Hugh Southern

In a mysterious move that stunned the music world Friday, Hugh Southern, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, abruptly resigned his post for unexplained reasons effective July 1. Southern, 58, a former official of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, had held the position only since November. "I have been reluctant to make such a choice, but I have become aware over the course of the season that I have not found fulfillment at the Met," Southern stated in a press release.

In a mysterious move that stunned the music world Friday, Hugh Southern, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, abruptly resigned his post for unexplained reasons effective July 1. Southern, 58, a former official of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, had held the position only since November. "I have been reluctant to make such a choice, but I have become aware over the course of the season that I have not found fulfillment at the Met," Southern stated in a press release.

The Metropolitan Opera in New York is getting a new general manager. Hugh Southern, who was acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts earlier this year before John Frohnmayer took over, will join the Met on Nov. 1. He replaces Bruce Crawford, who left last spring.

Boston University has decided to pay the rent of four or five talented artists after they graduate to help them start their careers. Under the program, a $1-million gift will be used to provide grants ranging from $10,000 to $12,500 to four or five students who complete undergraduate or graduate programs at the school. The school hopes the grants will free the blossoming artists to concentrate on their careers.

The National Endowment for the Arts contended Friday that a pending bill that would prohibit support for controversial art would "totally disable" its grant-making apparatus, forcing it to become the federal government's "cultural czar."

"I might as well sell my weekend house. I'll never see it again." This was the reaction of Joseph Volpe on his first day as the new general director of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Volpe was named Wednesday to run the nation's largest opera company. He will also be in charge of financial operations and public relations. At the same time Marilyn Shapiro was promoted to executive director of external affairs (in charge of fund-raising and marketing).

A new effort to resolve a dispute over federal funding of controversial art works was gingerly developed Thursday when a House committee instructed the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities to alter procedures for approving grants to artists, authors and scholars. The changes would require express approval by the Washington headquarters of both endowments of grants that previously could be made by intermediary organizations that receive blocks of money from the two federal agencies and parcel it out to individual recipients.

After an emotional debate over the value of public funding for controversial art, the House voted Wednesday to cut a slap-on-the-wrist $45,000 from the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Members of the National Endowment for the Arts' advisory council Friday condemned the political controversy besetting the agency as a harbinger of an era of censorship. "History has proven that the freedom to create can only be healthy for a country," said Sally Brayley Bliss, a North Carolina dance authority and council member. "If there is censorship, this can lead to the end of civilization."

With a sideshow staged by a Southern California congressman over, a House-Senate conference committee prepared Thursday for what most arts experts believe will be the climactic scene of a pivotal melodrama for the National Endowment for the Arts. In key developments, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the conservative nemesis of the endowment, reportedly held a "cordial and friendly" meeting Wednesday afternoon with the lawyer/arts advocate President Bush has nominated to head the endowment.

It began in April as a controversy few people took seriously over two pieces of art many found in questionable taste. But by Thursday morning, a day after the U.S. Senate approved an unprecedented amendment by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to bar the National Endowment for the Arts from financing obscene or offensive works, many were calling it a full-blown censorship crisis. Arts observers found themselves questioning the survival, as it is now known, of federal support for cultural institutions.