Opera, La Jolla Playhouse Win Total of $650,000

The National Endowment for the Arts on Thursday announced awards worth a total of $650,000 to two San Diego institutions.

San Diego Opera received a $400,000 award and the La Jolla Playhouse was awarded $250,000. The pair were among 11 California organizations named to split a total of $3.4 million in federal grants.

Both local institutions said they will use their grants to improve their financial stability. A spokeswoman for the opera said that, in addition to going toward establishment of a permanent cash reserve, the grant will be used to raise the organization’s funding level over the next three years.

The playhouse will use its award to reduce its debt, create a cash reserve and help build its endowment, according to a spokesman.

Sixty-eight organizations in 27 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands were awarded $19.2 million in grants in the final phase of the NEA’s Challenge I and Challenge II programs. The size of the awards ranged from $100,000 to $1 million, which went to Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center.

Outgoing NEA chairman Frank Hodsoll announced the grants at a Thursday-morning news conference at the Otis Parsons Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles.

“Our challenge grants are a small contribution,” he told officials from each California institution to receive an award. “It is the people here today and your colleagues nationwide who have the day-to-day task of making sure the best cultural institutions in the country are strong. Today we see that that activity in California is alive and well.”

The terms of the NEA grants required that the federal funds be matched 3-to-1 with new or increased funds over a three-year period. In other words, both the opera and the playhouse must match each dollar of the federal money with $3 of increased funding over three years.

When matched, the opera’s $400,000 grant will total $1.6 million. The playhouse will use its $250,000 award to raise another $750,000 over three years.

Brenda Hughes, a publicist for the opera, said its $400,000 grant was the largest awarded nationwide to any opera and the only award to a California opera during the current grant cycle.

Playhouse managing director Alan Levey said the theater will use part of its award to reduce the $703,000 debt it has accrued over the past three years.

Levey attributed the debt to “budget overages” beginning in 1986 and predicted that, with the help of the challenge grant, the playhouse will “complete our deficit reduction in two to three years.”

The other California institutions named to receive grants, most for purposes of financial stabilization, are:

- Public-television station KCET Channel 28, Los Angeles, $800,000.

- Otis Parsons Institute of Parsons School of Design, $500,000, for the school’s $12-million campus expansion project to include a new building with studios, an auditorium and a library.

- Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, $300,000.

- Huntington Library, art collections and botanical gardens, San Marino, $100,000.

- American Cinematheque, Hollywood, $150,000.

- Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Society, $100,000.

- American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, $250,000.

- Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley, $325,000.

- California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, $250,000.