Ncss suburban arts study

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New Jersey

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Fairfax County, VA.

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Chicago

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Atlanta

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Marin County, CA.

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Charts

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By

Peter W. Goodman Assistant Professor

Department of Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations School of Communication

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Chicago

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“It’s strange to think of a place as affluent and educated as Long Island, home to 2.9 million, more populous than Chicago, relying so heavily on a few dreamers to keep its independent cultural scene alive.” - Lawrence Downes,

The New York Times, June 20, 2010.

Yes it is!

Downes was musing on the deaths of Michael Rothbard, co-founder of the now-defunct Inter-Media Art Center, and Vic Skolnick, co-founder of the still-thriving Cinema Arts Center. He was merely the latest observer to wonder why these two counties, among the wealthiest and best-educated in the United States, have such a low level of significant, locally generated artistic activity.

There are many painful examples: • There are many painful examples: the Long Island Philharmonic, which once aimed to become a “world class orchestra,” is now considering how to survive. Its executive director left at the end of 2010; it has cancelled its 2010 - 2011 season, except for a New Year’s fund-raiser. It is in the process of reorganization, has a significant number of educational programs and has a group of summer concerts scheduled. Then again, the Philadelphia Orchestra has just filed for bankruptcy.

Orchestras everywhere are suffering.

• The Nassau County Museum of Art and the Heckscher Museum in Huntington have both been forced to shelve long-awaited expansion plans. After many years and struggle, including a long-term conflict with residents of downtown Southampton Village, the Parrish Museum is building a new home in rural Water Mill---the only active cultural expansion project under way.

• There is a handful of art galleries scattered about.

• There is only one fully professional, year-round theater company between the New York City line and the Hamptons. There is no fully professional ballet company.

• Ambitious plans for a residential-commercial-entertainment complex in the center of Nassau County included, among other things two ice-hockey rinks---but no space for any artistic or cultural activity. Those plans themselves have essentially been shelved by powerful local resistance.

• Hofstra University, which does have a nationally accredited museum and active theater, dance and film programs, rarely presents major performers and does little promotion or advertising.

There is outreach for some of its operations, including the newly aggressive museum and several individual performing arts programs, but there is no cohesive overall effort to establish the university as a significant cultural force in the county.

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• On the other hand, Adelphi University has a brand-new concert hall and performing arts complex which is beginning to make its presence felt, but it is also small and university oriented. Only the Tilles and Staller Centers, on the campuses respectively of C. W. Post Center of Long Island University and Stony Brook University, present full seasons of music and dance.

Several other organizations have folded or shrunk with the departure of their founders. The Friends of the Arts presenting organization soldiered on for a few years after founder Teddy Bookman retired; the Sea Cliff Chamber Players disappeared soon after the death of co-founder Herb Sucoff; the Inter-Media Art Center in Huntington, another concert presenter, was already gone when Rothbard died---the effort to keep it afloat essentially wore out him and partner Kathy Bodily.

Is New York City the problem?

It is America’s cultural megalith, the Gulliver of the arts in a nation of Lilliputians---not all of them dwarfish by any means, except by contrast. “I don’t think you can compare any city in the United States artistically with New York,” said Marcy Cady, a principal in the Helicon Collaborative consulting firm. “When we worked on cultural planning in Los Angeles, we had to throw the comparison to New York out the window, it is so different. There is the Cultural Affairs Department, subsidies to major institutions, the involvement with City Hall---none of the comparisons held.”

Be that as it may, geography cannot be changed. Nassau and Suffolk Counties will always be east of the city, New Jersey will always be torn between New York and Philadelphia, Marin County will be north of San Francisco, Cobb and Gwinnett Counties will stay north of Atlanta---and what are the counties around Chicago?

Nevertheless, there are theaters, museums, orchestras, concert halls, the full panoply of artistic activity, in each of these places. Suburban America has not been just the cities’ bedroom for a long time now. The 2000 Census found that half the American population lived in suburban areas.

What precisely is a suburb?

The Census Bureau, rather unhelpfully, defines it as “the area inside a metropolitan area but outside the central city.” (Hobbs, Frank and Nicole Stoops, U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Special Reports, Series CENSR-4, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2002.) The suburbs in this study were those places abutting a series of central cities, whose population densities are lower than that of the urban centers, and which are identified by both residents and outsiders as closely affiliated with the city.

The purpose of this study is to examine how arts organizations in suburbs around major urban cultural centers attempt to counteract the pull of the big city. Are there marketing methods, fundraising strategies, programming collaborations or other practices successful in one community that can be implemented elsewhere? Specifically, does Westchester County do something that Nassau County can emulate? Can Suffolk look to Marin for guidance?

We looked at the following places: Westchester County in New York, which by proximity to New York City, population, wealth, education and other parameters is most similar to Nassau and Suffolk; the entire state of New Jersey, which by accident of geography can be seen as one gigantic suburb split between New York City and 2

We interviewed directors and administrators of theaters, musical organizations, concert halls, arts councils, foundations, journalists and others in each of these places. We looked at their programs and their online activities.

Although all of these places have similar general characteristics, they also are individual in their histories, growth and development. Some are tied more closely to the center; others profess to want nothing to do with them.

Nevertheless, nearly everyone consulted agreed that the presence of the central city was a factor, often negative, in their efforts to survive and to grow. Officials in New Jersey, Chicago and Marin County described instances in which local residents they had approached for funding, as board members or as potential audiences, indicated they would prefer giving their money or their time to institutions in the city. Officials in Fairfax acknowledged that they could not compete directly for board members with institutions in Washington DC. Their reasons included the prestige, size, or history of the orchestra or museum.

To counter that resistance, there were a couple of tactics that were universal: travel to the local site was easier, quicker and less expensive; and tickets were cheaper while the quality was either just as high or very close. Appeals to local pride or identity were much less frequent.

But here are several observations that stand out: • Collaboration and cooperation improve the overall health of local culture. Regions that had comprehensive plans, either county or statewide, were in much better positions than those without.

• The existence of a central arts planning organization, such as an arts council or a master plan, is fundamental.

• Robust use of the web and social media strengthen outreach and visibility.

• Maintenance of good ties with local government is important, but the arts must remain politically neutral.

• Learn the community: patiently seek out and recruit potential donors and board members who can give financial support.

• Good leadership is extremely important. A strong leader can overcome many handicaps.

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Philadelphia; Fairfax County, Virginia, the second wealthiest county in the United States; Cobb and Gwinnett Counties outside Atlanta, two of the fastest growing suburbs in the country; the entire ring of counties around Chicago; and Marin County, the hippie fastness on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Overview

Some examples: The cultural life of Westchester County seems to have been enhanced by the growth of a single, county wide arts council, now called ArtsWestchester. It has a very strong, politically savvy leader named Janet Langsam. The council uses themed county-wide events; collaborative advertising; frequent contact among the different organizations; and a comprehensive, frequently updated website.

In the Chicago suburbs, however, there is little unity or the presence of overarching councils or committees that attempt to bring organizations together. However there is a vibrant theater community marked by frequent communication and coordination of activity.

ArtsWestchester

The Atlanta metropolitan area is notable for the outright hostility between city and suburb, especially the two wealthiest northern counties. In the absence of and sometimes opposition from local government, cultural organizations have found support from aggressive local businessmen and developers to fund construction and expansion of their activities.

Atlanta: Aurora Theatre

New Jersey, largely decentralized, has developed a set of statewide, online resources offering lobbying and political tools; unified marketing and advertising; a dedicated funding stream for cultural and historical institutions; and a highly detailed database of arts education in schools statewide. The state has earned national recognition for its cultural structures. “We will often cite them as a great place that works to connect arts organizations with each other,” said Angela Han, director of research at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

Fairfax County: Wolftrap National Park

Chicago Theatre District

Fairfax County, VA, the second wealthiest county in the nation, has New Jersey Performing Arts Center relatively little indigenous cultural activity - not only is it just across the Potomac River from Washington DC, but it is also the home of the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. It is also served by the highly successful George Mason University Center for the Performing Arts. Nevertheless, county culture advocates recently succeeded in adding a section on support for the arts to the county comprehensive policy plan. The county’s arts council is preparing to create a cultural master plan in keeping with that county mandate.

Marin County, physically beautiful and populated with creative individuals from film and music, is looking to make itself a destination for art-lovers and tourists.

Not everything found in each of these communities can be transferred to Long Island --- It will never have Marin’s beauty, and it is long past the period of rapid growth still being experienced outside Atlanta.

But Islanders can learn from the examples of unified advocacy in Westchester and New Jersey; the importance of avoiding the politicization of cultural activity that almost destroyed a theater in Cobb County; and other instances of successful practices studded through these suburbs.

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Marin County: Forest Meadows Amphitheatre

Westchester County is a wealthy, well-educated area with easy access to New York City and surrounding communities. It has its own lengthy history and half a dozen significant urban centers. The main unifying factor for arts groups is ArtsWestchester, a United Arts Fund organization with a $4.3 million budget, about $1.3 million of which it re-distributes. ArtsWestchester has worked to create a growing level of collaboration among county arts groups. It provides joint advertising and marketing, and creates themed events in which many independent organizations participate. One recent theme was All Fired Up, a county-wide set of ceramics exhibits. The council attempts to overcome territoriality and competition by bringing different boards, executives and staff members together in informal gatherings.

It also supports and encourages strong outreach and connection to the educational systems in the county.

ArtsWestchester It has a roster of 100 artists who go into the schools, and most of its constituent groups do the same. At the same time, there are several large institutions, such as the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, which have successful independent existences. They can be wary of the power of an overall arts organization which competes with them for funding, has county support, and has even begun presenting programs on its own.

Demographics, History, Transportation Westchester County, New York, directly abuts New York City from the north. In an area of about 433 square land miles, it has a population of 949,050 (2009 Census estimate), with a median household income of $79,585 (2009 estimate), significantly higher than the statewide average, and 5.40 percent below the poverty line, significantly lower than the state level. Similarly, its educational level is much higher than the state average, with 44.4 percent claiming at least a college degree.

This places the county between Nassau and Suffolk Counties, except---perhaps surprisingly---in the poverty level. With a land area of 287 square miles, Nassau County had a population of 1,354,141 (2009 estimate), a median household income of $92,450 with 3.2 percent below the poverty line 5

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(2009 estimate) and 40.3 percent with at least a bachelor’s degree. Suffolk, with a land area of 912 square miles and a 2009 population estimated at 1,511,028, had a 2009 median household income of $84,530 with 3.5 percent below the poverty line, and 31.5 percent with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Most of Westchester’s population is clustered in the southern portion, closest to New York City. There are six cities, and five of them---Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, White Plains, and Rye, with 43 percent of the total population---are below the east-west line of Interstate 287, in the lower third of the county.

Although the county suffers from the same traffic strangulation as most other inner suburbs, it does offer more alternative routes than Long Island’s transportation grid, for a smaller land area and population.

For example, virtually all Long Island Rail Road travelers must pass through the bottleneck of the Jamaica station either to get into New York City or to transfer among lines. But Westchester residents, especially the bulk of the population living in the southern section, can choose among the Hudson, Harlem or New Haven branches of Metro North. Similarly, Long Island drivers have three east-west limited-access highways---and only two lanes of those are accessible to truck traffic. Meanwhile, Westchester, in a much smaller area, is served by six north-south limited access roadways. Anecdotally, Westchester residents say they feel it is easier for them to get around in the county and into New York City than for Long Islanders.

Westchester’s cities were established in the 19th century, and many of its suburban communities existed before the post-World-War-II Levitt boom.

Its suburbs were for the wealthy and upper middle classes, not the postwar middle and working class developments typified by Levittown in Nassau County. George M. Cohan’s town “45 Minutes from Broadway,” in 1905, was New Rochelle. When Sky Masterson was wooing Miss Sarah Browne in the 1950 “Guys and Dolls,” he mocked her dreams of “a Scarsdale Galahad.”

Long Island communities were not part of the mix.

“Guys and Dolls” on Broadway

There has been a significant “society” element in communities such as Bedford, in which belonging to the right organizations and participating in the right events is important for one’s social standing.

This social element can be used as an attraction for board membership and fund raising. On Long Island, the Gatsby Gold Coast, which was a 20th century phenomenon, has largely given way as estates were broken up for development. There is little left in the way of “society” to be tapped even in Locust Valley and Sands Point.

This means, among other things, that the wealth in Westchester has deeper roots in the community and may be more likely to support local institutions.

There is a county-wide government consisting of an elected county executive and a 17 member elected board of legislators.

Demographically, in 2009 the county’s population was estimated as 69.2 percent white; 14 percent African-American; 18.7 percent of Latino or Hispanic origin; 5.6 percent Asian; and a scattering of others. For Nassau, the breakdown was 75.6 percent white, 12.2 percent Latino, 10.8 percent African-American, 6.8 percent Asian. For Suffolk, 84 percent white, 13.2 percent Latino, 7.2 percent African-American and 3.4 percent Asian.

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So, while there are significant similarities between Westchester and the two Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk, there are important differences as well. The many limited-access roads and railways mean transportation in Westchester is somewhat easier. The long history and independent urban centers mean that the county had deep experience and means of self-identification long before Nassau and Suffolk, which have only two small cities and whose populations grew only with the suburban expansion after World War II. Whether this has had an effect on the artistic life of the county remains to be seen. “You need some CEOs, you need some hedge fund managers, you need some tycoons, you need some very wealthy surgeons,” said Paul Rosenblum, managing director of Caramoor and a Manhattan resident. “Do you have enough of them for the number of cultural organizations?”

My own opinion is that Long Islanders, who moved to the suburbs specifically to escape the city, have less interest in non-profit cultural institutions of any sort. There may be a hidden opportunity here. A large proportion of Long Islanders rarely if ever travels into New York City. Local organizations, properly supported and well-marketed, may be able to attract some of this population.

