An artless move

Boston Phoenix October 24 - 31, 2002

When state legislators cut arts funding, they showed a shocking degree of economic shortsightedness

By LOREN KING

VETERANS OF the arts community in Massachusetts have been through this before. In the early 1990s, the state slashed spending on the arts. So this year's devastating hit - a 62 percent cut in funding for the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC), which awards grants to hundreds of artists and programs around the Commonwealth - is familiar even as it's shocking. There's little doubt that the state's cultural landscape will be ravaged by the cuts. Beyond that, though, arts administrators warn that minimal funding for arts programs will have a ripple effect well beyond the worlds of dance, theater, and music. One of Massachusetts's greatest assets - its arts and culture - attracts investors and new residents seeking high quality of life. Thanks to the creation of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), for instance, North Adams has become a destination point. Thanks to an investment in the arts community, New Bedford is seeing a revitalization of its downtown. Such momentum, built up over the past decade as artists recovered from the early-'90s recession, will now be lost.

"We're not going to see the results of this cut yet," predicts Geri Guardino, executive director of First Night Boston and an arts administrator in Boston for more than 20 years. "We lost so many terrific groups in the aftermath of the '90s cuts, the Modern Dance Company and Theaterworks, little groups that had been around a long time. [Those cuts] were the straw that finally broke their backs."

Dan Hunter, executive director of Massachusetts Advocates for the Arts, Sciences and Humanities (MAASH), says the Bay State is enjoying the fruits of its investment in local arts institutions. But for how long? "Years ago, you could not pay tourists to go to North Adams," he says. Today, thanks to Mass MoCA and the Williamstown Theatre Festival, both of which have benefited from state funding, more than 250,000 out-of-state visitors have traveled to the Western Mass town. Hunter points out that Tanglewood, for instance, brings $70 million into the Berkshires in annual tourism.

"The cuts are a devastating blow," Hunter says. "It isn't a blow to the arts. It's a blow to the local economy. It's a blow to jobs in cultural organizations. The economic impact will reverberate years from now. These are shortsighted cuts."

THE CUT IN funding dealt to the MCC was the worst financial blow suffered by the agency in more than a decade, and the deepest cut to any state agency for 2003. Indeed, the 62 percent budget cut (from $19.1 million to $7.29 million) represents the largest percentage reduction to any arts agency in the US this year, according to Hunter, who notes that MAASH was formed in 1993 in the wake of dire funding cuts to the agency, when the MCC's budget was slashed from $27 million in 1989 to just $3 million in 1990.

The effects are surging through the agency. The MCC has eliminated four programs that funded arts for the elderly (the Elder Arts Initiative), gave support to nonprofit cultural institutions (the Endowment Grant Program), paid for professional development for artists (the Professional Development Grant Program), and matched municipal donations to the arts (the Matching Incentive Program). Other programs will be phased out by the end of the year, including the innovative Cultural Economic Development Program, which provides seed money for regional artistic and economic collaborations, and the Education Partnership Initiative, which helps schools teach art in the classroom. One of the MCC's most visible programs, Individual Grants to Artists, was reduced from $500,000 to $200,000. Two years ago, the MCC was able to award grants of $12,500 to artists and writers. (Disclosure: I received a writing grant from MCC in 2000.) Next year, that top award will be reduced to $5000. Money for the Local Cultural Council Program, which makes annual contributions to municipal arts organizations, was reduced by 60 percent from $4 million to $1.6 million. And finally, the agency itself cut $1 million from its administration budget and eliminated 11 positions out of 41.

The impact of these dramatic cuts are already being felt on the local level. The Cambridge Arts Council, which will receive $13,940 from the MCC this year compared with $52,400 last year, receives more than 100 grant applications annually. It awards about 35, on average, according to Jason Weeks, executive director of the council. This year, the council, which organizes the popular Cambridge River Festival and oversees Gallery 57 (which is temporarily closed for renovations) expects to make grants to just 20 recipients - and that's with financial help from the city, which few local arts councils get.

When one thinks of the alternatives to these cuts - such as trimming Medicaid or social-service agencies that assist the Commonwealth's neediest - it's hard to make the case for continued arts funding. But this comparison irks arts specialists, who say that unlike human services, which are a social responsibility, support for the arts is an economic as well as a quality-of-life issue.

Hunter stresses that in the long run it is the state's economy that will suffer the most. He points to New Bedford as an example of how civic investment in the arts jump-started that city's failing economy. The seaport city south of Boston had fallen on hard economic times over the past few decades, but in recent years it had reinvented itself as an arts center with a vibrant historic downtown of art galleries, museums, and the presence of the art department of Southern Massachusetts University. The Massachusetts Cultural Council invested in the AHA! Project (Art, History, and Architecture) through its Cultural Economic Development Program. The AHA! Committee was able to leverage this funding to gain additional support from the city of New Bedford and other foundations. That's the crucial "seed money" that administrators like Hunter stress has effects that go far beyond those of small operating grants. Using money to attract money can turn a given program into a flourishing local cultural institution that brings in revenue in the form of tourism, new residents, and increased property values.

The New Bedford Cultural Council would have received more than $100,000 at 2002 funding levels; instead, it will get $41,440 this year. The New Bedford Whaling Museum, one of the city's oldest and most popular attractions, saw its funding reduced from $64,570 to $24,540. Small groups will likely feel the pinch most deeply of all. ArtWorks at Dover Street, a fledgling gallery/workshop, got just $1500 this year instead of the $4000 it received last year.

