CAC ADOPTS NEW ‘MINORITY’ PROGRAM

With some expectation that the governor will augment its budget for the coming fiscal year, the California Arts Council has adopted its first comprehensive “ethnic minority” arts program that will, at first, primarily benefit artists and organizations in the Los Angeles area.

Despite the setting of the regular council meeting Friday at the San Francisco Ballet, no one questioned the Los Angeles concentration of the nearly $200,000 program. Council chairman Stephen Goldstine, president of the San Francisco Art Institute, noted that a budgetary increase for fiscal 1985-86 over the Deukmejian Adminstration’s current proposals could bring additional projects to the minority program. The new program, which would begin July 1, is “not written in stone,” he said.

There was also the recognition that not only are a lot of traditional minority groups centered in Los Angeles County, ideal for a “test” program with limited funding, but that there was a political factor as well: All along, the prime mover behind the minority arts program has been Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

About the only sustained dispute during the meeting centered around the program name. Various minority audience members, as well as Goldstine, preferred “expansion” arts--the term used by the National Endowment for the Arts, which Goldstine noted was coined during the Nixon Administration. He mentioned, too, that Waters likes the term “ethnic minority.”

By a unanimous vote, the council also expanded its definition of “minority.” Beyond blacks, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders and native Americans (including American Indians and Eskimos), the council voted unanimously to incorporate a fifth category used by many states as well as the NEA: a person (or group) “having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East.”

The council stressed, however, that while this last category may sound all-encompassing, it was concerned only with those having economic need and “rooted” in a particular community. While noting that “clearly” most of the support dollars would be awarded to artists and organizations from “the larger ethnic groupings,” Patricia Geary Johnson of Rolling Hills maintained that “if the program’s operation is to be consistent with its policy goals, all ethnic minority groups who are at an economic disadvantage because of their minority status should be included.”

The three-part program includes:

--The Ethnic Minority Advancement Grant, a test project in Los Angeles County that will aid arts organizations that have reached, as council staffer John Sullivan described it, “a certain level of institutionalization.” The funding will assist organizations that lie outside the scope of traditional Arts Council funding. The project will be funded with $100,000 from the ethnic minority line item in the governor’s proposed 1985-86 budget.

--The Ethnic Minority Survey Grant, which will identify and support the creation and presentation of art by ethnic minority artists previously unfamiliar to the council. This will be funded by the remaining $64,000 in the governor’s line item. (While the governor has proposed $164,000 overall for the ethnic minority program, the Legislature by the end of the budgetary process will have approved $500,000 for that line item.)

--Two Ethnic Minority Conferences, one in Oakland in October, the second in November in Los Angeles, to encourage arts presenters and sponsors to locate and support artists and organizations. The conferences, funded by a $5,000 NEA grant and a $24,000 matching grant that has already been committed out of the Art Council’s current-fiscal-year touring program, will help identify and assist survey grant applicants.

Some concern had been expressed over language, indeed the philosophy, behind proposals that referred to “indigenous” ethnic art. John Gordone, author of the Pulitzer-winning play “No Place to Be Somebody,” said: “We are all Americans. . . . Let’s not look at anything as a ‘special interest’ here.” And Oscar Maciel, director of the newly organized Northern California Coalition for Expansion Arts, cautioned against attitudes that “help segregate us even further.”

In another action, the Arts Council gave formal approval to the legislative budget request of about $4 million over the governor’s $12,579,000 proposal. However, in the $16,585,000 legislative budget, they carefully exempted a $25,000 special line item bequest for Filmex’s Latino Film Festival, which had garnered bipartisan support. “However worthy the project,” Goldstine said, “you can’t have 800 or so arts organizations seeking special line items.”

Consuelo Santos-Killins explained that should the governor veto the line item, Filmex would still be funded under the standard line items for such projects. She, too, spoke of an unfortunate “precedent” in having special line items for individual projects--which would, of course, take significant granting powers away from the Arts Council.

Meanwhile, the council welcomed one new member (which brings it back to its full complement of 11)--Bryan (Whitey) Littlefield, general manager of the Long Beach-based Budweiser distributorship for the South Bay, who was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian. Littlefield, a member of the Fine Arts Affiliates of Cal State Long Beach and a former member of the board of the Long Beach Symphony, is a close friend of the governor, who had been generally expected to name someone from Northern California or the Central Valley. At present, only Ann Getty, wife of Gordon Peter Getty (son of J. Paul Getty), Santos-Killins and Goldstine are from outside Southern California.

The council also noted the reappointments of two members--Santos-Killins by the Senate Rules Committee and Joan Agajanian Quinn by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

As the council prepared for an early start on the Memorial Day weekend, it got caught in a wrangle with staff over the Artists in Schools program. Ten minutes before the scheduled vote, council members were presented with a 16-page document recommending 62 projects for funding at a cost of more than $500,000. They questioned not only why well-known artist/school residencies in San Francisco and Santa Cruz were de-funded and other “unnamed, questionable” projects were being recommended for funding, but more importantly why they couldn’t get the necessary information sooner.

In the end, they approved the money, not wishing to jeopardize “the worthy projects.” They also noted they might add to the residencies later--that is, if Deukmejian augments the Arts Council budget this time, just as he did for the current fiscal year last July.