A PARADE OF WITNESSES FOR THE ARTS

“I don’t know that anyone has ever accused the cultural agencies of having an $800 coffeepot or a $50 monkey wrench,” said Edward M. Block, a senior vice president of American Telephone and Telegraph and vice chairman of the American Council for the Arts.

“I realize that, at this moment, you are considering such serious and weighty topics as aid to Nicaragua, funding for housing and job development,” Juanita M. Crabb, mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., began.

“It is also essential for you to consider,” she said, “(that) we as a society must not fail to express our idealism, our vision for the future, our quest for goodness. We must not fail the arts which express our collective dreams. . . . By considering a reduction in funding (for the arts), we invite blandness and selfishness to enter our national conscious.”

William P. Wingate, executive managing director of Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group, warned that in nonprofit theaters across the nation “our expenses are increasing a lot faster than our income, and that’s the bottom line. That includes our income from all sources. We’re not keeping up. There’s been a clear erosion. . . . We lack the rehearsal time, we lack the ability to sustain ensembles at reasonable wages. “We saw in Los Angeles at the Olympics true brilliance on the stage,” Wingate said. Brilliant Shakespeare, brilliant Sophocles. It was produced by the Theatre du Soleil from Paris . . . “ and other companies from England, Italy and Japan.”

A parade of far-flung witnesses from business, government and the arts came to Rep. Sidney R. Yates’ (D-Ill.) House appropriation interior subcommittee hearing-room table Wednesday. Among them was also concert pianist Lorin Hollander, who observed that the arts are “at the heart” of “what human beings are about.”

The mood in Yates’ subcommittee as he heard public testimony on budgets for the National Endowment for Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum Services was friendly and unhurried. For a time budget numbers appeared to take a back seat, while ideas prevailed.

Yates’ questions were softballs. To William Macomber, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yates commented that most people take art museums for granted, and he wondered what the nation would be like without them. “What would the world be like?” Macomber replied.

When Sterling VanWagenen, director of artistic affairs at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, talked about the importance of “networking,” Yates, whose district encompasses Chicago’s North Side, commented: “At home, we call that a precinct organization.”

And when it it was Hollander’s turn, Yates chatted a bit about his 10-year-old grandson who also plays piano.

“Art is the way we come to know ourselves and experience the world,” Hollander said in his testimony.

The 41-year-old musician and educator noted that “perhaps now because I am the father of a 1-year-old, I am so focused on the question of how can we have these little jewels bear the tensions of what human beings are all about? What will allow them to dare to reach the higher levels of the human experience? What can we give them that will prepare them for the awesome task of living on our planet?

“What we need today is a planetary population . . . brilliant, visionary, humane, understanding, cultured, willing to compromise, willing to work together for the peaceful joyous celebration of life. . . . What can we give children to allow them to become fully human?

“There is only the arts,” Hollander said. “Art is the heart of it. Art can heal wounds so that it can allow a child who would go to vandalism and crime and violence to find legitimate outlets for these powerful emotions. Music can point the way. Dance and an understanding of (its role in) the psychological well-being of human beings is a new field of exploration. All the art therapies, understanding how the arts touch. . . . “

The National Endowment for the Arts--and even Chairman Frank Hodsoll who, as a presidential appointee, is cast in the role of backing the lowered White House budget numbers--came in for particular praise for what it is about and how it is administered.

The Reagan Administration is seeking to cut the arts endowment from $165.6 million in fiscal 1986--already down 4.3% under the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing law to $158.5 million--to $144.9 million for fiscal 1987 beginning Oct. 1. It wants to take humanities from $138.6 million in fiscal ‘86, already down under Gramm-Rudman to $132.7 million, down still further to $126.4 million in fiscal ’87.

And it proposes to demolish the Institute of Museum Services--from $21.4 million in fiscal 1986, cut under Gramm-Rudman to $20.5 million--all the way down to $330,000 so that Museum Services can be phased out. Yates objects to that.

In testimony submitted for the record, the American Arts Alliance, the nation’s principal arts advocacy or lobbying organization, noted that “the federal government has been a central player in our country’s artistic renaissance.”

