Whether to Be Public or Private Is Question for New Arts Council

To be or not to be . . . private--that was the key question Tuesday when about 50 local arts officials brainstormed over how to run a proposed countywide arts support organization meant to replace the defunct Orange County Arts Alliance.

Over the past several months, an ad hoc committee of about 12 administrators from the county’s larger arts institutions came up with the idea for an Orange County Arts Council. Committee members Martin Weil, former managing director of Opera Pacific, and Bonnie Brittain Hall, director of development for South Coast Repertory Theatre, unveiled initial guidelines for the council at an open meeting in Costa Mesa.

“Our purpose is simply to accomplish things none of us can do by ourselves,” Hall said.

The highest priorities listed in the guidelines were advocacy (or lobbying), arts education and technical service. Guidelines were based largely on a state-funded study made to determine the cause of former alliance’s demise in December, 1988.

No details on how such an organization might function have been agreed upon. Also still undecided is whether the council should be a county agency and supported primarily (or at least in part) by the county, or a private, nonprofit organization that would seek both private and governmental funding. The ad hoc committee estimated an initial council budget of about $200,000 would be needed for the group to be effective. By comparison, the 14-year-old Orange County Arts Alliance operated during its final year on a budget of $15,000 provided through a California Arts Council grant.

Russell Barrios, executive assistant to County Supervisor Don R. Roth, said that the supervisors have discussed support of the proposed council. “Sure,” he said, “it is always a possibility” that the council could become a county agency. “Is funding available? Sure, and we’ve discussed options.”

Nevertheless, supervisors in recent months have been philosophically supportive but economically pessimistic about the prospect of significant county aid for the arts.

As Barrios cautioned, county dollars are used for a wide range of pressing needs. “I’ve got people who are homeless or who have no prenatal care. Then there’s the arts. You have to access how the public views” requests for arts funding.

Barrios, a former alliance board member, also said, “If the county is involved, then the county has a share of control” over who and what gets funded.

Catherine M. Michaels, director of the Children’s Museum at La Habra, made a vociferous plea for county support, calling Barrios’ comment about funding competition “a line of rhetoric we’ve been hearing from supervisors for years.”

Erich Vollmer, executive director of the Orange County Philharmonic Society, called for the county to take on the council: “I can’t imagine this county not having such an agency, given our size and the amount of arts organizations here.”

There were those at Tuesday’s meeting however, who preferred independence from the county.

“It’s easier to do fund raising in Orange County as a private, nonprofit organization, than as a government body,” said Carolyn Charkey, past vice chairman of the board of directors of the Master Chorale.

More open planning meetings will be held in the next few months throughout the county, Weil said.