the science and history museums.

Those types of things must certainly be taken into account.

Representative BRADEMAS. You see the logical problem of the tail wagging the dog, as it were.

I am not clear from your reply on the logical answer to the question of given that more money is spent on museums of science, more people go to museums of science, why should an endowment that is not geared toward meeting the needs of science be administering a program, the beneficiaries of which are to be museums of science?

I think there is a logical problem there that we have not sorted out. That explains at least in my own mind, I may say to my Senate colleagues, one of the reasons that it seemed more appropriate to locate any new program of basic operating support for museums in a broader agency than one of the several sectors.

If you have further comments on that that you would like to submit in writing, I will be very glad to get them.

Senator PELL. I would like to make a comment on this point.

The logical place for this work is under the Smithsonian Institution which is supposed to be the museums' museum and set up to do this. But they bridle at the concept of doing it because they are worried it. will be the tail wagging the dog and make their budget look much bigger than it is.

I am chairman of the Smithsonian Institution Subcommittee, but I have not been able to persuade them to accept it. I think they are making an error.

Representative BRADEMAS. I might say before calling on Mr. Peyser that if you think the Smithsonian would bridle, you have no idea how the museums of the country would bridle at that prospect.

I have many other questions that I will come back to.

Mr. Peyser.

Representative PEYSER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I will be very brief because I know there are others who certainly want to hear the rest of the testimony.

I just want to say that in my 5 years of service on this committee my work with Miss Hanks and Mr. Straight and other members of the Endowment has been one of the best relationships that I have seen established in the Congress between agency and the congressional committees. I think this is a reflection on both sides of the interest and concern on this very important issue.

I also would like to briefly state that the impact of the Endowment for Arts and Humanities was very graphically illustrated to me just a couple weeks ago when I had the opportunity of accompanying Mrs. Ford and Miss Hanks at the opening of the Henry Street Settlement, a new building on arts for living, in which the National Endowment had certainly a hand in developing.

It was interesting for me to observe that at a time when the city of New York is in such deep crisis, there was a real outpouring and interest of the people of New York City toward this project and a recognition of the importance of the arts and humanities to a city such as New York and to its people.

This is true, I think, all over the country.

So, I believe that the expansion of these programs, even at times of crisis, is critical. These programs should be expanded and not cut back because I think at times like this the needs are far greater for the people.

In keeping with that, the one question that I am going to ask is this: In convincing and moving the Congress to affirmatively act on legislation such as we are again considering, do you at the Endowment receive or do you request letters from States, local municipalities, individual recipients of grants and programs, responses as to what they see in the program, what they feel the contribution has meant to them? And, if you do have this type of file, let us say, I think it would be of the utmost importance to have that file separated by State and to have the availability of that to not only this committee but to Members of Congress, so that they can be aware very specifically as to what the impact is on their own local communities and what their own constituencies are saying.

I am wondering if such a file is available and, if not, perhaps what can be done within the immediate future of getting some reflection of that?

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