California Arts Panel Cuts 25% From SCR Grant

Despite strong protests by officials of South Coast Repertory, the California Arts Council voted Friday to slash its annual organizational grant to the theater company by nearly 25%, to $81,950.

A lack of “ethnic diversity” on the troupe’s board and staff was cited.

Bonnie Brittain Hall, SCR’s development director, decried the cut, which had been recommended by a council panel earlier in the week. She read the council a statement from David Emmes, the troupe’s producing artistic director.

“I’m sure we don’t need to remind the council that decisions such as this one severly impact an organization’s ability to plan and execute programming from year to year,” Hall read.

But the council accepted its panel’s recommendation, citing the need for SCR specifically, and other groups in general, to improve community outreach efforts. The action came during the council’s annual two-day meeting here, as it awarded a total of $321,950 to 15 Orange County groups. A total of $6.8 million was awarded to 598 groups statewide.

Under a new grant evaluation process for arts groups with budgets of $1 million or more, SCR’s ranking dropped from a 4 to a dual 4/3. The first number reflects artistic quality and managerial strength, while the second reflects degree of successful community outreach, particularly to under-served groups and minorities. SCR’s total rank was lowered by its outreach score.

Council outreach panelists (artists and arts administrators who rate grant applications) mentioned a lack of “ethnic diversity” at SCR--specifically, that too few minorities serve on the troupe’s board of directors and staff. Five of SCR’s 47 board members and three of its 60 staff members are minorities, Hall said.

The company’s “board and administrative personnel need to be further diversified,” the panelists wrote.

In his statement, Emmes asked, “Why, when our programs have been hailed by past panels as exemplary, would our ranking drop so considerably? Particularly in a year when our outreach activities continued to expand?”

Emmes said he was particularly surprised by the decrease because the funding levels of other organizations with similar rankings statewide had remained stable or had increased.

Grants are determined by a formula based on arts groups’ budgets as well as their artistic and managerial integrity, and it would be necessary to compare other groups’ budgets with SCR’s to determine any inequity, according to Tere Romo, council organizational grants program manager.

The number of minorities on SCR’s board and staff was indeed “low,” she said. However, she added, the troupe was not alone. Not a single large-budget organization in the state--in any discipline--received a 4 ranking for outreach, and all but two of the state’s 34 large-budget groups winning grants were told by panelists to “diversify (their) boards.”

One of the two groups not criticized was the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach.

The other 32 groups “are excellent organizations, they are just not models” for outreach, Romo said.

One council member, Consuelo Santos Killins of San Jose, went so far so to say she would no longer “vote to fund grant applications for large-budget groups unless board of directors makeup starts to change radically.”

Hall said that SCR officials believe that grant panelists may have made serious mistakes in evaluating the company’s application and that they plan to discuss the matter with council staff. If necessary, she said, a formal appeal will be filed.

SCR does not have strong grounds for appeal, Romo said.

Even with the cut of $24,450, SCR received the largest grant of any Orange County organization. Other top winners were the Newport Harbor Art Museum ($59,386), Opera Pacific ($41,880) and the Pacific Symphony ($39,319).

The county’s visual arts groups fared best in terms of increases over last year. A statewide discipline comparison should be ready next week, Romo said.

Other Orange County recipients and their grants, as reported earlier in the week, are:

The Orange County Philharmonic Society, $32,500; the Pacific Chorale, $14,000; the Laguna Art Museum, $14,000; the Grove Theatre Company, $11,200; the St. Joseph Ballet, $9,835; the Master Chorale of Orange County, $7,200; the Laguna Beach Chamber Music Society, $5,264; the South Coast Symphony, $2,000; Relampago del Cielo, $1,416; the Laguna Poets, $1,000; and Orange Coast College Community Services, $1,000.

The top grant recipients in the state included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which received $306,680; the San Francisco Symphony ($305,000), the San Francisco Opera ($302,250), the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco ($178,896) and the San Francisco Ballet ($120,658).

All the grants, given through the council’s Organizational Support Program, are for artistic and administrative projects or operational support and must be matched dollar for dollar.

Huntington Beach artist Mary-Linn Hughes won an Artists in Residence grant. (See accompanying story.)

It also was announced that arts council member Harvey Stearn, an Irvine-based developer, and B.W. (Whitey) Littlefield of Seal Beach have been reappointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to four-year terms.