A RAINBOW COALITION FOR THE ARTS

As June Gutfleisch, outgoing director of the California Confederation of the Arts, opened the organization’s 10th annual convention here, she inadvertently sounded the real keynote of the occasion.

“What I see here today is a ‘Congress of the Arts’ that looks like California,” Gutfleisch noted, scanning the crowd of nearly 400 arts representatives with their diverse multiracial and ethnic makeup. “I take pride in that--on behalf of my board. We have offered a forum, and you are here.”

Although the congress’ official theme dealt with the rather lofty matter of the role of boards of trustees in the nonprofit arts world and how they interact--or don’t--with their respective arts administrators, the action at this three-day convention was down in the grass roots. Within hours after getting under way at the Hyatt Regency, the new multicultural (formerly known as “minority”) caucus had unanimously recommended to the convention a nine-point resolution--the ninth point of which, if ever put into practice by a state arts agency, would revolutionize the awarding of grants dollars.

The ninth point called for “parity by 1990.”

Not 50-50, dollar-for-dollar parity between multicultural and Anglo arts organizations and artists, but parity by statewide population statistics--or 60% to multicultural arts organizations and artists and 40% to Anglo arts organizations and artists, in accord with the 1990 projections. As Mary Jane Hewitt, co-director of Los Angeles’ Museum of African American Art and vice chairman of the California Art Council’s 4-month-old Multicultural Advisory Panel, stated at the convention’s close Saturday: “We are the majority now.”

Or, as Halifu Osumare, artistic director of Everybody’s Creative Arts Center here, asserted as she convened the caucus of wall-to-wall attendees, it’s “very, very appropriate” that the caucus should be meeting in a city that’s “65% Third World and 46% black.”

The confederation, the statewide arts advocacy body and self-appointed monitor of the California Arts Council, is defining multicultural as black, Latino, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander.

About the only approximation of parity in the current budget and in budgets past is between the grants given the state’s two dozen or so “prominent” organizations, such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Opera with budgets usually well over $1 million, and grants given to all the rest of the field of California arts organizations whose budgets are more often considerably less than $1 million.

In the arts council’s current ‘85-’86 fiscal budget of $12.6 million, more than $10 million is allocated as grants money for large and small organizations as well as for specific programs, such as artist residencies in education.

Currently the separate multicultural budgetary item is $164,000, while 11% of smaller-organization funding (there being no so-called prominent multicultural organizations)--or about $340,000 more--goes to multicultural organizations. There are no immediate figures separating artist residencies.

Parity by population, in current-budget terms, would provide multicultural artists and organizations with more than $6 million.

The concept went down to a relatively quick but close defeat Saturday, 21-15, with most of the delegates having opted for an earlier start to their weekend. Gutfleisch said from the podium that she was “terribly disappointed” in the vote. Hewitt said privately that she was “not surprised” by it and hopes her confederation colleagues are “educable.” Meanwhile, the confederation managed to pull itself out of a severely divisive hole, thanks to a neat turn of phrase--and supplemental comments--by Lorna McLeod, public information director of public television station KEET in Eureka.

Instead of the confederation’s proposed resolution recognizing the contributions of the multicultural caucus and saying the confederation wants to develop a caucus structure in which the multicultural caucus “could work more closely with” other CCA caucuses, McLeod’s seemingly simple substitution, which won the day, recognized the multicultural caucus’ contributions and said the multicultural caucus “works equally with” other caucuses.

Most of the multiculturals’ eight points, including commendation for Gutfleisch for her efforts on behalf of multicultural organizations and support for a March conference of multicultural artists and organizations, that the California Arts Council has already voted funds for, had no opposition. The conference, to include representatives of the 85 arts organizations that applied for arts council grants last year, will be held March 16 and 17 at Asilomar, the state facility in Pacific Grove. Its main focus will be technical assistance to developing organizations to be provided on a continuing basis by more established multicultural organizational experts.

Meanwhile, another item calling for a more multicultural confederation board had already been voted upon. According to Gutfleisch the vote on the new slate of board members now brings multicultural representation to one out of three directors instead of one out of five.

However, two of the other nine points threatened further disruption: point three in calling for a multicultural advocacy organization, “not instead of, but in addition to” the confederation. And point four calling for “protection” of grants already being given to multicultural organizations. Robert Walker, business manager of the San Francisco Opera, said that sounded to him like “grandfathering in” permanent grants.

McLeod, who had already been voted in as part of a slate of new confederation board members, then recommended that instead of “nickel and diming” the other eight points it should be “the sense of the convention” that “by 1990 (they agree to) not only the first eight points but a reasonable definition of parity as well.”

With the multicultural issue accounted for, more grass-roots resolutions on behalf of a separate women’s panel and arts programs for the disabled were voted into place.

This convention was to have been the occasion for statewide input on the beginnings of a California Arts Council three-year draft plan to the National Endowment for the Arts, but it didn’t quite work out. The confederation soon discovered that a drafty lunchtime ballroom is hardly the setting for an intimate working session. So it adjourned to a caucus room--where only nine people showed up.

That night at the Oakland Museum the crowd was considerably larger as Gutfleisch who has been the confederation’s executive director for more than four years formally told the membership about her plans to resign. She said she was not an artist but a planner. “We are dangerous because we are interested in instantly changing things,” she said. “We want to build that park here, that theater that, that lunch program over there . . . and we want that $1 per capita for the arts.”