After his election in 1980 the New York Times ran an article by Hilton Kramer stating that Reagan arts policy advisors believed that both the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities had strayed from their original intent, and that their standards of artistry had been lowered to an unacceptable level.
Kramer stated that there were opposing views within the group of Reagan's policy makers on how to deal with the perceived issues of the two Endowments.
[5] In 1981 President Reagan convened a Special Presidential Task Force on the Arts and Humanities to assess the endowment process and its policies for awarding federal funds for culture.
Despite this finding, pressure to decentralize NEA funding – funneling it through state and local agencies – mounted during the 80s and into the 90s from both conservative and liberal interest groups.
In June 1985 Representative Steve Bartlett (R-Texas) proposed an amendment to a 1986 appropriations bill that would not allow the NEA to fund artwork considered to be "patently offensive to the average person".
[10]: 331–349 In March 1990 NEA grantees began receiving a new clause in their agreements that states: Public Law 101-121 requires that: None of the funds authorized to be appropriated for the National Endowment for the Arts ... may be used to promote, disseminate, or produce materials which in the judgement of the National Endowment for the Arts ... may be considered obscene, including but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homoerotocism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts and which, when taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.