Paul Rosenblum

Also, the Island boasts a number of important institutions that do not exist in Westchester: Tilles Center in Nassau and Staller Center in Suffolk are each larger than the arts complex at the State University at Purchase, the only comparable institution. And Westchester has nothing like the Nassau Coliseum, Jones Beach Theater or North Fork Theatre at Westbury. On the other hand, with the recent demise of the Friends of the Arts organization at Planting Fields Arboretum and State Historic Park, there is no Long Island summer program similar to Caramoor. (For the purposes of the study, we are not considering the communities of the East End of Long Island such as East Hampton and Southampton, which essentially exist apart from most of the populations of Nassau and Suffolk Counties.)

ArtsWestchester The major central arts and cultural organization in Westchester County is ArtsWestchester. In 1965, a group of Westchester citizens gathered to determine the feasibility of building a Lincoln Center-type of arts complex in the county. They decided that first the county needed some sort of arts infrastructure, and founded what was then called the Council for the Arts in Westchester, a private, not-for-profit program organization. For many years it was the Westchester Arts Council. The name was changed, with fanfare, in January, 2009. Among the council’s first projects 44 years ago was a countywide calendar of arts activities.

The defunct Nassau County Office of Cultural Development produced something similar for many years. Calendars on a smaller scale are available, online and in print, from the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport and the Huntington and Islip Arts Councils.

ArtsWestchester is now the county’s designated arts council and the largest in New York State. It had a 2008 budget of $4.3 million, including more than $1 million from Westchester County and, in 2008, $325,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts. Of that, it distributes between $1.3 and $1.5 7

Westchester

Comparisons with Nassau and Suffolk Counties

Westchester

million annually in re-grants to other country cultural groups. There are 150 cultural organization members, called affiliates, and between 1,000 to 1,500 individual members. In comparison, the Huntington Arts Council has about 600 members, the East End Arts Council about 1,000, the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport about 225 members, and the Long Island Arts Alliance about 60.

ArtsWestchester is headquartered in a nine-story, neo-classical former bank building at 31 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains. The council bought the building in 1998 with an interest-free loan from the Chase Manhattan Bank. In 2001 the bank forgave the loan, so essentially ArtsWestchester did not pay for the building, although it has spent several million dollars on renovations. The building, now called the Arts Exchange, is a registered National Historic Landmark.

ArtsWestchester is a “united arts fund.” Based loosely on the United Fund model, these are community-specific fundraising organizations that distribute earned funds to the arts groups in their locales. There are six in New York State, including the Dutchess County Arts Council, the Arts Council of Rockland County, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. There is none on Long Island.

The subject was briefly discussed among various cultural organizations in the early 1980s, but opposition from individual institutions prevented any further development. They were concerned about losing both funding and autonomy. Similarly, large Westchester institutions such as Caramoor and the Katonah Museum of Art continue to be wary of ArtsWestchester even as they collaborate with it.

Other organizations Not every community can support a united fund. Often individual associations want to go their own ways. ArtsWestchester Executive Director Janet Langsam said, “It’s been hard to keep everybody in the tent, so to speak, because some people think they can go their separate way, that they’re stronger on their own than as part of a group. We’ve worked really hard at maintaining the fact that arts funding comes through the Arts Council.”

Which is precisely the concern of some of the larger organizations in the county. These include Caramoor, Katonah, the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, the Neuberger Museum and the Performing Arts Center at SUNY Purchase. Caramoor’s Rosenblum said, “We are the only significant cultural organizations here. The Arts Council is not doing for us what we can’t do better for ourselves.”

Judith Weiner, executive describes ArtsWestchester councils in the country. aggressive, and do a lot of economically, everything.”

director of the New York State Alliance of Arts Organizations, as “pretty terrific, one of the biggest arts They do a bang-up job.

They are very very inclusive programming, racially, ethnically,

ArtsWestchester appears to have been successful in developing significant collaborations among its constituent members. This is part of a conscious action on its own part. “As a local arts agency, over the past five to seven years we have been positioning ourselves much more aggressively as the prime promoter of the arts in Westchester,” said Joanne Mongelli, the deputy director of programs and policy.

Joanne Mongelli

Two Strategies

The council is following two strategies: joint marketing and theme-based programming.

In marketing, ArtsWestchester negotiates rates with area newspapers including the New York 8

This gives the organizations much wider exposure than they could otherwise afford on their own.

It also broadens the readers’ view of what is going on in the county. If they had known only of the Westchester Philharmonic, for example, now they may also read about a performing arts center, a dance company, a theater group and a museum.

Examples of recent themes include a county-wide program on Suburbia. It was directed at visual arts and film organizations. Museums and exhibition spaces mounted their own related but independently curated shows. This made it easier to get wide press coverage, since the project was substantial rather than one show in one place. In addition, smaller organizations got what Mongelli called “the halo effect” because their exhibitions were paired with those of larger institutions.

All Fired Up The joint theme mentioned most often by member organizations was All Fired Up, a 2008 project initiated by Reena Kashyap, executive director of the Clay Art Center in Port Chester.

All Fired Up was devoted to ceramics. More than 60 organizations exhibited simultaneously. “Different libraries, museums, alternate spaces, all hosted clay exhibits and clay workshops and clay classes,” said Lisa Robb, director of the Pelham Art Center.

Lisa Robb

Neil Watson, executive director of the Katonah Museum of Art, was a member of the steering committee.

“Everybody chose to do the kind of show they could manage, and it was great,” he said.

Caramoor Center for Music and Arts

Even Caramoor, which is not known primarily as a museum, was able to participate. The center is the former estate of Lucie Bigelow and Walter Tower Rosen, and their former summer home contains the couple’s extensive collections of art objects and furnishings. Caramoor mounted an exhibition of its Urbino majolica ceramics and commissioned artist Kathy Ruttenberg to create an allegorical sculpture on stage.

“We had a wonderful time having that,” Rosenblum said. “It was great to see what was going on all over the county. It was a great idea. That’s what they should be doing, of course.”

Caramoor marketing manager Sal Vaccaro said, “It forced us to collaborate with the Katonah Museum of Art,”---which is just down the road. “They put us in a geographic area, northern Westchester. We were also going to places I had never even heard of, that we then collaborated with on marketing.”

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Westchester

Times for full-page ads. The council designs the ads and offers them to its members at a discount.

So, for example, one full-page advertisement will include information about five Westchester groups. There is nothing similar on Long Island. (Interestingly, Caramoor has pulled back much of its New York City advertising, including the New York Times, classical radio station WQXR and public radio WNYC, to focus its money and attention on local media. More on that later.)

Westchester

Even organizations whose contribution did not pass the jury selection benefited. For instance, the entry by the Hudson River Potters, a small, informal gathering of professional and amateur ceramicists, was not accepted into the juried part of the festival. But any organization that wished to create its own exhibition was welcome to join. The Potters paid a $100 fee and bought some posters and other publicity materials. They showed their work in an insurance office on Central Park Avenue in Yonkers. “So ArtsWestchester approved it, and so we were in their All Fired Up brochure and we got their advertising,” Levison said.

“But many people came through and looked at our work,” Levison said. “They signed our visitor book, and maybe next time we have a show they will come by. In this business you have to get your name out there. From All Fired Up we got potential customers and an additional mailing list. We’re happy. It’s nice to have All Fired Up on your résumé.”

Leigh Mickelson, program director of the Clay Art Center, said of All Fired Up, “That increased our visibility in Westchester for sure, and we couldn’t have done that without them as they pretty much handled all the marketing and fund raising. Definitely, the opportunity to market collaboratively has been helpful.”

She was very positive about the collaborative aspects of the project.

Among other things, the center, which deals exclusively with ceramics, Leigh Mickelson sponsored a jazz concert tied to the work of one of the artists.

Although “it’s not in our mission to cross-cultivate like that,” she said, “we had a handful of people who never had been here before.

“We were all eager to share our audiences because with any collaborative program, if you join forces you’ll bring in someone else’s audience.”

Competition Which raises the question of competition. Many organizations, which have worked hard to build themselves up and may be protective of their own membership, may resist working with other, similar groups. That has been a continuous issue on Long Island.

“The only time we felt there was any competitiveness was that people didn’t want to share their donor contacts for fund raising,” Mickelson said. But ArtsWestchester did most of the fund-raising using its own contacts.

On the other hand, in the last few years ArtsWestchester has moved beyond fund-raising, re-granting and behind-the-scenes work to presenting its own programs. This is causing uneasiness among some of the larger institutions.

“They’ve taken on a presenting space, they do shows, they are at the core of arts for re-granting funding, but they’ve also become, I don’t want to say competitors, colleagues as well,” Katonah’s Watson said. “It’s murky.”

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Theater Notwithstanding the behind-the-scenes jostling, efforts at collaboration are continuing. In June, 2009, ArtsWestchester brought leaders of several of the county’s theaters together to think about working together.

“We were talking about doing a festival at ArtsWestchester sometime this year, and promoting theater as a global entity,” Howard Meyer of the Axial Theatre in Pleasantville said. “We will all promote each other – we will share our e-mail lists and we will advertise each other’s shows, or attach those announcements to our own programs.”

Tal Aviezer of the Red Monkey Theater Group in Dobbs Ferry said of the meeting, “this is pretty interesting Howard Meyer because we haven’t done anything like this before.

It wasn’t Janet or . . . ArtsWestchester that was dictating what would happen.

Janet was just trying to get us in a room together first of all, to see if we would be willing to collaborate, and see if we could agree on anything. We had one meeting so far and we’re still brainstorming.”

Theater is one of the areas that are most likely to feel the pressure of competition Tal Aviezer for audiences. “In the last 30 years Westchester has been a theater graveyard,” the Axial’s Meyer said. “A lot of theaters have come and gone, some because of mismanagement, some because of career changes for the people running the groups.”

Now, however, he said, three of the county’s theaters have just marked their 10th anniversaries, an indication that some stability has developed. Theater in New York City benefits---as do all the arts in such a major center---from the creation of a sort of critical mass, he said. There are so many companies and so much work that it has created a theater “scene,” something that does not exist on Long Island.

The theaters in Westchester are trying to do the same thing: “You want to view each other as allies, not competitors,” Meyer said. “We don’t coordinate our schedules, we do what’s good for our actors and good for our schedules, but there’s usually not direct overlap – show for show. It’s usually different weekends, different months, different times.”

Meyer also spoke frankly of another phenomenon facing the suburbs: “People may think, well, if they’re doing theater up here maybe they couldn’t make it in New York City and that’s why they’re here. So to overcome that obstacle you have to show that, no, it’s not that we couldn’t make it . . . it’s that we prefer to be here for a variety of reasons, and it makes it more convenient and more cost effective for you; that’s why we had that meeting at ArtsWestchester.”

At this point, Westchester supports a number of professional theater companies, some of which use performers from Actors Equity, the actors’ union. Equity performances are frequently a mark of healthy 11

Westchester

The presentations, Caramoor’s Rosenblum said, present “an incredible conflict of interest.” This uneasiness is felt in fund-raising as well. The presence of ArtsWestchester makes it more difficult for other institutions to approach potential donors. Organizations that accept grant money from ArtsWestchester must sign an agreement not to solicit certain types of potential donors, such as corporations. In addition, a donor might respond to a funding request by pointing to its contribution to ArtsWestchester.

theatrical companies. There are only three Equity companies on Long Island and two of them, the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor and the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport, are seasonal, running in the summer.

Westchester

Classical Music Classical music, however, is another story. There are two major musical organizations in Westchester: the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, and the Westchester Philharmonic. The Philharmonic received what was hoped to be a tremendous—and unique---boost when the violinist Itzhak Perlman became its artistic director. “The main marketing tool,” marketing director Lenore Eggleston said in 2009, “is the name brand of Itzhak Perlman as conductor.” But the big name has proven not to be enough to keep the orchestra afloat. Perlman resigned his position in February, 2011, four months before the expiration of his contract. At that point, the orchestra had fallen behind in paying Perlman and its musicians.

Caramoor was founded by a wealthy couple, Walter and Lucie Bigelow Rosen, using their own home and estate as a location. Although there are chamber concerts, lectures and museum exhibitions throughout the year, Caramoor is best known for its annual summer music festival, which presents orchestral, chamber and operatic performances.

Caramoor has always been exquisitely aware of its delicate relationship with New York City. At one time, the center was an internationally known location for music. “There was a period when anybody who knew anything about classical music knew there was a world-class music festival one hour from New York called Caramoor,” Rosenblum said. “Now far fewer people know about it.” In addition, there are many competing summer programs in the city itself, from Mostly Mozart to Central Park Summerstage.

There is a larger mass of concertgoers in New York. Performers who sell out Carnegie Hall’s 2,800 seats don’t even fill Caramoor’s 1,700-seat Venetian Theater.

As a result, Caramoor has significantly cut back its marketing to New York City to focus on its home county. “We just decided that New Yorkers will find their way here or they won’t,” Rosenblum said, “but let’s make up the difference by getting more people in Westchester.”

So Caramoor advertises---selectively---on local radio, and more extensively in the local daily and weekly newspapers. There has been an increase in family-oriented and popular programming, aimed at people who just want an evening or afternoon out, rather than attending a specific performance or hearing a specific performer.

In addition, Caramoor has a robust online presence (as does ArtsWestchester and, on Long Island, both Tilles and Staller Centers). Caramoor’s website has been in existence since 1994, one of the very earliest. The center recently hired a full-time staff to maintain the site. It also has---unusually among local organizations ---a blog to which staffers, interns and summer volunteers contribute.

Following the Example

Neil Watson

ArtsWestchester is not the only organization that creates collaborations in the county. Early in 2009 Katonah launched a joint membership program with the Aldrich Museum in Richfield, CT., the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, the Hudson River Museum and the Peekskill Center for Contemporary 12

“We have really very positive experiences about collaboration,” he said. “It’s the only way we are going to survive. We’re collaborating with the Katonah library on a program called ‘Cross Talk.’ It’s a program where two disparate lecturers talk about their subjects – it could be goat cheese and rocket science, and then people bring them together and see if there’s a tie.”

Next year’s ArtsWestchester theme will be Latin music, program director Mongelli said.

