ARTS COUNCIL DOLING OUT FUNDS TODAY

Today in Sacramento, the California Arts Council is doling out its much-sought-after and sometimes controversial grants to arts groups of assorted sizes throughout the state.

More than 600 organizations applied for the $6.49 million the council is distributing this year in organizational grants. Although the official numbers won’t be made public until today, recommendations from the council’s evaluation panels show that a handful of top grant recipients will get more than $250,000 each; others get as little as $1,500. More than 170 of the applicants are being sent away empty-handed.

There is no clear distribution pattern based on population. In Los Angeles County, for instance, 115 groups are getting almost $1.85 million, representing 28.5% of the council’s total organizational grants budget. This is close to population figures: Los Angeles county contains 30.8% of the state residents.

On the other hand, the runaway money winner is San Francisco County, where 134 arts groups will receive $2.3 million. That’s 36.5% of the arts council’s organizational grants to an area where only 2.7% of California’s populace lives.

Just how does the state decide who gets a check and who doesn’t?

It’s not just artistic quality, although council officials say that quality is always the prime consideration. Because the council is handing out public money, other factors such as multicultural appeal and community outreach programs also carry significant weight.

And who’s to say that the council has drafted the most qualified people for its panels that evaluate each group’s request and then rate it on a scale of 1 to 4?

They’re not necessarily the most hallowed names in their respective fields, which prompts some complaints about the legitimacy of their decisions and ultimately the credibility of the ratings they bestow.

Last year, several organizations, including the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum and San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, unsuccessfully appealed to the council to restore cuts in their grants.

“There was a lot of what we felt was inaccuracy about us (in panel reports). Simply put, the wrong information was getting to the state,” said Peter Shavitz, annual-fund director for the Old Globe, whose grants dropped from $115,000 in 1985 to $95,000 last year.

Officials at both the Old Globe and the Taper now feel the review system has improved significantly.

“There’s a better exchange of information this year. We don’t have the same breakdown (in communications) that occurred last year,” said Stephen Albert, general manager of the Taper, whose grants had dropped from $214,000 in 1985 to $180,000 last year.

But complaints that the council’s rankings are “extremely subjective” persist.

Earlier this month in Sacramento, Los Angeles Music Center Opera general director Peter Hemmings interrupted evaluation hearings to ask, “Who are those people?”

“What are the criteria for naming some of these panelists?” said Ami Porat, founder of the Mozart Camerata, a relatively young Orange County chamber group that did not apply for Arts Council funding for next year after being shut out of funds for 1986-87. “Have we some sort of objective decision-making process?”

Yes, argues Tere Romo, program manager for the council’s organizational grants. “The panel members are all professionals, and so the organizations have peer reviews. It’s not an arbitrary decision or a decision made in a vacuum. . . . It’s a hard and complicated process,” Romo said.

But because requests (totaling $14.7 million in 1987) far outweigh available money, complaints are frequently raised by groups that are turned down or that receive substantially less money than they requested. In turn, organizations that get more of what they came for--no applicants are funded at 100%--are predictably happier with the system.

“It (the system) has been controversial in some areas, and it has had its ups and downs,” said Christine Fiedler, development director at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre. “Basically we’re very pleased with the way the review system is working this year.”

Furthermore, the image of regional favoritism in state grants seems to have subsided.

“At one time, yes, there was this obvious tilt to the traditional big areas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But I think that’s changed greatly,” said David Emmes, producing artistic director of the Orange County-based South Coast Repertory Theatre and a former Arts Council panelist.

Besides, as most arts administrators point out, the state’s ranking methodology is the only game in town.

There is, however, a conflict-of-interest issue that is begged by a rating system that draws many of its evaluation panelists from the same groups that are vying for grants.

“The panel system, by its nature, provides several safeguards,” says Elliot Klein, administrator of the music panel. “Panelists have their reputations very much at stake. They’re being judged by fellows panelists who are peers in their field. . . . The fact that we have public observers at our meetings also further assures the level of integrity.”

Nonetheless, Klein said the council program staff will conduct a first-time study covering the past six years to see whether serving on a panel has affected the score of that member’s organization. (The study will be completed by the end of October.)

The rating process itself is a three-round review lasting from three to five days. First, a panel of five to eight members reviews applications according to specific criteria. Second, it assigns the 1 to 4 rank, with pluses and minuses, to reflect a priority order of funding. (Only those groups that received a rating of 3-minus or higher were funded this year.) Third, panelists review the ranks to ensure that the “4-” given the Los Angeles Music Center Opera Assn. is equivalent to the “4-” given the Irvine-based Opera Pacific.

