NEA Four

The "NEA Four", Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes, were performance artists whose proposed grants from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June 1990. Grants were overtly vetoed on the basis of subject matter after the artists had successfully passed through a process. John Fleck was vetoed for a performance comedy with a toilet prop. The artists won their case in court in 1993 and were awarded amounts equal to the grant money in question, though the case would make its way to the United States Supreme Court in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley. In response, the NEA, under pressure from Congress, stopped funding individual artists.

The NEA has used peer review panels since 1966 (one year after its inception). The NEA's Founding Chairperson Roger L. Stevens did not want to use panels, preferring that staff members review applications. Due to the increase of funds and applications Stevens turned to peer review panels. Nancy Hanks (the next chairperson appointed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969) expanded panels and created a list of three criteria: appointments must be merit based; appointees must serve the panel as individuals, and may not make decisions based on any particular interest group, institution or viewpoint; the panels must be insulated from external pressures. The last criteria became more difficult to enforce as the budget of the NEA grew, and public interest in how the money was spent mounted.

In 1979, Report: a Study of the Panel System at the National Endowment for the Arts recommended that the panels be split into a policy panel that reviewed policies within the NEA panel process and a review panel that only made granting decisions. Once adopted this split panel allowed for more review panelists to be engaged who represented more diverse art practices. Also in 1979 a House report found that the NEA was failing to establish a coherent system of review and had not established a uniform system of review.

...
Wikipedia