“We’re going to work with the music groups to package music representative of different Spanish-speaking countries, and that will be the first time we’re doing it with music.”

How It Developed But it has taken a long time to develop this level of collaboration in Westchester.

“Ten or 15 years ago,” Mongelli said, “collaborations didn’t go over very well, especially with the larger institutions. They had limited resources, and were worried about losing their identities.”

The ArtsWestchester staff provided informal technical assistance, met and talked frequently with the different groups. In addition, it presented a number of what Mongelli called “very easy feel-good initiatives.” There were board-to-board gatherings, informal receptions in which board members of one group could meet board members of other groups.

“That way our board members began to know the organizations more personally, to know what they do and how they do it. It built collegiality between our board and that organization’s board, so that the arts council was not this large looming unapproachable funding agency,” she said.

Lisa Reilly, the recently appointed executive director of the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck, gave a first-hand account of the council’s outreach. “When I first got here, Janet [Langsam] arranged a lunch, just a talking, social networking lunch with other executive directors in the vicinity. They mostly knew each other, but I was new. It was a chance to see where there were points of similarity and points of difference. . . . It helps me define the niche of my organization better if I know what else is out there.” ArtsWestchester regularly gathers county executive directors: there are receptions four times a year hosted by different organizations. Once the Paramount Theater had a cocktail reception and set aside 25-50 free tickets for executive directors of other organizations.

Emelin Theatre

Beyond that, ArtsWestchester offered $1,000 grants for groups that created collaborations. The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow collaborated with the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Arts in Peekskill. Poets wrote new poems based on their responses to the art on 13

Westchester

Arts. Now, for no additional money, membership in one museum now means membership in all.

“Usually that benefit is given to a very high level of membership – the gold circle, or whatever they call it – and it’s worked very well,” Watson said.

Westchester

display, followed by a public performance in which writers stood in front of the work they selected and read.

“They weren’t big programs,” Mongelli said, “but they brought two or more organizations together and you began to see the spirit of collaboration and cooperation.”

In addition, the arts council held peer-group meetings, bringing together leaders of all the theater groups, for example. Theater companies are often afraid of losing audience to each other.

But here the leaders discussed questions of marketing, and bartered advertisements: “I’ll run an ad in your program if you run an ad in mine.”

“We have worked very hard behind the scenes to build a much more collaborative spirit,” Mongelli said. “There’s much more talk about collaboration and maximizing your impact through sharing resources. I’m not 100 per cent sure how much of it was something Arts Westchester consciously did, and how much was a change in leadership at some of the organizations, coupled with a lot more talk in the field about the importance of collaborations.

The quality of leadership is a factor that cannot be ignored, even if it cannot be guaranteed. “The capacity and excellence of an organization, if it has become institutionalized, should carry on after the leader is gone,” said Weiner of the Alliance of Arts Organizations. “But in fact that doesn’t usually happen, unless the next leader is equally as strong---not with the same strength or characteristics, but equally strong.

“I have seen organizations seesaw,” she said. “Arts councils across the state that were at the top of the game for a long time, when the leader retires or goes away, sometimes you see those organizations sink dramatically. Conversely, when a great leader comes into an organization that is [doing] not so much, it just turns around.”

Janet Langsam ArtsWestchester’s Janet Langsam appears to be one of the good leaders.

She also has a deep understanding of the political process: after beginning her career in the New York City mayoral administration of John Lindsay, she served as first deputy commissioner of cultural affairs under Mayors Abraham Beame and Ed Koch. She has also been CEO of the Boston Center for the Arts, and was involved in the founding of the Queens Museum. She has been with the council since the early 1990s, during the middle of a recession when money was scarce and there was a lot of belt-tightening going on. According to Mongelli, Langsam immediately set about raising the arts council’s profile---creating, for a very simple example, a logo. “Janet very quickly moved to make sure that not only was she going to Rotaries Janet Langsam and the county associations, but she began to build those relationships so that they began to see the arts organization as an important part of the community.”

“Langsam is one hell of a political operator,” Weiner said. “She is fabulous at working in the political environment at the local and state level. She is outstanding.”

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Langsam emphasized the importance of unity in the political sphere. “If arts funding is a political football, then that’s why you need a united front,” she said. “If the arts groups want to be out of that political warfare, it’s got to start with leadership with the county.

“Having the groups act in a united way and not kill each other, and then working with county government to increase their support. The message to each legislator has to be a united message: ‘Increase the pot,’ not ‘Increase me.’ “ Langsam and Mongelli are ArtsWestchester’s primary contact with county and state politicians. They stay in touch with local leaders year round. In addition, Mongelli said, the council’s staff, particularly the program managers, work to keep public officials in touch with what the various organizations are doing. “Managers who are doing a school-based program, when they have a good project going on, they will invite local legislators and state representatives to make a site visit.”

Langsam said she understands that it is impossible to compete directly with New York City. “You’re not telling people ‘Don’t go to the [Museum of Modern Art].’ You’re saying, sure go there, but for your everyday experience there’s plenty here. For its size, the Katonah and the Neuberger both offer high-quality, affordable experiences, particularly for families. Why would you go to Manhattan to take a kid to a museum when you can do that here? A kid’s not going to go through the whole MOMA - I can’t even do it - so having something nearby and accessible in the area is what you’re selling. “ Audience development through educational and community programs is also an important part of the arts groups’ activities. The council works closely with Westchester schools, whose Byzantine structure of 47 Neuberger Museum of Art different systems resembles the fragmentation of Nassau and Suffolk. ArtsWestchester has a roster of 100 teaching artists who will go into different schools. So do many of the constituent organizations. “Frankly,” she said, “the schools are the avenues to the parents and to the future audience.”

So are low-budget volunteer organizations such as choral groups. “Why are we funding volunteer groups?” Langsam asked.

“Because the truth is the choral groups are almost like a feeder into the audiences for the orchestras.

You get people who like to sing and who are participating in singing, and they’re the ones who want to go to the concerts. Somehow, there is a link between the volunteers, the community theatres, and developing an audience, just like there’s a link between schools and audiences.”

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Westchester

“She is the difference between Westchester and Long Island,” Caramoor’s Vaccaro said. “What a lobbyist does, that’s what she does, that’s her job.” As it happens, Caramoor recently hired a lobbying firm to help make its case in Westchester and Albany.

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NJ

The State is the Suburb

The State of New Jersey is essentially a suburb of New York and Philadelphia. The mostly densely populated state in the country, it nevertheless is largely a conglomeration of small communities situated along the Northeast Corridor. Its residents are pulled to both metropolitan areas. Perhaps as a result, there has developed a set of five statewide arts-promoting organizations. They are an arts lobbying organization, the ArtPrideNJ Foundation; a marketing and promotion organization, Discover Jersey Arts; a comprehensive, statewide blueprint for the arts, ArtsPlan NJ; a public/private historic and cultural investment fund, the New Jersey Historical Trust, which distributes funds from a dedicated stream for planning, capital and stabilization of arts, cultural and historical institutions; and the New Jersey Arts Education Project, which created a detailed census of arts education throughout the state and maintains an online searchable database. The managers of these groups, and the state arts council, collaborate, consult and work together to support the arts throughout the state. Although it would clearly be very difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate each of these projects on Long Island, creation of a regional marketing group or a lobbying group seems feasible.

As this was being written, arts organizations throughout the state of New Jersey were “upset, angry, scared, worried, and massively stressed out,” in the words of Bonnie Monte, artistic director of the Madison theater. They were in turmoil over the news that $10 million in state arts grants, approved in the summer of 2009 and already contracted and spent, were being frozen at the request of incoming Gov. Chris Christie. A Christie spokeswoman told Peggy McGlone of the Newark Star-Ledger that the governor-elect’s team wanted to “fully review and assess the state’s current fiscal situation.”

Mark Packer

In one immediate response, Mark Packer, president of ArtPride NJ, a statewide lobbying and advocacy group, wrote on NewJerseyartsblog, “For fifteen years the nonprofit arts industry has been educating our whole State to understand that the arts are not about rich people attending the opera or self absorbed artists feeling entitled. They are about good schools and rescuing children from gangs and drugs. They are about treating our parents and grandparents with the dignity and joy they deserve. They are about rebuilding our cities and towns, improving the business community, and supporting property values. They are about 17

New Jersey

ew ersey

helping people heal including patients in the recovery room and those who suffer multiple sclerosis, autism, mental illness and disabilities of all sorts. They are about retaining jobs, sustaining tourism, giving our residents pride and instilling a unique and attractive character to a state that is over 300 years old and needs now more than ever to secure its future.”

This crisis is not unlike the budget calamities facing New York State and other governments gasping from the loss of tax revenue. But New Jersey’s arts community may be better prepared than most to face and fight it because of a formidable network of interlocked lobbying, marketing, funding and educating organizations that go far beyond the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

New Jersey

They are all responses, in varying ways, to the unique problems of perception and centrifugal force facing the state.

“New Jersey is a keg tapped at both ends” ---attributed to Benjamin Franklin If Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties struggle against the pull of New York City on just one side of their borders, imagine the plight of New Jersey, caught between New York on the northeast and Philadelphia on the southwest. A mere 80 miles separates the cities as the crow flies.

The state was the literal crossroads of the Revolution, as American and British soldiers fought their way between the two metropolitan prizes.

Although New Jersey has always been prime farmland, and its rivers provided the water power for factories in the early Industrial Revolution, its location between the two metropoli---each of which served as the capital of the United States for a period---guaranteed that it would be difficult to sustain an independent identity.

It is not too much of a stretch to consider the bulk of New Jersey’s population as suburban. Although it is the most densely populated state in the nation, its 8.6 million inhabitants are not primarily city dwellers. Only four cities have populations of more than 100,000. Only two, Newark (277,070) and Jersey City (239,127), cross the 200,000 mark. Much of the rest of New Jersey’s people live in interlocking boroughs and townships of between 20,000 and 60,000.

Montclair Art Museum

If anything, the force exerted today is stronger than it was two centuries ago: the extensive highway system and the many rail lines that run through New Jersey make travel through and out of state even easier. Of the state’s 21 counties, 16 are considered part of either the New York or Philadelphia metropolitan areas. One of the starkest examples of the problem is the fact that the Giants and Jets, the two professional football teams that play in New Jersey, are called “New York.” There are virtually no major media outlets in the state: of the television networks, only Fox’s WWOR/9 and NBC’s WMGM/36 are based in New Jersey.

“New Jersey has always suffered from ‘bastard stepchild syndrome,’” said Jeff Norman, vice president for public affairs of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the sixth largest such institution in the country. “People in whatever state you name can name its two central cities. But in New Jersey our two central cites are New York and Philadelphia.”

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“It’s an ongoing thing, to try to establish an identity,” said Ann Marie Miller, executive director of ArtPrideNJ. The state’s government is probably no more corrupt than that of many other places--- New York is famous locally for its own dysfunctional state government.

But--- perhaps partly because it has no media outlets of its own for self-defense --- New Jersey also tends to be the butt of national jokes. The popularity of the TV show “Jersey Shore” is but the most prominent recent example.

Steve Runk

In terms of mere statistics, New Jersey should be able to more than hold its own. In 2009, the state’s total population was estimated at 8,650,548 making it the nation’s 11th largest. With 1,196 persons per square mile, it is the most densely populated state in the nation. It also has the second highest median household income: $68,342 in 2009. Yet much of that population and that money flow outward. “The phenomenon of New Jersey philanthropic dollars leaving the state, especially to New York City and Philadelphia, is a significant issue for the arts community here,” according to Steve Runk, executive director of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

“It has always been and continues to be a major, major challenge,” Runk said, “because we have the wealth and the corporate headquarters in New Jersey, but a lot of them put their dollars across the river, to organizations with name recognition.”

It could be said that the state’s greatest natural resource is its location. That is also a great weakness for indigenous institutions. If cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington are on the Northeast Corridor, New Jersey is the Northeast Corridor. With Atlantic City, the Meadowlands athletic complexes, half a dozen theme parks, and a multitude of historic sites, it draws a significant amount of tourism---New Jersey’s income from gawking visitors is the fifth highest in the country.

There are several significant cultural institutions, including the Newark Museum and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in that city, the Montclair Art Museum, and the McCarter Theater in Princeton among others.

But the perception, both within and outside New Jersey, is of a place that natives leave and others pass through. “It is a perception the arts are always struggling against,” Runk said.

There has been a statewide response among cultural institutions, perhaps not begun deliberately but today striking in its breadth. Beyond the state arts council, which like all government units is subject to the buffeting of politics, five independent organizations have been created in the past 20 years, each focused on a different method of building support for the arts.

McCarter Theater

The most visible is Discover Jersey Arts, a statewide marketing organization with a very robust online presence at jerseyarts.com. From that site a visitor can access virtually every arts group in the 19

New Jersey

“It doesn’t help New Jersey, if you are being pulled from two urban areas, that we are also dealing with a lot of political corruption, which puts the whole state program in a bad light,” Miller said. “Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno are joking about Newark; the highest-crime city of the country is Camden. We are dealing with all that too.”

state, choose activities by art form or geographic region, listen to podcasts, vote in various contests such as the Peoples Choice Awards, watch videos made by local students, or go shopping.

Beyond this significant publicity effort, there is a set of powerful organizations that work to support the state’s arts.

New Jersey

The first to be created was the ArtPride NJ Foundation, formally incorporated in 1986 during a push to pass a statewide cultural center bond issue. This has evolved into a sophisticated, no-holds-barred advocacy and lobbying organization. During the 2009 gubernatorial campaign it garnered statements of support for the arts from all three candidates.

“Artpride as an advocacy organization is probably one of the strongest in the country,” the council’s Runk said. “We have a very good relationship with them.”

ArtPride executive director Miller said of her organization, “we try to take more a proactive stance, in terms of educating the public about the role of the arts. It is not easy.

“At the same time we try to cultivate the connections between the arts and other sectors, so that we are not placed in a box on the table that says, ‘it’s not important.’ We try to connect between the arts, health care, economic development, the workforce, technology. It is an ongoing process.”

