ARTS BEAT / HILLIARD HARPER : City Apparently Prefers Non-Artists for Arts Panel

The makeup of the city’s new Commission for Arts and Culture will play a crucial role in the way it executes its two chief responsibilities: developing a municipal cultural arts program and annually distributing about $5 million of city money to the arts.

However, based on the nominations submitted by City Council members to Mayor Maureen O’Connor, it appears that artists will play a small role on this commission. Out of 19 nominations made by council members, only four are artists. Wes Pratt named choreographer Danny Scarborough, and Pratt and Gloria McColl nominated actress Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson. McColl and Abbe Wolfsheimer nominated flutist Alice Silverberg, and Bob Filner nominated artist Mario Acevedo Torero.

Three other nominees with close arts ties are David Thompson, a longtime theater presenter; Talli Larrick, fine arts coordinator for the San Diego Unified School District; and Matthew Strauss, an art collector.

The remaining 12 nominees--such as arts patron and UC San Diego co-founder Roger Revelle, San Carlos community leader Barbara Massey and cultural arts task force member Darlene Shiley--indicate that the balance of the commission will be weighted in favor of community leaders--well-meaning arts supporters who, nevertheless, have a secondhand relationship with the arts.

That will affect the nature of the commission.

“I think it’s good to have a healthy mix . . . but I would be happy if a majority on the group are professional acting artists,” said Gerald Hirshberg, chief of design at Nissan International and chairman of the Centre City Development Corp.’s arts advisory board. “If not, I fail to see how we’re going to have the kind of imaginative, arts-oriented philosophy if the board is peopled (primarily) by non-artists. Different kinds of things come out of a board comprised of lawyers and businessmen and professional people.”

Indeed, the city of Seattle tries to avoid a board comprised primarily of arts patrons. By statute, at least half its Arts Commission members must be artists, arts administrators or arts educators.

Jack Duggan, a spokesman for the Seattle Arts Commission, said the current membership thereincludes two architects, a musician, a music teacher, the managing director of the Seattle Repertory Theatre, two dancers and two visual artists. Among the non-artists are two attorneys, an art collector, an education administrator and a physician who is also chairman of the board of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra.

“We’re always over that 50% mark,” Duggan said, of the artist-dominated Seattle commission. “It’s important for us as a staff to have that kind of input. It’s a big city. There’s so much going on out there, it’s impossible to see it all. This way we have people who are conversant, who are current.”

San Diego should be so lucky. But it appears this city will go with clout rather than creativity on its arts commission. O’Connor has named two of her seven nominees: attorney Milton Fredman and McDonald’s heiress Linda Smith. The City Council will vote on all nominees when O’Connor returns in July from the Soviet Union, where she is seeking talent for her proposed monthlong Soviet arts festival in 1990.

Rather than establishing a cultural arts program, it appears the commission’s first order of business will be to plan an arts festival.

This month the city of San Diego slotted $60,000 of the nearly $5 million it will distribute to the arts to the San Diego Community Foundation for emerging arts groups. The foundation manages a growing endowment (currently $30 million) for charitable purposes.

More than a year ago, it received a matching grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to fund emerging arts groups. At the end of four years, if successful, the program will create a $600,000 endowment solely for such groups. And, in the process, the foundation will distribute $75,000 annually to emerging groups.

So far, the city is the first donor to back this important program. The foundation has already been given a one-year extension and still needs $90,000 to make this year’s match.

“It’s critical for the community to have a base of support for emerging arts groups,” said Helen Monroe, executive director of the foundation. “The (Old) Globe (Theatre) was an emerging organization once. The La Jolla Playhouse, the San Diego Repertory Theatre and the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre were emerging organizations once. Emerging organizations are the key to the arts community’s growth.”

The problem, she said, is that funding them is a little bit riskier. A developing company may go belly-up. Or, like the Rep, it may gain national recognition. There are plenty of groups that could fit into the emerging category. Four out of five dance groups, for instance.