Money from arts endowment funds, the alliance added, “while never providing more than 3%-4% of a company’s budget and requiring a 1-to-1 match of private dollars, is critical to the artistic integrity of performing and exhibiting institutions. For many, the endowment grant is the largest single contribution to the company’s annual budget.”

Macomber testified that at the Metropolitan “we weren’t able to raise (private) money until we got an NEA grant (of $50,000)” for the recent Balthus representational art exhibition, and that another NEA grant ($125,000) helped make it possible to put on the Renaissance and Gothic Art of Nuremburg show, opening next month.

Harry S. Parker III, director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, cited the ($60,000) support the endowment gave for a showing of the work of Russian emigre constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo. He said that while it’s important for Dallas to see “The Treasures of San Marco” now in Dallas, “it’s much harder to fund creativity.” The Gabo show is now at to the Guggenheim and will travel to the Tate in London.

“So often they’re (NEA grants) protecting the edge,” he noted.

“They show a national purpose, I think,” agreed Yates, “a national support recognition as an aid to attracting private support. Down in Dallas they criticize some aspects of the federal government. They still like to have the imprimatur of the housekeeping seal, the knowledge that experts in the arts who are saying, ‘We approve of you.’ ” Meanwhile proposed federal cutbacks come at a time, others said, when businesses as well as states are being stretched to the limit. Parker noted that with the oil glut he expects state support “to fall on its nose.”

Carolyn Adams, co-director of the Harlem Dance Foundation, noted that federal funding for dance in the ‘70s helped spur audience development for classical as well as modern dance. “I urgently ask you to consider that support for the arts is not a luxury. It is a lifeline for artists, a passport to the world, an identifying force for the nation.”

Joanne Kohn, chairwoman of the Missouri Arts Council, testified on behalf of the NEA’s folk arts apprenticeship program, which has supported fiddlers, button-box accordionists, saddle makers, rug and basket weavers. In fiscal 1985, in the program’s first year of operation, NEA gave $10,000, which the state Arts Council matched, and in the current fiscal year $14,600, also matched. For fiscal year 1987 they have asked for $30,000, “which Missouri proposes to match.

“Because of the endowment,” Kohn said, “our cultural heritage and communal values are being preserved. As the bald eagle is threatened with extinction so are master artists.”

Michael Newman of Winston-Salem, N.C., chairman of the North Carolina Arts Council, asserted that “while many do not consider the arts as a business, arts and cultural organizations represent the 10th-largest employer in my county (Forsyth) of 240,000 people. This puts the arts up there with our other industries, including R. J. Reynolds Industries, AT&T;, Piedmont Airlines, Sara Lee Corp. . . . “

Edward Wolff, general manager of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, noted that when a regional airline announced it was starting service to Birmingham, local headlines said it would bring about 100 people to the city and have a payroll of $2 million. “Our budget is close to $3 million, our payroll is $1,750,000, and we employ approximately 85 people--72 in the orchestra, a few conductors and the rest are staff. We bring into the economy approximately $3 million. He talked about the contributions of the Alabama Symphony “to the fabric” of Birmingham. Orchestra members taught 500 children in the schools with city funding. Last year it put on the largest Bach Festival last year in the country. . . . All the churches in Birmingham would be without musicians to perform on Sunday, especially Christmas and Easter.” Musicians perform and speak about their art in prisons, hospitals, and to public housing audiences.

Wolff also noted that last December basketball stars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Ralph Sampson purchased an old hotel, renovated it, and gave the land to the Alabama Symphony, which brings in $50,000 a year. “In Birmingham ?” asked Yates. “Sir, one day that image is no longer going to be,” replied Wolff. “We all know the image of Birmingham, especially since 1963. The hoses, Bull Connor, the dogs, and we still live that (image). But one thing the arts are not: They’re not prejudiced. . . . “

Indeed, he said, “we are now talking” with the city about commissioning an original piece of music to honor the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “We need the NEA,” said Wolff. “I cannot envision us and our programs not having this event sponsored by the NEA because that puts the mark of approval. And our country must move forward with our culture and our arts, because that’s how we live and breathe.”