Then came Arts Plan NJ, created in 1998 by the efforts of the state council and ArtPride, and updated in 2008. This is a comprehensive blueprint that lays out, in very broad strokes, statewide goals and objectives to entrench the arts deeply into the fabric of New Jersey life. Its six goals, very briefly, involve economic and community development; creating the arts organization of tomorrow; enhancing arts education; providing support for artists; improving general access and participation by the public; and providing technological support.

Ann Marie Miller

The New Jersey Cultural Trust was created just two years later. It is a public/private investment fund that gives grants to build endowments, support capital projects and to stabilize the institutional and financial structure of arts, history and humanities groups. Authorized by an act of the state legislature in 2000, it is a direct outgrowth of the first Arts Plan NJ. Funding for the grants comes from interest earned on the Cultural Trust Fund, which is a permanent investment fund.

Under the provisions of the act that created the trust, the state was to appropriate $10 million annually for 10 years, to be matched by private contributions, for a total fund of $200 million by 2010. That goal has not been met---the full $10 million was only appropriated in 2002 and 2003. Still, the principal in the fund is nearly $23 million, with more than $4 million in interest, and private donations to endowments and matching grants of more than $42 million.

Then there is the New Jersey Arts Education Project, which in 2007 released a census of arts education in every kindergarten -through-Grade-12 school in the state. The result is a searchable online database with information about every school in New Jersey. It permits direct comparisons with any other school or district in terms of curriculum, funding, teacher qualifications, and so forth.

All of these organizations have very strong online presences. Discover New Jersey Arts is jerseyarts.com; Arts Plan is artsplannj.com; ArtPride Foundation is artpridenj.com; the education census is at artsednj.org; the cultural trust is http://www.state.nj.us/state/culturaltrust/.

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These various efforts require a great deal of cooperation and collaboration to function effectively. “In New Jersey in general there is a very collaborative spirit,” Runk said. “This is a small state.”

“There is definitely more a sense of collaboration,” said Nina Stack, president of the Council of New Jersey Grantsmakers. “We have a really remarkable community that is quite collegial.”

The first thing that happened, in 1986, was the incorporation of ArtPride New Jersey “to foster a favorable climate for the arts in the state of New Jersey and to encourage citizens and elected officials to endorse positions favorable to the arts and the endeavors of individual artists.”

The original impetus was a successful effort to pass a statewide cultural center bond issue. By the time it was formally organized, according to the Grantsmakers’ Stack, members of the arts community “had been working with legislators trying to get the word out about the value of the arts, as an economic revenue generator, for education, for the creation of community.”

“When funding was jeopardized back in the ‘80s,” said ArtPride executive director Miller, “a group of major art organizations came together. We’ve been existence since then. We’ve weathered the up and down storms of the economy.”

One of those storms occurred in 2003, when then-Gov. James McGreavey proposed the wholesale elimination of the state arts council, historical commission and cultural trust, among others.

“ArtPride essentially saved the day,” the arts council’s Runk said.

“It brought together the community, put out a consistent, powerful message, and organized. Everyone was so unified on the message, they were working in lockstep, and partnering with the state historical advocacy organizations. Through ArtPride the council was saved.”

Another significant outcome of that crisis was the creation of a dedicated, 7 percent hotel/motel tax, which provides funding for the arts council, the state historical council and the cultural trust. Arts groups generally receive about a quarter of that revenue, which in 2008 was $86.3 million. (It is worth noting that Gov. Christie’s $16 million budget request is nevertheless $4 million less than it would have received with full funding from the tax.)

ArtPride has built an armory of sophisticated weaponry ranging from the political foundation stones of district captains in every legislative district to the even more grassroots device of prepared templates for the proverbial letters from concerned citizens. The ArtPride website (artpridenj.com) offers a simple online clickthrough “Action Alert” that enables anyone to send packaged notes to elected officials about issues concerning the arts. In mid-December, 2009, the alert was headlined “State Funding Freeze Impact on Cultural Community: Please Unfreeze State Contracted Dollars.”

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New Jersey

The state council itself, whose budget of $16 million is significantly lower than the high of $22.69 million reached in 2005-06, is limited in its capabilities. “Our approach has been through partnership, whether in the arts community or with other sectors,” Runk said. ”When we partner, things happen.”

It may be an indication of the effectiveness of arts lobbying that Gov. Chris Christie, while slashing budgets statewide, chose not to touch that of the state council.

ArtPride maintains a bulletin board, job bank, speakers’ bureau and technical assistance department for advocates. It also offers a template for arts groups to create their own audience and membership surveys, among other tools. It has even created a pair of advertisements which members are encouraged to use in playbills, lobby boards and anywhere else they might be effective.

In the mid-1990s, ArtPride and the state arts council collaborated to create the first ArtsPlan NJ. This is a blueprint so detailed that a brief description of just one of its goals should suffice.

New Jersey

Under the heading of economic and community development, Goal One is “Grow thriving and vibrant communities in New Jersey through the arts.” The reason: the arts community has to involve itself more in community life if civic leaders are to support the arts and look to them to address community priorities.

There are five strategies to achieve this goal.

In abridged form, taken from the website, they are: Public policy alignment: Identify public interests and goals to which the arts make significant contributions, including economic development, education, recreation, health, design and quality of life.

Connection to the civic agenda: Promote inclusive community cultural planning, cultural districts, public art, and incorporation of the arts and artists into community development strategies, decision-making bodies and civic activities.

Connection to the business community: Position the arts as a viable and valuable business sector in the community, a resource to commercial enterprises, a partner in achieving business goals and an active participant in chambers of commerce and other business-related civic organizations.

Cultural Tourism: Tourism, which is supported by a strong cultural sector, is a more than $37 billion industry, making it an important contributor to New Jersey’s economic health. Cultural tourism, defined as “travel directed toward experiencing the arts, heritage, and special character of a place,” is a growing sector of tourism.

Information and data: Develop a comprehensive approach to the compilation and distribution of research and information that expands understanding of the capacity of the arts to attract and retain business, create jobs, prepare a well educated citizenry, improve performance in other fields, enhance tourism, promote individual well-being, beautify the environment, and enrich and revitalize New Jersey communities.

Other goals, with similarly detailed strategies, are: • to build the very strongest arts community possible • to provide lifelong arts education; to broaden, deepen and diversify cultural participation • to foster a strong network of support for artists; and to apply advanced technology.

The next part of this interlocking network is the New Jersey Cultural Trust, described in some detail above.

Then there is the New Jersey Arts Education Census Project, which may be unique in the country for its thoroughness. It created an exceptionally detailed survey of the state of arts education for every school in the state. For example, it asked for the total number of classes offered in each of four 22

disciplines: dance, music, theater and visual arts; the number of classes taught in a dedicated classroom; the total number of students who received instruction in each area; the total number of students enrolled in one or more arts classes; the number of full-time-equivalent teachers in each arts area; the types of facilities available for each discipline; the types of classes; the number of hours offered per year; etc.

The census also resulted in a report, “Within Our Power: The Progress, Plight and Promise of Arts Education for Every Child,” listing the key findings and recommendations for the state.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center

Even with all these elements in place, it remains a struggle to keep state residents focused on activities within the borders. With the lack of major local media, and the expense of advertising in, for example, the New York Times, some arts organizations are turning increasingly to new technology and the growth of social media for outreach and publicity.

When Stephanie Hughley returned to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, for example, she asked to be named vice president for programming and new media, according to public relations vice president Jeff Norman. She said, “We are all going to have to learn together this wave of the future: either ride or get drowned.”

Online activity is now “a very significant part of what we do now,” NJPAC’s Norman said. “Over 50 percent of our [ticketing] transactions are online. We have a very active website, which we are constantly reinvigorating. We are very active in social networking, Facebook, Twitter.”

NJPAC has its own YouTube channel. It posts recordings of old performances that have been digitized, and at the same time will have a staff member make a FlipCam recording of a current event and post it immediately.

New media have even affected the traditional attempt to prevent recording and photographing of performances. “Enforcement,” Norman said, “is semi-futile.”

When Eddie Vedder, formerly of Pearl Jam, performed last year, Norman recalled, “there had to be a thousand cell-phone cameras going off at once.

They were on YouTube in minutes.”

Eddie Vedder

Many organizations are turning to “viral marketing” techniques to approach younger or small, niche audiences. “Those organizations that take advantage seem to do well, not just in their local niche but even from New York and Philadelphia,” said the New Jersey Grantsmakers’ Stack. “The days of the subscriber are over.”

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New Jersey

The result of the survey was, among other things, a searchable database for every school in the state, complete with an “arts index score” that can be compared with other schools.

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FC

airfax ounty

Still, like many of the other suburbs discussed here, Fairfax County did not experience its greatest growth until after World War II. Before that, it was a domain of plantations and woodland. But today, with a 2009 population estimated at 1,012,751, Fairfax is by far the largest county in Virginia by population. Its weight is so important that the vote of Fairfax can swing statewide elections. In demographic terms, the population is fairly diverse and changing quickly. The most recent census figures estimate an ethnic makeup that is 66.7 percent white, down from 72.91 in 2000; 16 percent Asian, up from 13 percent in 2000; 14 percent Hispanic or Latino, up from 11.03 percent; and 9.2 percent African American, up from 8.83 percent. Residents are very well educated: 58.4 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree.

However, unlike the migration of veterans east from New York City that seeded Nassau and Suffolk Counties, or the growth of corporate headquarters and industry that fueled the counties around Atlanta, Fairfax owes its population explosion to the expansion of the federal government itself, the growth of the armed forces, and the resultant flocking of major military contractors and consultancies to the area.

Between 1940 and 1960, the county grew from a mere 40,929 to 275,002, and it kept pace after that.

Only in the past decade has this increase slowed.

Workhouse Arts Center

Indeed, it is almost entirely due to the presence of Washington D.C. just across the river that Fairfax is currently the second wealthiest county in the nation, with a 2009 median household income, adjusted for inflation, of $104,259. No. 1 is Loudoun County, its much smaller northern neighbor, at a whopping $112,021.

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Fairfax

Fairfax County, VA., is steeped in history. Not only did George Washington sleep here, he lived here--Mount Vernon runs along the Potomac River in the southeastern corner of the county. Part of the county was ceded to the federal government to help create the national capital in the District of Columbia. The Civil War Battles of Bull Run (or Manassas, as they are known in the south) took place on its western edge.

Gannett, Capital One, General Dynamics, both Sallie and Fannie May, Mars, the consulting giant SAIC and CSC (formerly the Computer Sciences Corp.) have their headquarters there. It is home to half of the Washington area’s Fortune 500 companies. Not to mention the Central Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and National Reconnaissance Office, as well as the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Clearly, Fairfax may not be the greatest seat of power in the nation, but it’s close---not just geographically but in wealth and influence.

Fairfax

Yet, as those familiar with the cultural activity of the county attest, it does not have an artistic presence commensurate with that apparent stature. Just as in New York and Chicago, the pull of the capital--specifically the Kennedy Center and its constituents; the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, and the independent Corcoran Gallery of Art---is almost overwhelming. In addition, the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, the nation’s only national part dedicated to the arts, is close to the center of the county.

“If you want to have quality programs in Fairfax County, there is a slice of the population that is just not going to engage with the county’s arts offerings,” said John Mason, a former mayor of Fairfax City and former chairman of the Arts Council of Fairfax. “The result is that it is a big challenge to raise significant funding for the arts in Fairfax County.”

For one thing, Mason said, the fact that growth has been so recent means that there are few institutions with deep roots in the county. “The composition of Fairfax County in business and people is unique,” he said. “The spurt in growth comes primarily in the area of high tech companies---Booz Allen, SAIC---there are dozens of them here.” It’s not like the Northeast or Midwest, where banks and other corporations have been in the community for many years.

“You don’t have many CEOs of companies whose wife for years has been on the symphony or ballet board, who goes home and says, ‘Dear, I need $50,000,’ ” Mason said. He himself is originally from Springfield, Mass., and settled in Fairfax after a career in the military. “Given that set of executives, if you will, and employees who in many cases are relatively new to living in northern Virginia. They don’t have that long established tradition that is true in many cities such as Boston, and dramatically in Chicago.”

John Mason

Still, cultural development is beginning to stir. Linda Sullivan, current president and CEO of the arts council, thinks that in terms of gaining support for the arts, Fairfax is about 10 years behind Montgomery County, Maryland, where she once worked. “There was a huge growth spurt in Montgomery County,” she said. That expansion, she said, was spurred by, among other things, a county government that was supportive of the arts and asked developers to put aside a certain percentage of their projects for community amenities, which includes the arts.

“The planning board . . says to the developer . . . : ‘for the right to do this mall, for us to cut you a building permit, we want you to give a contribution to a civic amenity and we want you to give $3 per square foot of your build-out, toward a community amenity fund for upper Montgomery County,’” Sullivan said.

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That is not the case in Fairfax, but there is movement in that direction. In May, 2010, as a result of lobbying by Mason and others, the county added a section to its comprehensive policy plan specifically oriented toward the arts: “Fairfax County should encourage a dynamic and diverse arts presence by supporting the works, participants, and audiences in the areas of dance, creative writing, choral and instrumental music, theater arts, film and new media, two and three-dimensional visual art in traditional and contemporary cultural iterations, but also in the ways that these areas may overlap and interact with new and emerging technologies.”

The addition of this section to the county plan was the result of a study by a Commission on the Future of the Arts in Fairfax County, whose chairman was John Mason. Now the arts council is to create a master plan for the arts, and Mason said he expects to chair the task force to develop by that plan.

“Right now,” the arts council’s Sullivan said, “we know that a major chunk of it is going to be looking at the facilities that are needed throughout the county, arts facilities, and public gardens.”

Mason said, “I think the fundamental approach, if I may make a prediction, is that Fairfax County will not be in the business of building a huge centralized arts center like Strathmore in Maryland. It will be a decentralized approach that leads to providing other parts of the county the kinds of facilities they have in McLean and Reston.”

