Category: issues

Gail Thompson, who was demoted last week from project manager of the troubled Mimai-Dade Performing Arts Center project, suddenly quit her new job Monday. “Building of the center, touted as Miami’s cultural centerpiece, is 20 months behind schedule and $67 million over budget. Thompson, hired in 1999 after successfully overseeing the construction of Newark, New Jersey’s Performing Arts Center, was pushed aside last week by Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess in an attempt to get the project back on track.”

“There are about 548,000 creative businesses in the U.S., ranging from nonprofits like museums, symphonies and theaters, to film production, architecture and advertising companies. They account for about 2.2 percent of the workforce tracked in Dun & Bradstreet’s business database, or about 3 million jobs.”

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a $1 million increase in the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s budget to $8.3 million in the 2005. This follows a $12 million cut in arts funding made in 2002.

San Francisco is facing a $300 million budget deficit, and its mayor, “in an effort to achieve greater efficiency, has proposed merging San Francisco’s nationally recognized Grants for the Arts with the San Francisco Arts Commission. Managerially, the merger might seem to make sense, but the unintended consequences could be dramatic.”

NEA chairman Dana Gioia goes to Silicon Valley and says the area has been a miracle of creativity but that that inspiration has yet to be translated into art. “You’ve had an economic renaissance but haven’t created the visual legacies of that. Florence at the height of the renaissance was smaller than Palo Alto but look what it left behind.”

The Annenberg Foundation has announced plans for a cultural center for Beverly Hills. Wallis Annenberg, the “daughter of Walter H. Annenberg, the philanthropist, art collector and communications mogul, who died in 2002, said the center would include a 500-seat theater, a 150-seat studio theater, a rehearsal hall, classrooms and a sculpture garden. The overall project, costing $30 million, is expected to be completed in late 2007.”

Artists in the Brooklyn neighborhood known as DUMBO are relocating as they get priced out of their lofts. Nothing new about this kind of gentrification – except the speed at which it’s happening. “Five years ago, when I first came here, there were no city services, no trash pickup, and it was completely dark and desolate.”

An Americans for the Arts study reports that “arts-related businesses make up 4.3 percent of all the companies in the United States, and employ almost 3 million people, according to the most detailed account yet of their economic impact. The New York metropolitan area ranks No. 1 nationally in arts-related businesses, with nearly 55,000.”

Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle proposes cutting state arts funding by 61 percent. “The Legislature allocated nearly $1.2 million for the foundation for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins Thursday. Lingle’s plan is to reduce that amount by more than $730,000. The foundation, which has taken budget hits since 1994, when it received more than $6 million in state funding, supports more than 110 nonprofit arts organizations.”

Last week’s US Senate hearings on how non-profit organizations work is likely to lead to new legislation in the fall. “Like the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act targeting public companies, the draft seeks to make non-profits’ dealings transparent and accountable. It proposes, among other things, increased and timelier financial reporting and auditing, more reliance on independent directors, limits on board size and on pay, and stiffer penalties for violations. It also would create restrictions on donor-advised funds, a fast-growing area of philanthropy not now subject to any special government rules.”