Small Trusts Quietly Give to the Arts : Shy foundations often give more cash directly because they don’t stage exhibits

The roster of heavy hitters in private arts support on the Westside is impressive, with such well-known family trusts as the Ahmanson Foundation, the Lannan Foundation and the Broad Family Foundation, not to mention the J. Paul Getty Trust--a bona fide member of the billionaire’s club.

But besides these famous deep-pockets charities are obscure family outfits that quietly--very quietly--share some of the burden of supplying assistance on a smaller level to cultural and artistic causes. Just don’t ask them about it.

“We don’t want publicity of any kind,” said Whitelight Foundation trustee Betty Freeman, who oversees the Beverly Hills-based foundation that provides grants to music, performing arts and fine arts organizations.

Attorney Max Fink, who handles the even smaller Gladys Turk Foundation in West Los Angeles, was equally publicity shy. “I don’t want to comment. We’re too small for the attention.”

Forget sculpture, glasswork or bulky installations--judging by the volume of requests received by these foundations, the hardest thing for artists to create is funding. Because of the huge demand for assistance and the obvious limits of these smaller family trusts--most of which are handled by a single attorney or trustee--these organizations insist on a low profile.

“Everybody’s struggling to get the same $5,000,” said artist Jacki Apple, director of the Cactus Foundation, a nonprofit artists’ production company. “It’s very competitive.”

The irony is that the more modest family-based arts charities can end up distributing more cash directly to artists than the more celebrated arts supporters, who spend millions to collect, maintain and house the personal collections that they lend to museums and other public institutions.

“We get deluged with grant applications; everybody does,” said Henry Hopkins, director of the Frederick R. Weisman Arts Foundation, created in 1982 by Weisman, the Mid-Atlantic Toyota CEO. “But we’re not really a granting agency.”

Although the Weisman Arts Foundation does distribute money to arts groups, Weisman’s primary objective is to improve the public’s understanding of modern art by loaning his extensive personal collection of contemporary masterpieces around the country and overseas, and by setting up workshops and lecture series.

Hopkins said $30,000 is given annually by the Weisman Arts Foundation to such groups as Beyond Baroque and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibits, as well as other smaller, lesser-known organizations.

Other large family charities on the Westside are also major collectors who spend most of their assets on acquiring, loaning and housing art.

The Eli Broad Family Foundation was established to enhance the public’s awareness and appreciation of art of the last quarter of the 20th Century. The 5-year-old, Santa Monica-based organization loans artworks to museums and university galleries from financier Broad’s private collection, which includes works by artists such as Eric Fischl and Cindy Sherman. The art is on display, by appointment only, in a refurbished telephone switching building just blocks from the beach on Barnard Way.

The Broad Family Foundation provides about $80,000 in annual grants, which is less than half of the total yearly output of the much smaller Whitelight Foundation. Millionaires Broad and Weisman see their expenditures paying for the high cost of maintaining and housing their lending libraries of contemporary art, as well as providing their special educational programs.

The 29-year-old Lannan Foundation, based in the Marina Industrial Park just north of the Los Angeles International Airport, relocated to Los Angeles in 1986 from New York and Florida. The foundation is still in the process of completing a sprawling headquarters on McConnell Avenue that will include a public exhibition area and a private collection of contemporary works for lending purposes.

Like the mammoth J. Paul Getty Trust, the Lannan Foundation’s assets are large enough to provide millions in grants and it has the capacity to display and circulate its personal art collections. Lannan also has a major literary-awards program in which grants are as high as $35,000.

According to Arthur Greenberg, an attorney who has helped set up various family foundations, the difference in the functioning of a charity depends on whether it’s an operating or non-operating foundation.

“In the art world, an operating foundation disburses its expenditures by lending, giving or showing; the non-operating foundation just writes checks to other charities,” Greenberg said.

As a result, the small foundations can afford only to give money away.

“The smaller ones do not have sufficient resources to operate or assemble a facility,” said Greenberg. “They have no choice but to comply with the tax laws and give away the required portions of their income to survive.”