McLean is an extremely wealthy unincorporated enclave (median household income of $156,943 in 2009) whose community center includes a theater and an art gallery. The McLean Community Center is funded by a property tax raised from a local tax district created in 1970. Reston, which was one of the first planned communities in the United States, also has a special tax district, which supports educational, cultural and recreational activities at the Reston Community Center. Interestingly, Reston is slightly below the average wealth for the county, with a 2009 median household income of $98,207.

“Those two areas have beautiful facilities,” Mason said.

“They stage small musicals and theater---all kinds of things occur in those at the community level, because they are supported by special tax districts.”

As for adding the arts section to the county comprehensive plan, he described Fairfax as “a mature county. The growth rate has leveled off, it has been residentially built out.

Then it is time to begin thinking of quality of life issues---that to some degree is how we sold it.”

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McLean Community Center

Fairfax

The new section includes specific goals and objectives including supporting displays of art in public and private facilities, incorporating art in design and renovation of public buildings, in major commercial and mixed-use developments, and supporting the development of arts venues as potential catalysts for the revitalization of older, established communities. It also calls for development of a county master plan for the arts, which should include consideration of options for provision of a large performing arts space containing at least 1,500 seats; and locations for multi-use community-based arts center each containing up to 500 seats.

It helped significantly that Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who has represented the district including Fairfax since 2008, is a major supporter of the arts. Before his election to Congress, Connolly was chairman of the county board of supervisors. He belongs to a local theater company, and his wife Cathy works at the Fairfax Symphony.

“It was a question of bringing on board each supervisor,” Mason said. “We lobbied to have some degree of assurance that there was a comfort level. It was critical to our success in doing that, that the amendment to the comprehensive plan does not mandate that developers shall contribute ‘X’ percent to public art. It creates an opportunity for a discussion about such things. It’s a subtle but important difference.”

Sullivan, referring to her experience in Montgomery County in requiring support for the arts in commercial development, said “Everybody [in Fairfax] seems to be afraid to ask the corporations to give up anything, to give a contribution or amenities as a stipulation to their ability to move in and build new buildings.”

George Mason University Performing Arts Center

Nevertheless, the level of local arts activity in Fairfax---outside Wolf Trap and the George Mason University Performing Arts Center, about which more later---is fairly low. The total number of state grants to Fairfax arts groups was $374,453, a mere 36 cents per capita, according to figures supplied by the National Association of State Arts Agencies. That compares with 35 cents per capita for the chronically underfunded Nassau County, and $1.41 per capita for Westchester County. Similarly, Fairfax County itself only provides about $600,000 for the arts council, according to Mason.

There are two major cultural centers in the county, one a unique partnership with the federal government and the other a development of the state university system. The Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts is the only place of its kind in the country.

There is a 6,800-seat indoor-outdoor theater whose main season runs from May through September, and a 382-seat indoor venue that functions throughout the year. It was founded with a gift from Catherine Filene Shouse of 100 acres of her estate, as well as the money to build the Filene Center, the outdoor theater.

It is run through a public/private partnership between the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts and the Department of the Interior.

Outside of Wolf Trap, the most significant cultural center in Fairfax, is the Center for the Arts at George Mason University.

This massive complex, which opened in 1990, holds a 1,935 seat concert hall, a 500-seat proscenium stage, a 150-seat black box theater, a dance performance studio and three visual arts galleries. As if that were not enough, 28

Wolf Trap National Park

Fairfax

The arts council itself has survived some difficult times. It began as a small presenting organization, sponsoring an international children’s festival. During a previous recession the county cut off whatever support it was giving to the council, but the council survived, and redefined itself as an arts-granting organization rather than a presenter.

in July, 2010, the center opened the Hylton Performing Arts Center on George Mason’s Prince William County campus, including an 1,121 seat opera house, a 270-seat theater and an art gallery.

The centers present a full array of performances, ranging from the Vienna Boys Choir, the BBC Concert Orchestra orchestra, to the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and the Bayanihan Philippine National Dance Company. In addition, the George Mason center is the home of the Fairfax Symphony and Virginia Opera.

George Mason, which is a state university, built its performing arts center, but the Hylton Center, run by the university, was 60 percent paid for by Prince William County. Although the head of the Mason center, William Reeder, is dean of the college of visual and performing arts, he emphasized that the facilities are directed primarily at the public.

Fairfax

“This center, from day one, was built by the university for the community, but it has a four million dollar annual subsidy by the university for the community,” Reeder said.

“We went from $700,000 in sales to $2,500,000 in sales,” he said. “We went from $35,000 a year in fundraising to an annual fund of $1,500,000 plus about $40 million of capital gifts by doing one thing: building a 1,000-member volunteer force.”

“Bill Reeder has done a magnificent job in capital fundraising for arts facilities in George Mason University,” John Mason (no relation to the Fairfax Masons) said. “As a result, the concert hall, the facilities there become a de facto arts center.

“What is very interesting with him,” Mason said, “he did not come up through academic channels, with peer rating systems and internal politics.” Before going to George Mason he was vice president and general manager of the William Reeder Washington Performing Arts Society, and was director of the Sallie Mae Trust for Education, among other educational and cultural positions. He began his career as an operatic tenor, with an extensive career in Europe. “That has made him as a dean far more entrepreneurial than most academics,” Mason said. “He has uniquely grown the facilities at George Mason University.”

Reeder attributes his success at George Mason largely to his success in building volunteer support.

“Fairfax has the same problems that Long Island has, and what we say is: ‘yeah, when you’re in DC you have access to the board room, when you’re in Fairfax you have access to the bedroom.’ Because people live here,” he said.

“You count your success in volunteer effectiveness,” he said. How did he build his volunteer base?

“We just ask them,” he said, somewhat disingenuously. In fact, Reeder said, building support takes a complex, intensive, long-range effort.

“In our community,” he said, “the most precious thing is time with your family.” The amount of time spent at work and in traveling makes family time “a premium. So, if we are going to maximize our relationship with the bedroom, we really have to orient, very deeply, into the family experience.”

Tom Reynolds, who is the marketing director and the program director for both centers, agreed with Reeder about the importance of building a volunteer base. “Our growth in terms of attendance at the performances is directly related to our growth in pushing people to become committed in terms of becoming donors,” he said.

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One method that they have found to be effective, both Reeder and Reynolds said, involved just a simple change of wording for the various support groups. Rather than call the donor group George Mason Arts Associates, Reynolds recalled, “I said ‘changing the name to the Friends of the Center for the Arts says that you’re about supporting something, not about having your own little parties and social club.’ And that change, even though they were reluctant to do it, really made a huge difference.”

Reeder continued, “so we created Friends of Dance, Friends of Music, Friends of Film, Friends of…we’ve got nine Friends groups. And I said let’s take all those Friends groups now, and let’s put them all into one great big thing called the Arts at Mason Partnership.”

Reeder also spoke of the center’s work developing contacts with local country clubs: “that’s where the decision-makers are.” He himself has joined the Country Club of Fairfax. “We now have seven past presidents on our Arts at Mason Partnership board,” he said. “There are like six really big mainline country clubs in this region. We’re going to get them all.”

Reynolds added, “in essence, what we did was provide an opportunity for people to plug-in wherever their passions…. Then, get some people engaged who would engage people they knew and that was the key. I think the volunteers create the volunteers, eventually.”

In addition, by becoming an academic dean, Reeder has tightened the center’s relationship with the university. This is in contrast with both Tilles and Staller Centers on Long Island, where the directors are not directly involved with the university’s classroom functions. The only comparable situation in Nassau and Suffolk Counties is at Adelphi University in Garden City, which opened a $30 million performing arts center in 2008. AUPAC, as it is known, operates on a relatively small scale compared with Tilles Staller and George Mason. The 53,000 square-foot building houses a 500-seat concert hall, an 80-seat recital hall, a black box theater that seats 120, a dance theater with room for 179 and the renovated Olmsted Theater, which holds 315. It, like George Mason, is tightly connected with the university academic programs. Its executive director, William Prenevost, is an assistant dean, and the building houses the dance, theater and music departments. There is an active performing arts season, which features appearances by the various Adelphi troupes and ensembles as well as touring performers.

Emphasizing the importance of the academic connection, Reynolds said, “every radio advertisement now that we do, any time we describe that building it’s not the Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Virginia, it’s George Mason University Center for the Arts or the Center for the Arts at George Mason University. And we have made that relationship important. It certainly helps with other people at the university feeling like we are a part of them.”

That is an important factor in helping to develop and support the center, Reeder said. “We do have a harder time attracting corporate and foundation support than the non-profits that I worked with in DC. And for exactly the same reasons: people for whom those power relationships matter simply need them and they gravitate toward them. And we decided that we couldn’t compete.”

Instead, he has focused his attention strictly on “the cultural and artistic advancement of the community that is, basically, in a 10-15 miles radius, which is a million people, and they’re extremely well-off.”

Therefore, whatever the state of the indigenous cultural organizations in the county, there are two powerful and active venues which support artistic activity and draw significant audiences and financial support: George Mason, and Wolf Trap.

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Fairfax

Now, he said, there are more than 1,000 members of this partnership, and various of its committees meet weekly to discuss issues ranging from long-term financial deficits to low ticket sales. “It’s hard work,” Reeder said, “it’s not like turning on a light switch.”

C

hicagoland Chicago’s pull on its surroundings is as strong as that of New York on its suburbs. It may indeed be stronger, since there are no real physical or psychological barriers separating city from suburb. The area’s theaters are able to use this sense of unity to work in collaboration and communication. On the other hand, musical organizations have not been able to break away from a more traditional competitiveness. One unique element in the area’s arts infrastructure is a funding collaborative called the Arts Work Fund: a group of foundations have banded together to create a more efficient way to offer support for local arts organizations. This is an idea, similar to but not the same as ArtsWestchester, which might work on Long Island.

If there is any metropolitan area in the United States whose suburbs feel as powerful a pull as those in the New York area, it’s Chicago. The Windy City is an international metropolis, with cultural institutions whose importance transcends the city limits or the state lines. The Chicago Symphony is considered one of the top five in the world (and this year it is boasting the first season of Riccardo Muti as music director). The Art Institute of Chicago can hold its own with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Museum of Science and Industry boasts that it is the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The Field Museum of Natural History, adjacent Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium are rightly considered a pre-eminent cultural complex. In terms of theater, Second City is the place where improv comedy was born, and the city probably has the nation’s largest, most active pure theater community outside of New York. Even dance has a strong profile---after decades in New York and some years in Los Angeles, the Joffrey Ballet moved to Chicago in 1995.

“It’s kind of a snobbish thing,” said Dale Lonis, executive director of the Elgin Symphony, 35 miles to the west. Trained as a conductor, Lonis served on the faculty of Northwestern University, which is in Evanston just north of the city line. “I know from being on that faculty there is a preference, a direct pull, a feeling of ‘Why would you want to be involved with anything but the Chicago Symphony?’ That’s clearly where you want to be.”

In terms of demographics, Chicago and its suburbs follow the American norm: the city is middle-to-lower income, the suburbs wealthier; the city is racially and ethnically diverse, and the suburbs are much whiter.

But the geography of the metropolitan area makes it significantly different from New York. New York’s suburbs are separated from the city by geographical and psychological barriers---the Hudson River to the west, Harlem River and the Bronx to the north, and Queens County to the east. But the flat Chicago plain blends the city and its outliers into one large urban sprawl. In fact, many well-known communities, such as Evanston, New Trier and Cicero, are independent townships in Cook County but outside the city limits.

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Chicago

North Shore Center

It’s all one place

The Chicago suburbs examined for this study are those used by the Chicago Metropolitan Area for Planning that directly abut the city: from north to south, counterclockwise, they are Lake, McHenry, Kane, DuPage, Kendall,, and Will.

Chicago itself, with a 2009 estimated population of 2,824,064, is the third largest city in the United States, and the second most densely populated after New York. It is 41.9 percent white, 34.1 percent black, 4.9 percent Asian and 27.4 percent Latino. Nearly 31 percent are college graduates, and the median household income was $46,781.

Once outside the city, the demographics begin to change. The population of Cook County as a whole is 5,257,001. Of that, 53.9 percent is white, 25.5 percent black, 5.7 percent Asian and 22.5 percent Latino. The median household income, is somewhat greater: $54,903.

The change becomes quite dramatic for the suburban counties, however. They are all whiter and richer.

Lake County, directly to the north, has a total population of 702,558. Of that, 78.1 percent are white, 6.5 percent are black, 5.7 percent are Asian and 18.6 percent are Latino. The median household income is $78,423.

McHenry, west of Lake, has half the number of people but the distribution is similar. The total population is 312,946. Of that, 90.9 percent are white, .9 percent black, 2.7 percent Asian, and 10.6 percent Latino. The median household income is $77,314.

Chicago

Kane, directly south of McHenry, does not quite follow that pattern. The total population is 494,371. Of that, 76.8 percent are white, 5.5 percent black, 3.0 percent Asian and 27.7 percent Latino.

But the county is significantly less affluent: the median household income is $68,327.

Downtown Chicago Aerial View

Dupage is sandwiched between Cook and Kane, and contains a small portion of the city of Chicago. Its total population is 925,530. Of that, 80.9 percent are white, 4.3 percent are black, 9.7 percent are Asian and 11.9 percent are Latino. The median household income is $76,366.

Kendall, to the south, is the least populated of the inner counties. Its total population is 94,070. Of that, 86.4 percent are white, 4.4 percent black, 2.5 percent Asian and 15.6 percent Latino. The median household income is $79,504.

The southernmost, Will County, again has a large population: 664,361. Of that, 77.9 percent are white, 10.6 percent black, 3.8 percent Asian and 14.0 percent Latino. The median household income is $74,118.

In terms of physical geography, the entire region is flat, situated largely on the Chicago Plain on the west shore of Lake Michigan. There is an area cut with bluffs and ravines running down to the lake along the northern shore, but neither that nor the three major waterways---the Chicago and Calumet Rivers and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal---pose serious physical or psychological barriers.

