ASSEMBLY TO PROBE ARTS IN CITY LIFE

About 350 representatives from state arts agencies across the nation and from the six territories gather here today for the 11th annual National Assembly of State Arts Agencies conference on “The Arts and Livability”--or how the arts can improve the quality of city life.

The setting is particularly appropriate, convention planners say, because last year the U.S. Conference of Mayors named Seattle as the nation’s most livable city. In particular, the city was cited for its many outdoor sculptures. (This year that honor went to St. Paul, Minn., which happens to be the site of next year’s assembly.)

Jonathan Katz, new executive director of the arts agency assembly and a former executive director of the Kansas Arts Commission, said this will be the organization’s largest conference ever, and he attributes the attendance to both the conference theme--and to Seattle.

“We wanted to take advantage of the fact that we were going to be here,” Katz said, explaining why livability was chosen as this year’s theme. “This city uses artists in its planning. You walk down the street and see designs on the manhole covers. It’s quite remarkable.”

Frank Hodsoll, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, is scheduled to address the opening session. Author and architecture critic William H. Whyte Jr., who wrote “The Organization Man” and “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces,” will deliver the keynote address.

Other major convention participants include New Mexico sculptor Luis Jimenez, who uses fiberglass and acrylic to construct sculptures that depict real-life images, and Gustave Harrow, adjunct professor of arts administration at New York University and legal consultant to artists Richard Serra and Nancy Holt.

This assembly will also rank each state in order of its per-capita funding of the arts and in order of the percentage of its overall budget accorded the arts. California has tended to fall into the bottom half of the rankings in the past.

The California Arts Council as well as the California Confederation of the Arts, the state’s arts advocacy organization, will both be represented for the first time in two years. The Arts Council’s representation is part of its overall effort to comply with NEA policies. Last February, in temporarily deferring the Arts Council’s basic state grant, the endowment had criticized the agency for not reaching out to its western arts federation neighbors.

There will be a sizable contingent in attendance from the national endowment itself. One of Saturday morning’s speakers will be Anthony B. Turney, who is in charge of the endowment’s state/local partnership program, which distributes grants to the individual state agencies.

Meanwhile, Katz noted that overall funding for arts agencies has risen from $162 million for fiscal 1984-’85 to $201 million in fiscal ‘85-’86. He added that he hoped the assembly’s focus on livability “will benefit millions of Americans whose state arts agencies will support the involvement of artists in environmental planning and design.”