ARTS ADVISORY BOARD GETS NEEDED STAFF HELP

At last, the fledgling Public Arts Advisory Board for the City of San Diego has staffers dedicated to handling its paper work.

Not one, but two arts administrators were picked by a selection committee from a field of a dozen applicants for the 11-month temporary consultantship. They will share the $26,000 stipend. They are expected to help put together a program to provide for state arts funding through the state-local partnership program previously administered by COMBO. They will also provide a general arts plan.

David Lutz and Elizabeth Kennedy applied as a team and were chosen, according to PAAB selection committee member Kathi Howard, for their extensive experience in public arts administration. Lutz is director of the Santa Monica Arts Commission, and Kennedy is an administrator currently working under contract with the Music Center of Los Angeles.

The two will continue to live and work primarily in the Los Angeles area but will commute as necessary to San Diego to serve the needs of the PAAB. Kennedy said she will spend more time on the consultantship than Lutz will. He will retain his full-time position with the City of Santa Monica. But Lutz, who helped form the state-local partnership program while working with the California Arts Council, brings extensive knowledge to the position.

“It’s a tremendous job for one person,” Kennedy said by telephone from Los Angeles. “Our professional experience is similar but diverse enough so that we cover the high points of what the other doesn’t. We thought that between us we would come as a better product. David has more government-oriented experience. I have worked in nonprofit fund-raising. We know there are some strong arts presences in San Diego and a political structure that is pretty strong.”

So far the volunteer Public Arts Advisory Board has utilized staffers from the city’s Intergovernmental Relations Department. Lutz and Kennedy put forth a two-part proposal in their application to provide for routine staffing--”purely administrative stuff, the minutes and calling people”--and planning. Kennedy said they will provide for a partnership plan for the state and a general arts plan “suitable for the people of San Diego.”

Kennedy, a native New Yorker, has a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Missouri. She served as assistant director for the Kansas City Arts Council for five years, then moved to California two years ago. At the Music Center, she has supervised an educational program called the Music Center on Tour, which annually sends 40 performance groups out to 1,500 bookings in schools.

Kennedy met Lutz two years ago when he hired her to put together a private, nonprofit funding arm for the Santa Monica Arts Commission. Lutz has a master’s degree in arts administration from the University of Cincinnati.

Lutz is on vacation but Kennedy plans to attend Thursday’s meeting of the PAAB.

Commenting on the selection of the pair to help guide the PAAB’s programs, especially the setting up of public discussions on the arts, Kevin Munnelly of the Intergovernmental Relations Department said, “We’re not getting nice artists or people who knit. If these people can’t do it, who the hell can?”