32

“You don’t have a sense of separation,” Lonis said. “It is urban sprawl all the way out.” Even his city of Elgin, which is 35 miles outside Chicago and is separated from the westernmost suburbs by about five miles of green space, feels like the metropolitan area—at least partly because it is the last stop on one of the city’s main mass transit rail lines. The absence of geographic barriers “absolutely makes a difference, psychologically,” Lonis said.

Another extremely important element tying the suburbs to the center is Chicago’s history as the nation’s primary railroad hub. The city sits spiderlike at the center of a web of nearly a dozen rail lines from every point of the compass except the east. These are all part of the region’s Metra rapid transit system, providing relatively easy mass transit access to the metropolitan center.

Indeed, Elgin is tied into Chicago as the last stop on one of the Metra lines. The Ravinia Festival, for decades the summer home of the Chicago Symphony, was created in 1904 as an amusement park to lure riders to the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railroad.

The Main Street Evanston stop on Metra’s Union Pacific North section looks like an elevated station almost anywhere in the city. “Evanston is sort of seamless,” said Peter Kuntz, executive director of the Arts and Business Council of Chicago. “Those immediate suburbs feel like part of the city---Skokie, Oak Park.”

“We hear of people who give their money, especially in affluent areas like Lake Forest, for generations who have supported the Chicago Symphony, the Lyric Opera, the museum,” said Gayle Heatherington, executive director of the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, based in Skokie. “It is a tough nut to crack.

There is that perception that the downtown institutions are the ones that need to be funded.”

Heatherington is particularly familiar with the problems of the area’s smaller institutions: her husband, Alan, is music director not only of Ars Viva but also of the Lake Forest Symphony and the Chicago Master Singers, and she is on the staff or the board of each.

At the same time, this linkage between the city and the suburbs is sometimes used to advantage by institutions that are closer in.

Kevin Heckman, executive director of the Next Theatre Company in Evanston, said he didn’t think the city-suburb split is as severe in Chicago as in New York. His company specializes in new and unusual repertory, and, he said, “Ironically, Chicago theatergoers are more aware [of us] than Evanston theatergoers. If a show gets good reviews, we get an influx of single ticket-buyers from Chicago.”

Whether there is collaboration or competition among the suburban organizations depends on whom you ask. Ars Viva’s Heatherington said, “basically, everyone is on their own. There is a sense of competitiveness among the suburban arts organizations, but the 33

Gayle & Alan Heatherington

Chicago

Not surprisingly, just as in New York, Chicago cultural organizations attract the large majority of funding, both corporate and individual, from the metropolitan area. “The large, prestigious, high-profile organizations in the city do get a lot of support,” said George Christianson, retired theater critic from the Chicago Tribune. “They find their boards and funding bases comes not only from the city but from the suburbs, where the residents are interested, for whatever reason, in putting their money into well-established, high-profile arts organizations.”

funders like collaboration.” The Lake Forest and Elgin orchestras do not have much contact between themselves. Dale Lonis of the Elgin Symphony professed only to have heard of Alan Heatherington. “We don’t have much of a relationship other than with the Illinois Council of Orchestras,” he said. Ars Viva’s Heatherington said that although her organizations “cross pollinate” amongst themselves, and share subscriber lists with the Chicago Symphony, they are less likely to work with Elgin, “which is seen more as a competitor.” Elgin also shares lists with the Chicago Symphony, looking for people from its own area. “To them, we are a gnat,” Lonis said.

On the other hand, the theater companies do appear to have stronger relationships.

There was a brief attempt at collaborative marketing in 2003, when the Boeing Corp., newly arrived in Chicago, gave a $40,000 grant to five suburban theaters to do a joint audience development study and to create a joint website.

Peter Handler

“The idea was to create a marketing consortium of theaters on the North Shore,” the Next’s Heckman said. “The message was that there is quality professional theater in the neighborhood,” said Peter Handler of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. “People who lived within blocks of them had no idea there was a theater company around the corner.”

Chicago

“We initiated some joint program covers, “ said Northlight Theatre marketing associate Mara Mihlfried.

“There were some ticket exchanges to build email lists. Each theater gave a pair to raffle off.”

However, Boeing’s grant was intended to set up the collaboration, not to keep it going. The theaters themselves either did not have enough money to maintain the site, or chose not to.

“The problem was that the funding had no sustainability, with no plans to renew or self-sustain,” Mihlfried said. “Nobody had a person who could manage a database in addition to their own responsibility.”

“When there was no further support for the idea, nobody was willing to pick up the cost,” Heckman said. “We had a four-person staff; we were not in a position to continue it.”

The North Shore Convention and Visitors Bureau picked the website up for a while, he said, but did not develop it. “I went looking for it, but couldn’t find anything.” Heckman, who was not at the theater at that time, said, ”my impression from those who were here, it was a nice idea that in the end probably needed significantly more funding to actually become an effective entity.”

B. J. Jones, executive director of the Northlight Theatre in Skokie, said that nowadays, each of the theaters has its own website.

One result, however, has been that the marketing directors of several of the theaters---among them, Next, Northlight (in Skokie) and the Writers Theatre (in Glencoe)---talk regularly, though there is no formal gathering.

“We are all pretty friendly,” Heckman said. “We share ideas, call on each other, and frequently exchange lists. Certainly in some ways they are our strongest competition…But we all draw primarily from our own 34

B.J. Jones

communities.” Beyond that, the Chicago area theaters “all consider ourselves a community,” said Northlight’s Jones. “We have a trade association, the Chicago League of Theaters, and we are all in it.”

Writers Theatre

His company, with 8,200 subscribers, is the fourth largest in the metropolitan area. “We use the same actors and directors and so forth. Everyone is from Chicago… As far as the community is concerned, we are part of Chicago.” That is true, he said, even of the Writers Theatre in Glencoe, which is 45 minutes north of the city.

“Our feeling in Chicago is, is what is good for Stage Left [near Wrigley Field] is good for Northlight,” he said. “If you whet the appetite for good theater, they will go.”

Writers Theatre artistic director Michael Halberstam agreed strongly with that sentiment. “Chicago is unlike any other theater town in that regard,” he said. “We call each other, we support each other.

Michael Halberstam

Nevertheless, the suburban companies do find resistance when they approach potential funders. “We on the North Shore, not unlike Westchester, find people saying, ‘you guys are rich anyway,’” Jones said. “That’s not true.”

“There is no question that the big-money philanthropists give to Chicago,” he said.

Northlight’s development director, Molly Hansen, said she accepts this in her own strategy for attracting board members. “I try to set my expectations reasonably,” she said. “We are not going to necessarily get the highest of the high and mighty to serve on the board. So who can we get?”

Hansen is familiar with the problems associated with suburban organizations from both sides: she was development director of the Goodman Theater, now a prominent national company, as well as having worked for years at a planning firm for nonprofit organizations, mostly in the Chicago area.

Elgin Symphony

There are other problems for suburban companies, such as creating diversity in the audience and on the boards. “We don’t have any black board members, we don’t have any black staff members,” Halberstam said. “It is a function of location.

The Chicago Community Trust won’t give us money unless we have a diversified board. I am not sure how to navigate that one.” Out of Glencoe’s 35

Chicago

“When we do a Shakespeare play, I usually email [Chicago Shakespeare Theatre artistic director] Barbara Gaines to see if it is in their upcoming plans, to make sure they are not overlapping, and in some ways to ask her blessing…. I don’t believe I am in competition with any other theater company in Chicago. The more good work there is, the better for all of us.”

population of 8,893 in the 2009 census, a total of 101 were black. On the other hand, the village is in Cook County, which does have a significant minority population. Corporate support for suburban groups is “really, really meager,” Northlight’s Hansen said. She blames that on weak boards of trustees and directors. “We are trying to expand our board.” Northlight has added five trustees in the past five years, and “three of them work for significant companies in Chicago.”

Elgin’s Lonis also spoke of the importance of finding well-to-do donors and board members from the local area. “We have tried to identify those people out in our area who are or have been members of the Chicago Symphony board or the Lyric Opera board.”

At the same time, he recognizes that an organization such as his is not likely to draw board members from the highest corporate ranks, except by chance. “We are working with the Baker and McKenzie law firm,” Lonis said. “One of their partners grew up in Elgin. For us it really comes down to personal choice. We are not going to get United Airlines unless there is an ‘in’ with someone passionate about trying to rebuild Elgin.”

There are, however, firms and tools available to help non-profit organizations find potential donors. The Elgin Symphony uses a firm called WealthEngine for “data mining.”

Chicago

“We can look up every one of our patrons, every patron in the area by name and zip code,” he said. “It will tell us what boards they are on, how much money they have donated.

That has been very helpful. It tells us what kind of ‘ask’ we can do. . . It’s truly amazing.”

As an example, he spoke of a donor who had regularly been giving the orchestra $1,500. “He has given to the Lyric, to the CSO. He gave $100 million to build a building for Washington University in St. Louis. We had a little chat with him, and upped [his donation] to $25,000. One person we found like that became helpful and useful.”

WealthEngine is not the only fundraising and data-mining service available. The Caramoor Festival in Katonah, N.Y., uses Raiser’s Edge, for example.

The view of suburban organizations from the donor’s side is a bit cloudy.

“We get far fewer applications from the suburbs,” said Marcia Festen, director of the Arts Work Fund. This is a “funding collaborative” of nine Chicago area foundations and corporation. It provides grants to small arts groups within the metropolitan area for support of infrastructure and operations, as opposed to capital projects. “While it is true that there are more arts organizations in the city, there are quite a few suburban organizations. They are isolated, I think, from knowing about funding opportunities.”

Kuntz, of the Arts and Business Council, said that he has been getting more contacts from suburban groups recently, however. “They seem to becoming aware of our services, and we are in the heart of downtown. They are reaching out, and making use of our services, which was not always the case.”

36

Marcia Festen

“Very few of the arts funders, except the state government, fund outside the Chicago area,” Festen said.

Which points to another problem: the Illinois Arts Council itself is weak and underfunded.

Its 2010 budget is a mere $9.5 million. Of course, this is during a period of extreme financial distress, but even in 2007, before the crunch, it was just $20.5 million. In contrast, the New York State Council on the Arts’ 2009-2010 budget was four times as much, at $41.7 million.

The Arts Work Fund itself is an unusual organization. A group of separate foundations---11 currently ---have combined their efforts to support small organizations with operating expenses of less than $1 million. Less than four years old, its budget last year was $725,000, Festen said. Its grants are generally around $10,000, and about 65 percent deal with developing technology, she said: “how to be better marketers and fundraisers via social media.”

So there appears to be a dichotomy among arts groups outside the Chicago city limits. Theater companies, united by pride in the strength of Chicago theater, tend to work together, or at least to consider themselves collaborators rather than competitors. Musical organizations, on the other hand, are pretty much on their own, struggling against the attraction of the Chicago Symphony, and looking for niches within their own communities.

On the other hand, suburban groups do tout their easy accessibility, free parking and lower cost in comparison with the city. Often the musicians of the Lake Forest, Ars Viva and Elgin orchestras are in fact members of the Chicago Symphony performing on their time off.

“We’ve picked up audience members who are unhappy with the CSO, the long commute, and having to pay for parking,” Ars Viva’s Heatherington said.

“If the symphony was playing contemporary music they were not happy with, people left in droves. They would tell us, ‘Why go downtown when I can hear you guys, when you are just as good?’“ Elgin uses essentially the same argument, although Lonis was aware that his orchestra’s quality is not as high: “We make it so easy for people who want to hear an orchestra that they choose us,” Lonis said. “They won’t choose us over the CSO---all our serious patrons also go to the CSO. But we have valet parking, the ticket prices are low, we have an intimate theater. It is an orchestra for the non-trained ear, who are not going to really be able to tell the difference on a regular basis---the music lovers.”

Dale Lonis

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Chicago

“We kind of compete with the Chicago Symphonietta for players,” Elgin’s Lonis said.

“And with the Grant Park Orchestra in the summers.”

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A

tlanta The Suburbs

versus

The City

Atlanta’s suburban counties are almost actively hostile to the city, which is the economic engine of the region. The two populous, affluent, predominantly white northern counties, Cobb and Gwinnett, are in the process of creating their own independent cultural organizations, supported to a large extent by aggressive land developers and corporations. There is little government involvement, either directly or indirectly. Community foundations in the counties are trying to build or support cultural activity on their own. The state of Georgia has an unusual tax structure, called a SPLOST (Special Local Option Sales Tax), which can be used by individual counties for selected capital projects. Arts groups are hoping to create a SPLOST option for the arts. It is not clear that Long Island developers any longer have the energy or the wish to place cultural centers within their own developments, as has happened in some of Atlanta’s counties.

Metropolitan Atlanta is an American anomaly. Despite its storied history, much of the city, and certainly the surrounding suburbs, are new. Although the central city is the economic focus of the area, the inner suburbs far outweigh it in population and affluence. The relationship of their inhabitants to Atlanta is awkward and uncomfortable.

The entire area—whose size varies from five inner counties to 20 to even more, depending on which criteria are used---has experienced tremendous recent growth.

The United States Census Bureau defines the Atlanta Metropolitan Area as 28 counties with a 2009 estimated population of 5,475,213. But the central city and its immediate suburbs comprise five core counties with a combined population of about 3.5 million people: Fulton (which includes 90 percent of Atlanta), DeKalb (the other 10 percent), Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton. Just during the period from 1990 to Atlanta Skyline 2008, Gwinnett County’s population exploded by almost 117 percent, to an estimated 766,912 from 352,910. Cobb County’s population surged almost 54 percent, to an estimated 690,430 from 447,745. Fulton County has expanded by more than 52 percent in the same period, to 987,148 from 648,951.

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Atlanta

“People hate Atlanta. They don’t want to go downtown. They hate the parking. They hate the congestion in the streets. They don’t like the city government. They don’t want their money going to Atlanta for any reason whatsoever.”

---Susan W. Wootton, executive director, Cobb Community Foundation.

DeKalb has grown 34 percent, to 733,060 from 545,837. Even Clayton, the smallest and poorest, has grown about 50 percent, to 271,652 from 182,052.

