City Council Gives Go-Ahead for Planning of Soviet Arts Festival in S.D.

Moving on a proposal that Mayor Maureen O’Connor says will put San Diego in the “big league” of culture, the City Council Tuesday unanimously approved the mayor’s plan for a Soviet arts festival in 1989 and gave her newly appointed Commission for Arts and Culture the go-ahead to get started on it.

“We’re now about to enter the big league as it relates to the arts,” O’Connor told the council. “We should support our arts community and bring something to San Diego.”

While the decision affirmed the council’s support for the festival, it failed to address what may become the key underlying questions: How much will it cost and who will pay for it?

The council approved the plan after only a brief discussion and statements from about 20 proponents and about 15 opponents.

Faberge Eggs

The vote gave the council’s support to the mayor’s agreement with the Soviet Union to collaborate on an event that will bring to San Diego Soviet art, including rare Faberge eggs, icons and marionettes from the Georgian state fine arts museum in Tbilisi and a joint production of the Modest Mussorgsky opera “Borus Godounov” by American and Soviet performers.

Other possible attractions at the event--scheduled for fall of 1989--will be jazz and symphony performances by Soviet musicians, a photographic exhibit and folk dancers.

O’Connor made the non-binding agreement with Soviet Deputy Minister of Culture Vladislav Kazenin July 11 during a three-week visit to the Soviet Union in search of artists to bring to the festival. Her visit drew criticism from several council members and the public because it took her away from budget deliberations and discussions of growth management plans for the city.

Based on the cost of a similar festival held in Boston in March, O’Connor spokesman Paul Downey estimated that the festival will cost $3 million to $4 million. He concedes, however, that the calculation is imprecise at best. Steven Brezzo, director of the San Diego Museum of Art, has said that the festival could cost as much as $7 million.

But O’Connor said that the festival would ultimately bring money into the city by increasing tourism.

“We Will Make Money’

“Every major city in this country has an arts festival. We may have to spend some money to make some,” she said, “but we will make money. We cannot stop growing and maturing as a city because we have problems on the expense side of the ledger.”

The arts commission will meet later this month to develop a more precise plan for the festival and a better estimate of its cost, Downey said.

Current funding for the project includes a $1-million donation from McDonald’s restaurant chain owner Joan Kroc and an unspecified portion of the 2% increase in hotel tax revenue approved by the San Diego City Council in June. The tax rose 1% Aug. 1, and will increase another 1% when the city’s new Convention Center opens late next year.

A committee headed by City Manager John Lockwood is scheduled to make a recommendation on how much of that money should be devoted to the festival. Each 1% increase in the tax on hotel rooms brings the city about $3 million.

If the city is unable to generate enough money to cover the estimated costs of the festival as it now stands, the arts committee will adjust the scope of the festival to fit the budget, Downey said.

While all of the council members expressed support for the festival, most expressed concerns about the funding. Judy McCarty said she did not want public funds such as the hotel tax to be used to pay for the festival.

“We do not have city funds to pay for a lot of needs that we already have,” McCarty said. “It is my hope to get as much of it funded as privately as possible.”

Wolfsheimer Concern

Abbe Wolfsheimer supported the use of the hotel tax for funding but said she hoped that the festival would not direct the bulk of its funding to Soviet artists but to local artists participating in the festival.

“My issue is whether the funds are going to subsidize Russians or our local arts and local artists,” she said.

O’Connor said she and others planning for the festival would seek private and corporate sponsorship. She also said, though, that she would consider asking the council to use the hotel tax as a source of funds. “It is a tourist tax. It is to use to promote tourism.”

Support for the festival came mostly from representatives of local arts organizations, including the Mingei International Museum of World Folk Art, the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts, the San Diego Repertory Theater, the Timken Art Gallery and the Museum of Photographic Arts.

Support Expressed

La Jolla artist Chris Canole handed out a flyer in support of the festival before the meeting. It had “Exchange Arts--Not Arms” emblazoned across the top and contained quotes such as Marcel Proust’s: “Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another’s view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon.”

“Let’s give the artists a chance to express what the Soviet people are all about,” Canole told the council.

Other supporters of the festival said that it would improve perceptions of San Diego’s cultural life and thus make San Diego a more appealing place for major artists to visit.

Opponents, mostly private citizens, expressed fears that the festival was, as Elizabeth Oskins of El Cajon put it, a “Trojan horse” that would mask the aggression that the Soviet Union has demonstrated within its own borders and in countries such as Afghanistan, and that it would provide the Soviets with a convenient way to smuggle spies into San Diego.

“By having a Soviet arts festival in San Diego, we give credibility to an evil empire,” said Jim Rousseau of Coronado, a representative of the Larry MacDonald Crusade to Stop Financing Communism.

O’Connor said that plans for the festival have been coordinated with the State Department to avoid security problems and that the festival supports President Reagan’s recent attempts to improve relations with the Soviet Union.

“It is not a step that is without thought,” she said. “We are moving in a direction that our administration in Washington supports.”

Times staff writer Leonard Bernstein contributed to this story.