An Endowment Windfall for L.A. Artists

Some of Los Angeles’ struggling artists and fledgling arts groups may now get a small cut of the city’s new multimillion-dollar arts endowment.

Under the new guidelines adopted by the City Council this week, up to $800,000 from the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts may become available to individuals and less established arts organizations that, for the most part, have not be able to raise substantial amounts of money on their own. Artists and city officials hope the new program will support new artistic activity in the city.

“We will be the first city in California to fund individual artists,” said Al Nodal, general manager of the Cultural Affairs Department, which oversees the endowment. “We’re the only city in America that’s really moving forward on this.”

The new guidelines, adopted by the City Council on Tuesday, will be used to give out grants for projects scheduled to begin after Jan. 1 and to be completed before June 30. Individual artists and designers can apply for $1,000 to $15,000, and newer arts groups can apply for a one-time-only grant of $1,500 to $2,500. Neither will be required to match the funds given them by the city. According to Nodal, the grants will be available to artists who live throughout Los Angeles County as long as their actual art work is done in the city.

Nodal called the program the city’s “first real attempt at being very attentive to what we’ve heard (from local artists and others who’ve met to discuss their needs).”

Although artists and arts groups are generally supportive of the council’s new program, some have expressed concerns that the new money may not go where it is most needed.

“The endowment is supposedly meant to take care of the underrepresented and underrecognized (artists in Los Angeles),” said Leo Guerra, co-director of the Los Angeles Arts Congress, a group comprised of about 300 members of the local arts community. “But there’s no fund-raising priority set for these underrepresented groups, and there are no guarantees in (the new guidelines) that those groups that have been getting the funding all along won’t be the same ones to keep on getting it.”

Guerra, a poet, said he feared that those who have previously gone through the grant process would be the most qualified to receive additional grants, since they are already familiar with the applications and are among those who are assured of being notified of the new guidelines.

But overall, said Susan Franklin Tanner, a theater producer and co-director of the congress, “The city has done a pretty great job in coming up with a (funding) plan . . . and the priorities are in line with (the desires of) the L.A. Arts Congress.”

The endowment, an arts funding package approved by the city council in November, 1988, is now operating on $5.8 million from the city’s general fund. Another $15 million or so is expected to be raised from fees on municipal and private developments.

Under the new guidelines, artists can use the grants to cover their own fees or production costs for creating publicly accessible artworks, or artworks for nonprofit institutions that can not pay them. The money can be spent on projects such as artists-in-residence programs, public performances, murals and design projects.

“We’re pleased with the part that provides funding for individual artists,” said Orlando Bonner, an actor and secretary/treasurer of the arts congress. “The bulk of the artists that are interested in the endowment are individual artists that have been on their own anyway, and (in the past) have had to join an organization to get funding. I think (the individual artist grants) will stimulate a lot of new artistic activity in the city.”

Members of the arts congress, which was organized to ensure that local artists had a voice in the endowment’s funding process, said they are also pleased with the new “entry-level” grants for fledgling groups (defined as groups that have been in existence for between one and three years), which can be used to help with “start-up” costs such as administrative, managerial and planning projects. Co-director Guerra pointed out, however, that because of the tremendous amount of work required, the $2,500 limit may not be enough to get some groups started.

In addition to non-matching grants for individual artists and fledgling groups, the guidelines also provide for matching grants of $1,500 to $25,000 for arts organizations. These grants would be awarded to commission new works, to provide youth programs (such as public projects for young artists and artist-in-residence programs), to provide for special needs (such as artists with AIDS, homeless or disabled artists, and immigrant artists), to publish original art or criticism, to provide for historic and cultural preservation, and to fund short-term programming.

Arts congress co-director Franklin Tanner said the new guidelines fail to provide for one group, those that have been in existence for longer than three years (and are thus ineligible for the entry-level grants) but “still have a very shaky financial ground and will not be able to come up with the matching funds.”

“I’m afraid that there will be organizations that will fall in the cracks,” she said.

Added Bonner: “We are vehemently opposed to matching funds. (These type of grants) might be fine for someone like an L.A.T.C. (Los Angeles Theatre Centre) or Mark Taper Forum, but for a small group, raising matching funds is the same as having to raise their own funds.”

Another main concern, Franklin Tanner said, is the short time-period before the Oct. 2 application deadline.

“That’s a very short time to put together a grant application,” she said. “First-time grant writers will have a real disadvantage. For those who have not been funded in the past, it’s a whole new area.”