NATION IN BRIEF : MARYLAND : Panel Assails NEA for Rejecting Grants

A National Endowment for the Arts advisory panel has denounced the agency’s rejection of grant recommendations for performing artists Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Tom Miller, and it is urging reconsideration of the decision, the panel chairman said. The artists all deal with political and sexual issues in provocative ways. “I think it is really an issue of censorship,” said Phillip Arnoult, founder and artistic director of the Theatre Project, a performing arts center in Baltimore, where the artists had appeared.