"The investment of the MCC inspired other state and even national foundations to invest in the city of New Bedford," says Jeanne Girard, executive director of AHA! "The elimination of the MCC CED grant is disheartening and has already affected the AHA! Project. Resources are being taxed to be able to continue the program. We've scaled back on the entire budget in what should have been a growth year. Probably the worst aspect is that this is a community that was just starting to get a taste of success."

The effect of the cuts, she adds, go beyond dollars and cents. They are demoralizing to arts organizations already working on the fringe and to arts administrators who would rather be promoting their mission than begging for money. "When cuts like this happen and projects start to fade, it is like a self-fulfilling prophecy to the citizenry of New Bedford: they are accustomed to things not working out," she says. "AHA! remains strong and we will do our best to ensure that this movement does not fade, but it will be a much more difficult road without the prestigious MCC CED grant."

Girard says AHA! generated $15 in economic activity for every state dollar invested in the community project. "AHA! attracts over 20,000 visitors to the city in just 48 hours of programming a year," she notes. "New artists have leased spaces to be part of the burgeoning arts scene in New Bedford. More importantly, visitors of all ages from all socioeconomic levels would experience art openings, live music, educational children's activities, lectures, and more on AHA! Evenings. How could such a positive event be cut? What was to gain when so much was lost?"

THE CUTS WILL go beyond diminishing the ability of local arts councils to make grants or art-related economic development in a city like New Bedford. Even one of Boston's longest-running and most successful cultural institutions, First Night Boston, will feel the sting of the cuts to the MCC. The loss of $36,000 in direct aid won't cripple the annual celebration, says Guardino, but it will hurt an already overtaxed staff, as well as efforts to attract matching funds from outside. First Night, like so many other arts ventures, will have to increase pleas to the corporate and private sectors. This not only taps a limited pot, it puts an additional strain on other, smaller groups who don't have the longevity, resources, or staff to work aggressively on new funding sources.

Guardino, like Hunter, stresses that arts and cultural programs are vital to the economies of both city and state. "The Fleet Celebrity Series; the Lyric Opera; Shakespeare on the Common - all these things make Boston a great place to live and work and visit," she says. "All politicians say, 'We love the arts.' But they don't think about what we need to do to make it happen. No one hates us; but having the arts is a responsibility, when push comes to shove."

Not all major arts organizations, of course, feel the blow as acutely as others. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, for instance, one of the leading cultural institutions in the world, is a $70 million operation that will no doubt survive the loss of a $100,000 organizational-support grant from the MCC. Still, such support is "symbolically important," says BSO managing director Mark Volpe. "It suggests that the state has a public policy that values the arts. It is very important to smaller organizations. We want the state to reverse its position when the economy improves. But I don't want to overstate the significance of the cuts to us. For an organization of our size, it was a modest amount."

Volpe says most of the community partnerships that allowed, for example, schoolchildren to attend BSO performances, or that supported BSO performances in places like Franklin Park, come from private sources. "I don't see these activities being adversely impacted," he says. "But smaller institutions are suffering. There is pain out there."

At the other end of the spectrum is the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Just two years old, the BLO was not even eligible for state funds, which require that groups show at least three years of viability. But the BLO counted on aid from local arts councils in cities like Brockton, Lowell, and Lawrence, three municipalities where it performed for free this past summer. With that money slashed, the BLO will not be able to provide free concerts in communities outside of Boston, says Miguel A. Rodriguez, general manager of the BLO.

"I never thought this would happen," he says. "We're committed to making music available to people that won't or can't go to a BSO concert. We are going to have to hope that the private sector steps up to the plate and fills that void." Rodriguez notes that private funders normally are willing to support an organization only until it is able to sustain itself, which takes several years. The BLO was on track to becoming established and self-sufficient; it performed eight concerts in 2001, 30 in 2002, and was set to perform 35 to 40 shows in the summer of 2003. Now, that will depend largely on attracting private funding. Such a switch in mission is potentially devastating for a group like the BLO, which doesn't have the fallback resources such as a subscription series, or the established reputations and donor bases of larger organizations.

As an arts veteran who has been though budget crises and belt-tightening since the 1970s, Guardino worries that arts administrators like her are "a dying breed. People don't want to do this anymore," she says. "I can't tell you how hard it is to replace $36,000. I'll do my damnedest to preserve First Night. But a little dance company can't replace that kind of loss."

She adds that restaurants, hotels, retail establishments, and tourism in general are all suffering in the sluggish economy, so these private institutions can't be counted on to pick up the added burden of helping to fund arts programs. "There is an underlying economic impact," she says. "If we're wiped out, think of the consequences that won't show up right away. There's such passion involved in arts organizations that we scrape by and make it. But for how long? The state is saying that arts are not important."

Hunter of MAASH agrees with Guardino that the economic blow will have a ripple effect for years to come. "There's a strange framework for the argument that the arts are a luxury," he says. "They are a necessity for tourism. Just the way that our highways are central to our infrastructure, the arts are the infrastructure of our local economy. The state yanked out the bottom block of that foundation."

Loren King can be reached at Lking86958@aol.com.

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