But final ratings are less a real world assessment of a group’s quality or success than they are a gauge of how closely each group measures up to the council’s ideal of what an arts organization should be.

Those criteria essentially fall into four categories:

--Quality of the programs and services;

--Strength of the organization measured by its fiscal and managerial competence and history;

--Community relationship, measured by such things as ethnic makeup of the board and of its audiences;

--The value of the specific proposal in terms of the benefits to the organization and the community it serves.

“The ranking is a holistic judgment,” says Klein. “All of the factors are taken into consideration without weighing any one more heavily, although we do direct panelists to put the greatest weight on quality.”

Yet some of the biggest and most prestigious institutions say they can encounter identity problems when it comes to panel demands for increased community outreach.

“Sometimes, we feel they do not understand the nature of the kind of outreach a museum like ours can provide,” said Julia Johnston, development director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “Our aims necessitate that we bring people from the community to us. What we offer is on our site--obviously, you cannot take a Rembrandt painting on (school) tours, the way you can an orchestra.”

Another key council theme is the issue of increased multicultural representation on arts boards.

“Seeking this kind of pluralistic representation is a fine goal, of course. But for us, it becomes a matter of practicality and a recognition of what your community realistically is,” said Kevin Consey, director of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, whose board does not have ethnic-minority representation. “Our artistic mission is contemporary art, which in itself has limited appeal. It probably doesn’t make sense for institutions like ours to seek a broader representation just for the sake of demographic pluralism.”

Other arts officials argue that the ethnic makeup of a board of directors has little to do with a group’s artistic quality--or lack of it.

But Darlene Neel, manager of the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company and a three-year member of one of the council’s, explained: “We are in a state that has to take a fairly strong affirmative action position. I’m rather proud of the state because it’s trying to do that. I think we’re richer for it. There’s a vitality in this state you can hardly match in the country.”

In fact, the Arts Council is credited, at least in part, with prodding many organizations into expanding arts programs to meet two of the council’s pet themes: widening multicultural (or ethnic-minority) representation and expanding community outreach.

Says Los Angeles Music Center Opera general director Peter Hemmings: “Expanding the audience in all sections of society is vital to the future of our organizations. We can’t sit and rely on our loyal present public. We have to be looking to the future.”

Newport Harbor Art Museum, in direct response to a criticism by a council, last fall expanded its program for bringing school children to the museum in Newport Beach. The program, underwritten by a county grant, involved an additional 19,000 children, including many disadvantaged youths.

And South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, prodded in part by the multicultural focus of the Arts Council and other grants-giving bodies, not only has started a new plays program for Hispanic playwrights but also produced a readings production and a children’s theater work based on SCR’s own immigration-experience research project.

Says Robert McMillin, executive director of the Pasadena Symphony: “I believe a lot of their priorities are viable and fair . . . Arts should have an impact on other populations than the upper middle-class white constituency.”

Still, the council’s two-tier grant system--providing the largest grant amounts to groups with budgets of more than $1 million, while limiting grants to $50,000 for groups with operating budgets of less than $1 million--seems to reward those organizations that need council funds the least.

“That is a fact of life, but as the system is set up it’s fair within your category,” said Rita Majors, business manager for the Orange County Pacific Chorale.

“Funding agencies are not too hot on chamber orchestras in general,” says Micah Levy, founder of the Orange County Chamber Orchestra, which also fell below the minimum rank to receive CAC funding in 1986-87. “We got a list of chamber orchestras that received (CAC) funding and there were only two in all of California. That’s not a lot.”

Counters Klein: “A chamber symphony working in an urban center is going to have to work at a higher level of quality in its genre than a symphony in rural California, obviously. Part of that is, people in cities are not starved for this particular experience they way people in Paradise, Calif. would be if their symphony isn’t funded. . . . In some cases, it may be a little bit tougher, and that may have to do somewhat with community need.”

Even among those who do receive Arts Council grants, arts groups are virtually unanimous in their complaint that California allots far too little money to the arts in general. According to the latest figures from the Washington, D.C.-based National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, California last year spent only 47.5 cents per capita on arts, placing it 33rd among the nation’s 56 states and territories. Of the nation’s most populous states, fourth-ranked Massachusetts spends $3.14 per capita on the arts and fifth-ranked New York allocates $2.73 to the arts per capita.

“Let’s face it, the No. 1 issue is still that we simply are not getting enough money from the state. While the numbers of arts organizations are booming, the (CAC) funds are, proportionally, falling behind,” said Bill Bushnell, artistic director of the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

“For a major state, California has always lagged far behind in supporting its artists. The state and its Arts Council has to take the leadership in providing this kind of crucial support,” Bushnell said. “To do otherwise would be a cop-out.”