THE ARTS

Decency Update: John E. Frohnmayer, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, told a House subcommittee Wednesday that the agency’s use of standards of “decency” as part of its grant allocation process so far has provoked no controversies. “To my knowledge, no panel has had any difficulty in dealing with it. But it’s an elusive sort of thing,” Frohnmayer told the government operations subcommittee. A skittish Congress last year ordered the NEA to apply those standards after public uproar over funding of allegedly obscene art.