COMBO STIRS DISPUTE WITH ARTS AWARDS

COMBO, the private arts-funding organization, again finds itself at the center of public scrutiny. A brouhaha has arisen about its funding procedures and COMBO’s apparent failure to keep a promise to award half of a $139,000 grant to the visual arts.

COMBO’s commitment to the visual arts has been questioned by the Combined Organizations of Visual Arts (COVA) since the announcement of award recipients earlier this month. COMBO administers a three-year, $450,000 National Endowment for the Arts challenge grant. Last year, COMBO officials attempted to placate artists concerned about its support for the visual arts by vowing to award half of the second and third installments of the NEA grant to the visual arts.

In the second installment announced two weeks ago, only seven of 59 grants were awarded under the heading of visual arts. That came to $21,950, prompting COVA President Jennifer Spencer to cry foul.

Dianne Streifer, who manages the NEA grants for COMBO, defended the awards on two counts. The council of community volunteers that oversees the awards considered the literary and interdisciplinary categories as part of the visual arts, Streifer said. The council also dropped COMBO’s 50% pledge for the visual arts to 40% for the second installment, with hopes of making up the difference next year, she said.

Spencer and one of the artists who served on the “peer panels” that made the awards also say the procedures used were unfair. Visual arts panelist Jihmye Collins says the instructions he received placed familiarity with the artists and their work above other considerations. “That was the No. 1 criteria,” Collins said. “It was very clear that most of the panelists were selecting from people they knew or were associated with.”

Asked whether she told the panelists to give priority to the work of artists known to them, Streifer, who gave the oral instructions, said, “I don’t remember that. The decisions were to be based on the material provided by the artists.”

Two other visual arts panelists, David Avalos and Ronald Onorato, disagreed with Collins about conflicts. Chief curator for the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, Onorato did not remember receiving such an instruction. “I would hope that was not the case,” Onorato said. “We all took it seriously. Actually, in almost every case one of the five of us was familiar with the artist.”

Onorato and Avalos said the panelists were not advised that money originally allocated to the visual arts had been reapportioned to other disciplines. “Had I known that, I would have refused to serve,” Onorato said.

Many of the visual arts applications were rejected because they did not fall within the guidelines or did not present a strong case for the applicant, Avalos said. “I hope the people who didn’t get funded will stay with the process and not get discouraged,” he said. “They have a right to call COMBO and ask why they were rejected.”

Meanwhile, the city manager’s office has completed a management audit of COMBO. The report will be made to the City Council Public Safety and Services Committee Nov. 5 along with recommendations for a task force to study COMBO as the city’s umbrella organization for distributing funds to certain arts groups.

THE YEAR OF ISRAEL: UC San Diego drama Prof. Robert Israel has been having one fantastic year. The theater designer provoked praise and criticism for his exotic designs for “Der Ring des Nibelungen” at the Seattle Opera. In New York, he won the Joseph Maharam Foundation Award presented by the American Theatre Wing for his scenic and costume designs for the off-Broadway production of “Vienna: Lusthaus,” which is bound for an international tour.

Israel also received two NEA grants to support a collaboration with composer Morton Subotnick on a new opera, “Jacob’s Room,” and work as an artistic adviser to L.A. Theatre Works.

ARTBEATS: Pianist Fred Finn will bring his Mickey Finn Show to town Nov. 18-19 at the Fiesta Dinner Theatre for the first of several performances there over the next few months. For years the Mickey Finn Show presented Dixieland music at a Hillcrest nightclub until Finn moved the family to Las Vegas. . . . “Profile of a Gang Leader,” the Anasa Briggs documentary produced earlier this year by KPBS-TV (Channel 15), won two awards, one from the San Diego Press Club for best documentary, and a first place in television features from the National Assn. of Black Journalists.