BUDGET RITE: A PEEK INTO ARTS WORLD

“How are dancers in companies doing?” the congressman wondered, noting that for a while they had been earning, on average, $7,000 a year.

“Twelve-and-a-half a year ($12,500),” the dance program director for the National Endowment for the Arts responded, a bit relieved.

“Can they live on that?” asked Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee in mid-hearing on the arts budget for the coming fiscal year. (The U.S. Census lists the poverty level for a single person at $5,278.)

“They manage,” answered Sali Ann Kriegsman, NEA’s dance director, “In the largest companies, the top dancers earn $30,000 to $40,000 a year.”

“A year? That’s not very much for your superstars . . . “ said Yates.

The annual spring rite of going up to Capitol Hill to talk appropriations for the coming fiscal year provides some insights into the world of the arts--beyond the politics of budget battles.

The numbers reflect the politics of the Reagan Administration point man, NEA Chairman Frank Hodsoll, squaring off against a Democratic subcommittee chairman who has consistently increased endowment support. In the current fiscal year, Congress appropriated $165.1 million to NEA; for fiscal ‘88, which begins Oct. 1, Hodsoll is asking for $145.2 million.

However, Yates’ subcommittee also monitors how the money is spent, so the congressman asked some questions.

When NEA’s visual-arts program director Richard Andrews’ turn came, Yates, with a smile, asked: “So why do you discriminate against women artists?”

“We don’t,” Andrews replied. “In the fellowship area, the ratio of female recipients is roughly parallel to the applications received--60% (male). There is no evidence of any discrimination. In terms of fellowships, it’s not an issue.”

Before returning to money issues, Yates recalled conducting an informal survey of museum inventories and found that the works were done predominantly by male artists.

Ironically, in the 144-page notebooks making up the endowment’s official congressional budget submission, the one example of a national fellowship recipient mentioned is a woman from Yates’ city. “Karen Stahlecker, a crafts artist from Chicago, received a visual arts fellowship of $5,000 in fiscal year 1984. She reports that the grant provided a level of relief from constant financial pressures, particularly since the commercial market for large-scale paper and fiber work like hers is somewhat limited. . . . “

The director of the opera/musical-theater program, Patrick J. Smith, said that “practically all opera companies are presenting new works over the next five years. So the cause of new opera is very much alive.” He said that American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., and the Kentucky Opera are combining on a production of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and that the Lyric Opera of Chicago will be producing Philip Glass’ opera “Satyagraha” next season.

Hodsoll interjected that when he came to the endowment about five years ago he asked Smith if there were any new operas being produced. “Like serendipity, we now have evidence of lots of new operas. One is even about Nixon and China by composer John Adams. I heard some music. It’s quite wonderful,” the NEA chairman said. The work will be a co-production of the Houston Grand Opera, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Theatre de la Monnaiein Brussels. It is scheduled to premiere in Houston next fall.

The director of the folk arts program, Bess Hawes, predicted that within the decade a variety of so-called folk artists will be entering the artistic mainstream. Already, she noted, Cajun musicians are being invited to participate in cultural festivals in France.

The director of the design arts program, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, talked about a semi-annual seminar at the University of Virginia involving mayors and architects and city design experts to improve urban environments.

Like chairman Hodsoll, the endowment’s program directors insisted that the proposed Administration budget was enough to meet their department’s needs. At times, however, there was less than cheerleader enthusiasm.

When Yates asked A. B. Spellman, director of the expansion arts program (minority, inner city, rural and tribal programs), how they were doing, Spellman, facing a proposed cut from the current $6.7 million to $5.6 million, answered: “We’re doing OK.”

Yates finally grinned at Hodsoll and asked, almost in jest: “Who here is asking for more money . . . ? Let me ask all the department heads . . . Anyone on staff want to go against the boss?”

While the department heads weren’t talking, the American Arts Alliance was quietly distributing its own statistics. From fiscal 1981--the last year of the Carter budget--to the current fiscal year 1987, opera-program monies out of the total NEA budget have decreased from 3.9% to 3.7%, with a proposed drop next year to 3.5%; music-program monies have decreased from 10.2% to 9.3%, with a proposed drop to 8.7%; dance-program monies have decreased from 5.7% to 5.5%, with a proposed drop to 5.1%; theater-program monies have gone from 6.8% to 6.5%, with a proposed drop to 6.1%, and museum-program monies have gone from 8.2% to 7.5% with a proposed drop to 6.8%.