But the central city has not grown anywhere near as much: a mere 31 percent, to an estimated 515,843 from 394,017. Thus, four of the five surrounding counties are larger than the city itself. It has been estimated that only one in 10 people in the Atlanta metropolitan area lives in the city. One factor that has weakened the pull of the central city is the I-285 beltway: Atlantans speak of living and working Inside the Perimeter (ITP) and Outside the Perimeter (OTP).

“The 285 perimeter is a very thick line,” said Nicole Jones, editor in chief of AtlantaPlanit.com, an arts-oriented website. “People don’t want to come into the city.”

Another factor has been the growth of two “edge cities,” business, shopping and entertainment centers outside the traditional downtown: Perimeter Center and the Cumberland Galleria. These grew, without any planning, at interstate highway intersections northwest and northeast of Atlanta proper. Residents recently officially incorporated two cities around them: Sandy Springs and Dunwoody. A final underlying factor, which may be the most important, is race. The two northernmost counties, the wealthiest and perhaps the most powerful, are also majority white, while the other three and the city of Atlanta are majority African-American. Sandy Springs was created largely through white resistance to annexation by Atlanta.

Nicole Jones

One comparison, highly simplified, might be considered an example of the effect of all these elements: the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra could not raise the estimated $300 million it needed for a new symphony hall designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, inside the perimeter.

Meanwhile, the $146-million, 2,750-seat Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, which opened in 2007, now provides a home for the Atlanta Ballet and Atlanta Opera. The center, built as part of a much larger commercial development, lies just inside the intersection of I-285 and I-75, one of the two major north-south interstate highways that run through the area. It is inside the perimeter, but just barely.

Atlanta

In addition, the two powerful northern suburbs, Cobb and Gwinnett, have not permitted Atlanta’s mass transit system to expand into their territory. Instead, the metropolitan area has an immense highway grid---16 lanes wide in one stretch---and traffic congestion that is almost as bad as that of Los Angeles.

“We have also a lot of people who basically want to do their thing for their community,” said Joseph Bankoff, president and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta’s Lincoln Center. “They want culture, but they want culture in Roswell. They’re not talking about culture in Atlanta. They want culture in Cobb.”

Theatre in the Square

The state as a whole has never been very supportive of cultural activities. In 2009 Georgia ranked 44th in legislative appropriations for the arts, according to the National Assembly 40

of State Arts Agencies. Gov. Sonny Perdue recommended just $890,735 for the Georgia Council on the Arts in his 2011 budget proposal. Gwinnett County has no arts council. Cobb County eliminated all funding for the arts after Theatre in the Square, its largest theater, presented a play that was set in a gay community on Fire Island. (Cobb was the center of former Rep. Newt Gingrich’s congressional district at the height of the “culture wars” of the 1990s.)

In many other cities, wealthy families and individual philanthropists are often involved in backing museums, concert halls and theaters. That has not been the case in Atlanta. Ironically, the Woodruff Arts Center, the city’s main cultural institution, was created only as a memorial to the deaths of 40 potential arts patrons in an airplane crash in France.

“What we were losing was the generation that starts to give it, the individuals in those families that were passionate about the arts,” according to Lisa Cremin, director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund. “It was a massive loss.”

In fact, much of the cultural activity in the surrounding suburbs has been supported by the large corporations headquartered or with major facilities in the area, such as Coca Cola, Home Depot, Lockheed Martin Aerospace, and CNN, and by real estate developers who want to enhance the quality of life in their communities as a way to attract and keep residents. For example, the Aurora Theatre moved from its home in Duluth to nearby Lawrenceville at the invitation of a developer who wanted it to anchor his plans to invigorate the town center. The Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce produced a plan to create a county-wide arts advocacy organization, though implementation has been put on hold during the current economic crisis.

“Cobb County is probably the best example of how a suburban county is faring,” AtlantaPlanit’ Jones said. “They as a community have gotten political leadership, have started a dialogue with arts groups, and made a strategic attempt to get politicians and business to be supportive of the arts.”

The economic establishment of the county has thrown itself behind cultural development. “Cobb was built without a business plan,” the Woodruff’s Bankoff said. By his account, County Commissioner Sam Olens and real estate developer John Williams said, “ ‘By God, we’re just gonna do something.’ Which is the way things have happened around here forever.”

Lisa Cremin

“Everybody in Cobb -- developers, real estate people -- wanted to make things happen,” the Community Foundation’s Wootton said. “I think that’s a key factor, is to create almost like a core group of the movers and shakers, who like each other, who work together anyway. They have a huge vision for this whole area around here.

“If anything’s going to get done in this state in the arts, it’s going to get done in Cobb County,” said Michael Taormina, executive director of the Cobb Energy Center. “It’s sort of like they believe in the arts.”

41

Atlanta

The uproar in Cobb over Theatre in the Square created a powerful backlash that resulted, first, in the withdrawal of Olympic activities from the county and, since then, an apparent reversal in attitudes toward cultural activity.

One of the results of this vision has been the United Arts of Cobb. This is an effort to create a permanent endowment fund to provide grants for its member organizations. “The money will be used for operations funding and special project funding,” Wootton said. Progress, however, has been slow.

Its major effort is an annual fund-raising ball. There have been three so far, but only half a million dollars has been raised. Grants will not begin before there is at least a million dollars in the fund, Wootton said.

All of this is a remarkable turnaround from the situation in 1993, when Theatre in the Square, in Marietta, produced Terrence McNally’s play “Lips Together, Teeth Apart.” It involves two couples--straight--- who spend July 4th in the Fire Island home of a relative who died of AIDS. There were complaints to the County Commission (residents were already upset that Atlanta had recently approved domestic partnership status for gay couples). As a result, the commission passed a resolution condemning the “gay lifestyle” as a “lifestyle incompatible with community standards,” and later eliminated all arts funding with a warning that the arts help further a “gay agenda.”

Raye Varney and Sharmen Gowens

As it happens, theater founders Palmer Wells and Michael Horne were gay partners who met while working at a local IBM facility, according to managing director Raye Varney.

Atlanta

The result was a national uproar. Actress Joanne Woodward, a former resident of Marietta, gave a $20,000 matching grant to the theater. Local corporations, including Coca Cola, gave thousands more.

Olympic champion diver Greg Louganis demanded---and got---withdrawal of all Atlanta Olympic activity planned for Cobb County. The theater lost several hundred subscribers and a lot of financial support. Horne died in 1996---Varney said the cause was AIDS, although it was described in the press as cardiopulmonary failure.

“It was touch and go for a few years,” Varney said. “But what happened is we’d done a lot for this community, and a lot of the community was pissed off that this happened.” In the years since, Theatre in the Square has become the third largest theater in the metropolitan area, and is currently engaged in a major expansion and renovation.

The story of the Aurora Theatre in neighboring Gwinnett County is different, but also telling. It was founded in 1996 in a converted hardware store owned by the city of Duluth. The building, according to producing artistic director Anthony Rodriguez, was in bad shape. The air conditioning did not work, and the ceiling was so low he had to cast actors for height.

When Duluth did not want to spend any money to fix the building, a member of the county commission

Aurora Theatre 42

suggested that Pence and his wife, Ann-Carol Pence, contact Emory Morsburger.

Morsburger was buying property around the square in the city of Lawrenceville. He developed a master plan to transform the area into whathis firm described as “a thriving, pedestrian-friendly community with shops, restaurants and residences.”

“He wanted an entertainment venue of some sort in Lawrenceville,” Rodriguez said. “He knew that he needed something that would consistently draw patrons to the restaurants he wanted to build or that he wanted to attract and to the business that he wants to own or lease.”

After negotiation with Morsburger, city officials and other prominent local residents, Rodriguez and Lawrenceville drew up a plan to use revenue from a Special Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) to convert a downtown church into a theater for Aurora.

Emory Morsburger

It was put out to bid in 2005, and opened two years later. There was no opposition. “We never had any serious citizen backlash,” Rodriguez said. “We were amazed. And this particular city of all, nobody thought I could build it in here.”

There had been cross burnings in the city decades ago, and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt was shot in the courthouse square during his trial on obscenity charges in 1978.

Rodriguez credits the local support to the couple’s determination to keep in close touch with the community. Pence had been musical director on cruise ships, and Rodriguez’ father was a hotel manager, so they know about being hospitable. “We went out of our way to know our patrons,” he said. “We still know their names for the most part.”

The Aurora Theatre also benefited from an unusual Georgia funding mechanism, mentioned above, known as a SPLOST. Under Georgia law, individual counties may vote to temporarily add a penny or two to the state sales tax to pay for specific educational or infrastructure capital expenses. Many counties have used this to build schools, widen road and improve parks.

So, although government financial support has never been strong, there is a movement under way to create a SPLOST for the arts. A bill introduced in February, 2010, by State Rep. Ron Stephens, a Savannah Republican, would create a dedicated revenue stream for operations and maintenance, as well as capital construction. If it passes, any county can prepare a list of proposals to pay for museums, theaters, orchestras or other specified activity.

“In Cobb County, where our total budgets today is $25 to $28 million, if we were to get .01 percent, it’s worth $12 million per year,” said Atlanta Opera executive director Dennis Hanthorn.

“That’s $12 million you can use for operating, marketing, capital, a number of things.”

43

Atlanta

“It is all about the personal connection that we’ve created with our patrons and with our county . . . and with the people that could help us get what we needed.” - Anthony Rodriguez

“We’ve been talking about the tax as the only reliable way to get this stable source of funding for the arts,” said Wootton of the Cobb Community Foundation.

There is another, barely submerged element in any analysis of the relationship between Atlanta and its surroundings: Race.

The city itself, in the 2008 census estimate, is 50.1 percent African-American and 43.1 percent white. South of the city, Clayton County, the poorest of the region, is 60.5 percent black and 25.8 percent white. DeKalb also has a black majority: 54.1 percent black and 34.9 percent white, but it also includes part of the city. In Gwinnett and Cobb the figures are reversed: 59.5 percent white to 20.2 percent black in Gwinnett (the second largest ethnic group is Hispanic or Latino of any race, at 16.8 percent). For Cobb the figures are 64.6 percent white and 22.6 percent black.

The city of Sandy Springs was incorporated in 2005 after years of efforts by its mostly white population to resist attempts at annexation by Atlanta. There is frequent talk that the northern sections of Fulton County, predominantly white and more affluent than Atlanta proper, want to secede and create their own county. It is generally considered that Cobb’s and Gwinnett’s rejection of the MARTA mass transit system was based on race and class.

Bankoff, of the Woodruff Center, said that the city government is reluctant to provide support because “the city structure says, that’s for the rich white people.”

Atlanta

One intriguing sign of the growing strength of the area’s Asian population is the February, 2010, decision, prompted by community protests, to change the name of MARTA’s Doraville line from “Yellow” to “Gold.” Doraville is home to a large Asian-American community.

Residents of the northern counties profess reluctance to ride on the MARTA trains for safety reasons. Caryn McGarity, formerly director of the Gwinnett County Visitors Bureau, said, “All they would ever have to do to make MARTA succeed was to put a policeman on every train and a policeman in the parking lot of every park and ride, and MARTA would be successful. That’s why [in rejecting MARTA expansion] everybody, Gwinnett and Cobb, said, ‘Well, we don’t want people coming out on that train and stealing our TVs and getting back on the train and taking those TVs off.’ “ As Sue Wootton of the Cobb Foundation put it, “we definitely still have race issues here, but to me, it’s the same in other large cities wherever you go.”

Susan Wootton

44

MC

arin ounty The Gold in The

Golden Gate

The bulk of Marin County is unpopulated land devoted to park and farmland. It is a physically beautiful area with a population heavily weighted toward creativity, including filmmakers, musicians and visual artists. The local arts council is just beginning to develop a unified plan to provide support for cultural organizations in the county. Its efforts to develop a Marin County “brand” and to increase arts tourism may find opposition from residents who like things the way they are, and frown on tourists.

Nevertheless, the council’s project, similar to the arts plan in New Jersey, offers a template worthy of examination in Long Island’s art community.

Marin County is particularly blessed, even in a state that itself is already blessed by geography. A southward-facing peninsula, it is bordered on the east by San Pablo and San Francisco Bays, on the south by the Golden Gate, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The bulk of the population---246,711 people, according to the 2009 census estimate---lives in a string of communities proceeding up the lowlands of the southeastern coast. The bulk of the county---about 80 percent---is uninhabited land, much of it preserved as national, state or county park, forest and preserve.

The landscape is dominated by the ridges of the Northern California Coast Range, anchored by the 2,500-foot Mount Tamalpais near the southern tip. Marin is famous for its scenery: besides “Mount Tam,” beckoning San Franciscans like the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock in “the Great Gatsby,” there is the arboreal cathedral of the Muir Woods redwood forest, and the vast, wild, Point Reyes National Seashore which occupies almost the entire Pacific coast, to name just the most prominent. Marin’s geography even takes advantage of the San Andreas Fault: when the fault submerges on its run north, it forms the fjord-like, 15-mile-long Tomales Bay separating Point Reyes from the Marin mainland.“You can’t help but be impressed by its splendor,” Thompson said.

45

Marin

Marin County, California, is a suburb of San Francisco the way Versailles is a suburb of Paris. Gorgeous, dependent, right next door, but possessed of its own critical mass. The population of Marin, which begins at the northern terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge, is affluent, well educated and creative. Marin, said Argo Thompson, executive director of the Marin Arts Council, “is where all the hippies migrated to.”

There is no mass transit directly connecting Marin to its neighboring communities. The Golden Gate Bridge is the only road link with San Francisco, although there are ferries which run to the communities of Sausalito, Tiburon and Larkspur. Interstate Route 580, a spur of I-80, runs through Oakland and Richmond, and terminates in San Rafael, Marin’s largest city, with a 2009 population of 55,347. The main highways are US 101, through the populated eastern section, and, up the west coast, the winding, two-lane, spectacular California State Route 1.

The bulk of the population---81 percent in 2009---is white, with 3.2 percent black, 5.7 percent Asian and 13.6 percent Latino. The median household income is $87,728 in 2009 dollars.

