Arts Administrators: The Cost of Calling the Tunes

Thomas R. Kendrick, president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and his wife, Judith O’Dea Morr, the center’s general manager, are among the highest-paid administrators of multipurpose arts facilities in the nation, with combined compensation and benefits of more than $300,000.

Individually as well as collectively, Kendrick and Morr’s paychecks and other compensations rank just behind those of the two highest-paid administrators at New York’s Lincoln Center and ahead of those at the Music Center of Los Angeles County and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, according to a survey by the Times’ Orange County Edition.

This is despite the fact that of the seven facilities surveyed, the Orange County center has the fewest stages and ranks near the bottom of the list in the number of paid, ticketed performances per season and the number of full-time employees.

Francis L. Dale, who served until June of 1988 as president of the Los Angeles Music Center, was listed as earning $175,000 a year with no benefits package, according to the most recent information filed with the California Registry of Charitable Trusts in Sacramento. Esther Wachtell, who served as executive vice president until she succeeded Dale, was listed at $75,000 a year. She has been replaced in that position by James Black, whose salary is not yet available.

Kendrick and Morr say they are fairly compensated, and center board members say that at the amount Kendrick and Morr are paid, they are a bargain.

Information filed with the Internal Revenue Service and the California Registry of Charitable Trusts, required for all tax-exempt organizations, indicates that Kendrick was paid $184,246 in 1988 and received a benefits package worth an additional $6,543, primarily for an annuity plan. Morr, who came to Orange County with Kendrick from Washington, where both worked as top administrators at the Kennedy Center for nearly a decade, is the second-highest-paid staff member at the Orange County center, reporting earnings of $108,678 and a benefits package of $3,749 for 1988.

At the centers surveyed, none of the job descriptions for the top two administrative slots precisely mirrored Kendrick and Morr’s. In principle, all chief executives are responsible for everything that goes on in their institutions. But according to Kendrick, this is almost literally true for himself and Morr in Orange County.

Unlike most of the other executives surveyed, Kendrick said, the couple is responsible for day-to-day programming, administration, coordination with such regional groups as the Pacific Symphony and Opera Pacific, finance and budget controls, construction planning and supervision, marketing and media relations. (This despite their staff that includes a director of marketing, a director of development and a controller.)

Also on the couple’s list of responsibilities is fund raising, which now means presiding over a greatly expanded development department and an ambitious capital campaign to construct new theaters.

At Lincoln Center, although the operating budget is more than twice that of the Orange County center, president Nathan Leventhal is primarily responsible for day-to-day operations of the six-theater complex. Leventhal earned $205,865 and received a benefits package of $20,785 in 1988 for a total of $226,650, according to documents filed with the State of New York. Financing is handled by Donald Warner, one of the center’s six vice presidents and the second-highest paid administrator, who earned $108,765 and received benefits worth $14,750, totaling $123,515.

Ralph Davidson, chairman of the Kennedy Center, oversees programming, fund-raising and administration. He is paid $125,000 per year and provided with a car, according to Laura Longley, the center’s director of public affairs. He succeeded Roger Stevens, who took no salary. Much of the actual programming is done by Marta Istomin, the center’s artistic director, whose 1988 salary has not yet been filed with the IRS.

The two administrators who come closest to Kendrick and Morr in the range of day-to-day responsibilities are Lawrence J. Wilker and Art Falco at Playhouse Square Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Their combined compensation for 1988 was $213,230--$89,986 less than Kendrick and Morr’s combined total.

But the size of the compensation packages is misleading, Kendrick and Morr said in separate interviews, because the figures encompass such things as pro-rated moving and housing compensation and “significant” out-of-pocket contributions to disability, health and retirement plans to maintain the generous level of coverage they were provided at the Kennedy Center (but which is no longer provided to administrators there).

“I think we’re fairly paid,” Kendrick said.

Morr said that she, too, is “quite comfortable with my level of compensation.”

“We didn’t move here for pay,” but for the challenge of building and shaping a new institution, Kendrick added. He also said he prefers to be judged “on the basis of the jobs we were brought here to do, and the jobs we have done.”

On that basis, Center board members agree that the couple’s compensation is not out of line.

By many standards used to judge such facilities, center officials and board members said, the center is a success: it has reached what they consider to be “full bookings” three years ahead of schedule (center officials say that virtually every day not taken up by one of 266 events this year is needed for load-in/load-out time); more than 640,000 people attended performances in 1988, compared to 607,000 in 1987; paid attendance for events programmed by Kendrick and Morr (as opposed to booked into the center by others) was 85%, 20 points above the national average; and paid attendance for all performances since the center’s opening has been 80%, also well above the national average.

“At almost any price, they’re a bargain,” agreed Roger Johnson, head of Western Digital Co. of Irvine and the Center’s vice chairman for the corporate campaign. “They came to a brand-new area with a brand-new facility. I don’t think anything speaks better than the end result,” in terms of paid attendance and the quality of the presentations.

Center chairman Henry Segerstrom, whose fortune was based in part on agriculture, said that comparing Kendrick and Morr’s compensation to those of other arts center heads is like comparing “apples to apricots.” For one thing, lower salaries in Cleveland may go a lot further than higher ones in Orange County.

Differences are especially pronounced, Segerstrom said, between a facility such as the Orange County center, which depends entirely on private funding, and those that receive a large segment of financial support from government.

In order to judge the cost effectiveness of Kendrick and Morr’s compensation, “you have to look at the total executive payroll,” Johnson agreed. “We are not terribly heavy on staff at the center.”

However, in addition to Kendrick and Morr, the Orange County center reported that 27 other employees earned more than $30,000 in 1988. The Los Angeles Music Center listed only 11 in that pay range. The corresponding figures at other centers ranged from 2 at the Wortham Center in Houston to 106 at Lincoln Center.

It is difficult to find an exact comparison for the $73-million Orange County center, which has one stage--Segerstrom Hall--and 65 full-time employees. The current annual budget is $15.4 million. Apart from its tax-exempt status, the center has no governmental support. There were 266 paid, ticketed performances in 1988 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

A county facility with three halls, the Los Angeles Music Center has 400 employees and operates on $75 million a year. There were 976 paid, ticketed performances at the Music Center during the 1987-88 season.

Kendrick and Morr also are, by far, the highest-paid arts administrators in Orange County, according to information provided to the IRS. David Emmes and Martin Benson, the founders and artistic directors of the South Coast Repertory Theatre, earn $65,000 each; Louis Spisto, executive director of the Pacific Symphony, earns $67,000, and Kevin Consey of Newport Harbor Art Museum earns $85,000.