Category: issues

“The Charleston City Council voted Tuesday to contribute $50,000 from the city’s hospitality fee fund to partially match an expected $250,000 grant from a private foundation that would aid the cash-strapped Charleston Stage, Charleston Symphony Orchestra and Charleston Ballet Theatre.”

Yet another venue hit by fallout from the financial crisis: the Dr. P. Phillips Performing Arts Center, budgeted at $408 million and scheduled to open in 2012 in downtown Orlando. “While supporters have been able to raise $86 million in pledges, they are still short by $45 million. The center needs to raise $25 million by 2010 and another $20 million after that. […] [D]onors typically pledge money over a three to five year span. So the center has had to borrow money to get the new facility off the ground.”

COPIA, the center for food, wine and the arts founded by Robert Mondavi in downtown Napa, California, closed its doors without warning on Friday and is “suspending operations” while it tries to raise cash. The center, which in September reduced its schedule from seven days open to three and laid off 24 of 80 staff members, “has lost at least $4 million a year since it opened in 2001.”

“Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank AG last night won prizes for their culture sponsorship in the U.K. from Arts & Business, an organization partly funded by the government.”

“Due to stock market turmoil, endowments at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra have dropped by millions of dollars, limiting the money that can be withdrawn for operating expenses. State grants have been cut significantly.” But it’s the Baltimore Opera Company that’s suffered most in the economic crisis: It may not even finish the season.

“An ‘Oyster card’ for the arts, giving free or cheap entry to events and venues, could be handed out to Londoners under plans announced by the Mayor today. The electronic pass” — used on London’s transit system — “would provide access to museums, theatres and sports centres for the elderly and children in care, and could eventually be extended to all schoolchildren.”

“This is the worst-case scenario; other groups, both the community foundations that act as philanthropic umbrellas and the private family foundations that tackle particular causes, are struggling to keep the grants flowing at a time when their investments are not doing well enough to produce any income.”

Many arts groups are heavily invested in the stock market, and rely on endowment revenue to survive. “The arts groups’ predicament has some managers asking whether endowments should be regarded more as rainy-day funds than as annual producers.”

How will the arts do in the Age of Obama? The larger societal changes related to the economy and dissemination of culture might make more of an impact…

“Philadelphia, which created the nation’s first public-library system, had the good fortune to receive 25 of Carnegie’s libraries. But if Mayor Nutter goes through with his crisis plan to shrink the library system by 11 branches, the city will lose four representatives of its original Carnegie legacy. What will happen to Carnegie’s four temples of knowledge is anyone’s guess.”