But those mere numbers don’t convey the human wealth of the county. For example, the Marin Civic Center is the only public project ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It has a 1,600-seat auditorium and 315-seat theater. Wright even included a fairgrounds for an annual county fair that features, besides the usual pig races and barnyard, a film festival, displays of bonsai, fine arts and crafts and photography, master gardening workshops, and a global kitchen with local celebrity chefs.

A list of the musical performances for this year’s fair, over the July 4th weekend, gives some idea not just of the eclecticism and breadth of their programming, but the kinds of local connections Marin can call on. County fairs traditionally have continuous music during the holiday, but the bands tend to have one or two headliners, and the rest are just local heroes.

Marin Civic Center

Marin

Not so in Marin. The opening act is the vocal trio Wilson Phillips: Carney and Wendy Wilson are daughters of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, and Chynna Phillips is the daughter of the Mamas and Papas’ John and Michelle Phillips. They are followed by the Wailers, Bob Marley’s old bunch; veteran folkie Ramblin’ Jack Elliott; the San Francisco jam band Green Tea; rockers Little Feat; the Del McCoury Band and Preservation Hall Jazz Band; the Grammy-nominated, Cuban-American Tiempo Libre; and culminating with a pair of soul classics: the Four Tops and the Temptations.

Beyond that, “this is the greenest county fair on earth,” said Jim Farley, director of cultural and visitor services at the Marin Civic Center. The carousel and the local performance stage are solar powered; the concert stage generator is run on 99% vegetable oil biodiesel; a wind turbine runs exterior lighting; there are “eco-stations” to collect waste for compost, landfill or recycling; even bicyclists will have bicycle valet parking. There’s a solar powered, all-electric excursion train, and Betty Biodiesel, in a sunflower costume, does performances about the benefits of recycling.

Jim Farley

“Every kid in Marin County sings, dances and acts,” Farley said. “This community loves this place.”

It is a community operation, owned and operated by the county, with county employees. Of the $5 million budget, $1.2 million is a county subsidy, and the rest is raised with, apparently, not much difficulty, according to Farley. “We don’t do that much fundraising,” he said. “The support is ingrown. …It’s a given that if you live in Marin County there are cultural activities in the schools and here. There 46

is no strong political organization, but collectively and in expectations it’s here and there is support.”

“Here in this county there are two or three very large, nationally recognized cultural organizations, comparable to others in San Francisco,” said Marcy Cady of the Helicon Collaborative, a consulting firm currently conducting detailed audience surveys for the Marin Arts Council. Cady’s list included the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a vast children’s museum in Sausalito at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge; the California Film Institute, which includes the Mill Valley International Film Festival, a three-screen theater and an educational program; and the Headlands Center for the Arts, an artists’ residency program on the grounds of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area.

The county has long been a home or haven for actors, filmmakers and musicians. George Lucas lived in Marin while he wrote “Star Wars.” His 4,700-acre Skywalker Ranch is located in Nicasio, and his company, Lucasfilm, was based in Marin until 2005, when he moved the headquarters to the Presidio in San Francisco. Most of the members of the Grateful Dead lived in Marin at one time or another; so did Robin Williams. Wynonna Judd waitressed in a local café.

The nature of the population shows up in many ways. “There might be a world famous filmmaker whose daughter goes to a school, and it suddenly has a state of the art theater,” said Jim Farley, director of cultural and visitor services at the Marin Civic Center.

Still, even this green and prosperous land feels the pull of San Francisco across the Golden Gate. “We are in the shadow of San Francisco,” Farley said. “After a while you get used to it.”

There is a sense that Marin’s arts community does not try to compete directly with the attractions of San Francisco, the San Francisco Symphony, Ballet, Opera, Museum of Modern Art and so forth. “I don’t feel in competition with San Francisco,” said Jeannette Thompson, director of the Alter Theater in San Rafael. “It’s a blessing to have the resources of a vibrant theater community, and they are resources for us, help us with finding a prop, or technical expertise.”

“We do have trouble getting money from foundations in San Francisco,” said Jasson Minadakis, artistic director of the Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley. “There is a little bit of trouble with some of the state and regional organizations as well, because they know of the money in the county. It is a sort of blessing and curse.”

The arts council’s Thompson acknowledges that the presence of the city is a “hindrance…it’s a double-edged sword,” he said, “but it also helps. Because we are in such proximity, many artists live here in Marin. We have rich talent. For people who are visiting San Francisco, we are a draw as well.”

Still, it is an effort to loosen local donors’ ties to the city. Minadakis counsels patience. “We just stay on their radar, and continue to invite them,” he said. “We know it is a long road with these folks, people with the substantial foundations. They are worth the longer cultivation.”

Minadakis, who has been at the theater for four years, said one of his problems has been getting people from San Francisco to Marin because of the lack of public transportation.

“There is always a hesitation to go to Marin,” he said. “It is not easy to get here...You have to drive to get here, and a lot of people in San Francisco don’t drive.”

47

Marin

“The people here are very artistically oriented,” said Minadakis. “We have a much larger base than I have seen in Atlanta or Cincinnati.,” two other places where he has worked.

His company, with a budget of $2.2 million, has been making a conscious effort to raise the quality of its productions, as a means to attract larger audiences. It recently upgraded its contract with Actors Equity to the level of the League of Regional Theaters, which requires a larger budget and greater commitment to the level of performance.

“We made a massive effort to recruit the best designers and directors in the Bay Area,” Minadakis said.

“It has changed how people look at us, and what they are willing to donate. We have gone out on a limb in some programming things we thought would elevate us in community. It has paid off.”

The company has worked hard to change its perception in the eyes of Marin County theatergoers, as well. “We still have, even now, a lot of people living in Marin who think of us as a local company . . . We have been focusing on getting people aware of our status.”

Not surprisingly, considering the beauty of the area, the majority of the council’s members are visual artists.

One of its primary public activities has been the annual “Marin Arts Open,” when hundreds of artists around the county open their studios to the public, and the council has shows in its two galleries in San Rafael.

Indeed, the council is currently working with the Helicon Collaborative and local arts groups to find ways to increase the county’s drawing power.

Early in 2010 the council published a four-year strategic plan that aims to “establish Marin County as a community that expresses creativity through innovative approaches to economic development, education and government, a mecca for artists and all creative people.”

The Marin Arts Council Strategic Plan, approved on March 8, 2010, was created, Thompson said, because “I wanted an external document to rally people around our mission and cause.” It is similar to, though not as comprehensive as, ArtsPlan NJ, the detailed cultural blueprint created for that state in 1998 and updated in 2008. ArtsPlan focused heavily on political goals such as aligning the arts with public policy, the civic agenda and the business community. The Marin plan essentially assumes that its community already has a good sense of the arts’ importance, and seeks ways to build on that.

Argo Thompson

It starts with a vision: “Where the arts thrive, community flourishes and lives are filled discovery.” Each of these is broken out as a “belief,” with three goals for each belief.

Marin

For example, for Belief No. 1, “Where the Arts Thrive,” the goals include “creating an environment where artists can work, thrive and feel supported in their creative lives,” “grow and leverage community support for Marin’s arts organizations,” and “brand Marin arts.”

Among the specific activities to accomplish these goals, for example, the Helicon Collaborative is conducting a cultural census: “not just every arts organization,” Thompson said, “but the non-tradtional: crocheting at a Starbucks, or selling arts related items in bookstores; music stores, art supply stores, dance---it’s a broader study of the impact of the arts.”

“We are gathering who is attending and who is not, and what is stopping them from attending and what is being offered. We are hoping to develop a series of tools,” he said.

In addition, the council hopes to turn itself into the county’s “central provider of arts-related 48

information,” to become a central ticket agency for the county, and to help create cooperative marketing and advertising programs for Marin arts groups.

It wants to form “a countywide marketing consortium to position and market Marin as a destination for arts and culture.” Part of that process includes expanding relationships with the press by hosting annual press tours of the county. Nor are the social media ignored: the council expects to use Facebook, YouTube and similar outlets to “broaden and deepen participation in the arts.”

Other goals and projects envisioned in the strategic plan include developing “Creative Vitality Indicators” that can be used by the county’s cities and towns to “capture a more complete picture of the health and impact of Marin’s arts industry”; integrating the arts into local municipalities’ own master plans; partnering with local Chambers of Commerce; finding ways to expand offerings to seniors, minorities and the disabled; and developing a section of the council’s own website (marinarts.org) that provides “comprehensive resources for educators, students and families.”

The centralized, online ticketing program has just begun. Any arts organization in the county will be able to sell tickets through the site. As currently structured, Thompson said, there are three tiers of membership. For $55, a basic member can sell one item at a time---a book, a show, a painting. For $150, members can sell up to three items---a series of shows or concerts, for example. At the top level, for $275, members can sell up to six items, such as a set of paintings in a portfolio or a collection of books.

Beyond that very specific sort of project, the master plan envisions developing a “brand” for Marin County as a whole. The individual communities tend to think of themselves as independent entities, Thompson said; “branding will be a challenge for the entire region.”

The council has been conducting quarterly forums for arts groups to discuss issues of mutual concern.

“This way we get better ideas how to brand the arts in the area. It may come to the point that we hire an outside firm to put in the finishing touches.”

There is likely to be resistance to the concept of making Marin County itself a destination.

“Tourism is a four-letter word in Marin,” Thompson said. “There are people here who are opposed to tourism. They see it as a violation of the open space that is so precious here.

Others are obviously embracing it as needed to survive.”

There is competition among the various arts organizations, but, Thompson said, “I’ve seen counties and cities where the competition is more fierce.” As a result of the quarterly meetings, he said, there is less resistance now than several years ago, he said, to the idea of sharing membership or contact lists. “We are sharing lists now instead of protecting our own.

“It just makes sense,” he said. “Why are we all repeating the same tasks when we could share that task, and minimize the investment. We all have to have development directors talking to the same people. Why not have just one.”

One thing that has not yet been worked out: who decides which group gets what support.

“That’s where the rubber hits the road,” Thompson said.

Still, he finds the level of cooperation encouraging: “We just invited people to come and talk, and through the conversations, the ideas just started coming out. It was that simple. We sit in a room together, the heads of these organizations, artists, and other people, and just talked about what we all need, which resources we had, and what we have in common.”

49

Marin

In fact, the council is in discussion with the Marin Symphony, the TeamWorks program and the Youth in Arts organization to use just a single development director for all four, to send out a single fund-raising letter, and to otherwise consolidate some staffing and other work.

Charts

Arts, Entertainment and Recreation*

2008 County Business Patterns

U.S. Census

County

Paid Employees

Annual Payroll ($1,000)

Total Establishments

Nassau

11,558

411,606

823

Suffolk

9,130

262,209

834

Westchester

9,858

331,179

660

New York County

66,430

3,780,061

4,166

New Jersey

52,767

1,571,306

3,523

Fairfax

8,347

238,283

351

Washington DC

7,610

355,784

289

Cobb

4,314

75,376

236

Gwinnett

3,976

65,650

252

Atlanta (Fulton County)

11,696

553,579

489

Lake

6,108

281,925

348

McHenry

1,389

25,596

137

DuPage

7,019

142,845

343

Kendall

399

5,187

30

Will

3,230

58,534

214

Cook

34,180

1,380,734

1,735

Kane

5,776

137,189

160

Marin

3,536

96,943

263

San Francisco

12,573

562,792

493

*Includes performing arts, spectator sports, and related industries 50

County

2009 Population

Number of Grants

Grant Dollars

Per Capita

Cook County, IL

5,287,037

834

$9,442,692

$1.79

DuPage County, IL

932,541

93

$494,218

$0.53

Kane County, IL

511,892

38

$186,377

$0.36

Kendall County, IL

104,821

0

$0

$0.00

Lake County, IL

712,567

51

$257,820

$0.36

McHenry County, IL

320,961

16

$47,700

$0.15

Will County, IL

685,251

12

$47,720

$0.07

Marin County, CA

250,750

6

$61,377

$0.24

Cobb County, GA

714,692

15

$129,414

$0.18

Gwinnet County, GA

808,167

7

$47,735

$0.06

Westchester County, NY

955,962

87

$1,413,000

$1.48

Fairfax County, VA

1,037,605

48

$374,453

$0.36

Nassau County, NY

1,357,429

38

$510,520

$0.38

Suffolk County, NY

1,518,475

57

$1,088,410

$0.72

Source: NASAA - Final Descriptive Reports, US Census Bureau 51

Charts

State Arts Agency Grants to Selected Counties, FY 2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Very little work can ever been considered the product of one person, and this report is no exception. I have had a great deal of help over the time this report has taken to reach fruition.

The first credit must go to Larry Levy of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, who first broached the idea to Roger Tilles of the Long Island Arts Alliance. It was only after Roger gave his approval, and the Long Island Community Foundation generously agreed to fund it, that Larry approached me with the project.

Once we got under way, Hofstra University graduate student Lauren Shapiro was diligent and persistent in conducting interviews with arts leaders throughout Westchester County.

As the work progressed further, my former colleague Janice Berman in California graciously conducted interviews and gathered information for the report on Marin County.

Hofstra undergraduate Jessica Lewis performed the thankless task of compiling photographs of everyone who had been interviewed, and images of the institutions they represented.

The dozens of recorded interviews were flawlessly transcribed by Jan Bear in Oregon and Meagan Morrell in Buenos Aires.

When thickets of bureaucracy threatened to be overwhelming, Ina Katz patiently guided me through them.

As this report was being compiled and written, Dale Lewis of the Usdan Center, Beth Levinthal of the Hofstra University Museum, and Elliott Sroka of Tilles Center read the various sections.

Their comments and suggestions significantly improved the final version, and I am very grateful to them for their contributions.

Theresa Statz Smith of the Long Island Arts Alliance has provided invaluable support and suggestions.

And, of course, I am very grateful to the dozens of individuals throughout the nation who spoke so candidly and well about the status of their own organizations. All of these people contributed importantly to this study. Any errors in the final report are mine alone.

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