(Federal tax laws require that private foundations must make sure grants equal or exceed 5% of the foundation’s fair market value. The foundations must also pay the Internal Revenue Service an annual excise tax amounting to 1% to 2% of their income. These charities must also provide extensive documentation of their financial activities yearly to federal and state authorities.)

While museums and other public institutions would be lost without the likes of Weisman, Broad and other operating foundations, the smaller family charities also have an important impact, according to local arts groups.

“Compared to government money, it’s not a large percentage, but we certainly do rely on family foundations,” said Carlyn Clark, director of the Westside Arts Center, a nonprofit organization that teaches art to children and also offers a few classes for adults. “With family foundations, you’re getting more than a $1,000 check. They support you philosophically.”

The Westside Arts Center, which was ravaged by a fire last August, depends heavily on fund-raisers and charitable contributions because class fees cover only about 50% of its costs. And because the school teaches mostly local children from 2 to 12 years old, family charities take a special interest.

“You have a more personal connection to the smaller foundations,” said Clark, 32, who added that the arts center plans to increase its adult-education program when it moves to a new location at the Santa Monica Pier in June. “Instead of just dealing with a staff person, you’re dealing directly with the donor in a more close to the heart kind of way.”

Clark noted that family foundations are also well connected and can help get artists in touch with other funders. “They hook you into a larger segment of the art community.”

As necessary as a low profile is to small granting foundations, being visible is part of the function of operating a foundation that lends one’s personal art collection. Software wizard Peter Norton, who along with his wife, Eileen, founded the Peter Norton Family Foundation in 1988, has already made a name for himself in art circles with his enthusiastic support of such contemporary-art institutions as the Santa Monica Art Museum and the Santa Monica Arts Commission, among others.

A multimillionaire who once described himself as the nerd who got lucky, Norton said he had to educate himself in the ways of big-bucks philanthropy. He relies heavily on the advice of established members of the arts community, he said, but also trusts his own instincts as a collector of contemporary art.

“Charities can turn on a dime,” said Norton, 45. “It’s important to find knowledgeable people. I’ve learned to trust certain critics and museum directors that help me make decisions on what art to buy and support.”

A high-profile, large private foundation can also help the art community in ways other than simple charitable contributions. Last July, the Lannan Foundation, for example, awarded a grant to aid the Washington Projects for the Arts in presenting the provocative and controversial exhibition, “Robert Mapplethorpe, The Perfect Moment.” And Lannan’s new Literary Arts Program awarded a $35,000 Outstanding Literary Achievement award to Kay Boyle, a distinguished but sometimes controversial writer.

“We aren’t political. We aren’t out here to stir up the pot,” said 51-year-old J. Patrick Lannan Jr., whose father founded the organization. “But it’s consistent with a foundation that has a literary program to be supportive of First Amendment issues of free speech and free expression.”

Though these philanthropists are hardly mavericks, Apple of the Cactus Foundation said they may be inclined to choose the more provocative endeavor to fund. “Sometimes they prefer the sexier, more high-profile projects that have a little glamour to them,” Apple said.

This willingness to venture beyond conservative art circles and into controversy counters the fact that most large and small foundations were built by people who made their fortunes in traditional markets as financiers or industrialists.

Supporting the causes of artists as well as the art itself increases the importance of private art foundations, according to Lyn Kienholz, founder of California International Arts Foundation, an organization that promotes area artists in other countries and introduces foreign artists to Los Angeles.

Kienholz also notes the irony that these funds originate from business people such as Lannan and Broad in an area populated by rich denizens of show business who are part of the cultural landscape yet don’t usually support artists financially.

“The Westside is full of money from Hollywood, but they’re notoriously bad givers,” said Kienholz. “They don’t give back to the community.”

She suggested that the stingy habits of Tinseltown may just be a condition of having it all but not knowing what to do with it while “old” money has a tradition of funding arts. Or maybe it is a byproduct of Angeleno isolation.

“They always say that people give to people,” said Kienholz, noting the importance of family foundations. “I think it’s really true.”