Denial of Funding to Arts Group Upheld

The California Arts Council on Friday upheld a decision to deny funding to the Bilingual Foundation for the Arts for the first time in 11 years, despite a last-minute plea and a major public campaign waged by the local theater troupe.

At a regular council meeting at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles, representatives of the 14-year-old foundation tried to reverse a grant request denial they had already appealed in writing--and the council had already rejected. This came two days after the organization protested the grant denial at a news conference attended by Councilwoman Gloria Molina and other prominent Latino arts and community figures.

Acknowledging that council panels--made up of artists who evaluate their peers for grants--have for several years expressed dissatisfaction with the level of the foundation’s artistic quality with respect to acting, writing and directing, foundation chairman Mary Salinas Duron read excerpts from critical reviews and cited foundation achievements to try to win for fiscal 1987-88 at least $6,800, the size of the troupe’s 1986-87 grant.

“BFA seeks to inform this council with facts about the progress we have made in the last year and our consistent and positive response to the concerns of council theater panels since 1982,” Duron told the council.

Local critics, whom she did not name, have cried, “rich dramaturgy,” “superb acting” and “sensitive direction,” Duron said. And the foundation, the only local troupe to present all its plays in English and Spanish, was judged as having “consummate artistry” by the Kansas City Star.

Responding to other panelists’ concerns, the Equity waiver theater troupe has also increased their actors’ pay in their current $500,000 budget by 125% over the previous year, Duron said. It also invited at least four guest directors, after panelists claimed in 1986 that it was “ ‘insular,’ and should bring in outside talent and fresh ideas,” she said.

This year’s grant denial was particularly damaging, Duron added in an interview, because it makes the foundation ineligible to apply for council “multicultural” grants to ethnic minorities until 1991. That restriction is especially “ludicrous,” Duron said, because foundation president Carmen Zapata, also at Friday’s meeting, testified before a legislative committee two years ago about the need for such a program and now serves on its advisory panel. It is ironic, too, she said, that this year the troupe will receive council support for its national tours.

Duron’s council testimony was familiar. Last year, representatives of the troupe, based in Lincoln Heights, flew to a council meeting in Sacramento to protest denial of the grant that the foundation appealed and ultimately won.

But this year council chairman Harvey Stearn, who led the move to reinstate the troupe’s last grant “on the basis that BFA holds an important place in the Hispanic community,” stood by the council’s decision.

“Last year we continued funding for the BFA,” Stearn said, “but in effect put them on probation that they improve artistic quality. A year later a panel had similar comments to make about lack of artistic quality and improvements about working wages for artists. I have to ask myself, ‘What’s changed?’ ”

“It’s important that we give organizations time to enhance the quality of their programming,” Stearn said, “but improvement must be seen and the BFA has failed to make artistic improvements requested by panels over several years. I think we cannot risk destroying the credibility of this council or its panel process by overturning panel recommendations--which haven’t been a one-shot deal.”

After Stearn’s remarks, no council action was taken to overturn its panels’ recommendations and thus no grant was awarded. However, council member Gerald Yoshitomi, director of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, suggested that a council task force be formed to study Latino theater in California. No action was taken on the issue.

Mary Jane Hewitt, co-director of the Museum of African American Art and chairwoman of the council’s multicultural program advisory panel, noted that an upcoming council-sponsored conference will explore issues of quality and minority arts. Hewitt, who had urged the council to award the foundation a grant, said that “California Dialogue II,” subtitled “Artistic Quality/Cultural Survival,” is scheduled for Dec. 12-13. It is to be held at the Moseley Salvatori Conference Center in Los Angeles.