Arts Groups Face the ‘Quiet Crisis’

While the financial dilemma facing Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions has unique elements, there is little doubt that LACE’s plight is a function of an emerging national dilemma characterized in a new national report as “a quiet crisis.”

The report is the work of the Foundation for Extension and Development of the American Professional Theatre, a private performing arts consulting group based in New York.

Nello McDaniel, one of the report’s authors, said a financial emergency is taking root in arts organizations whose budgets are between $750,000 and $1.5 million--a category that included LACE until recently.

“We see alarming numbers of 10- and 15-year-old theaters, dance companies, music groups and even presenting organizations in serious trouble,” the report noted. “These warning signs are not characteristics of organizational problems; they are symptoms of things that are very wrong throughout the country. Our assumptions about the role of the arts in the complex and contradictory scheme of American life have begun to unravel.”

McDaniel said the current recession may be perceived as the root cause of an organization’s problems, when, he said, indications nationally are that something else is happening, as well. “The recession will go away,” he said, “but this problem with arts organizations will not.”

There are only about three dozen artist-run multimedia spaces in the country similar to LACE in budget and program diversity. Within the community of LACE-like groups, there are other signs of trouble--but some bright spots too:

* Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, N.Y., which has been without a permanent director for nearly two years, must cut its $600,000 budget by perhaps 50% this year and fears the outbreak of a localized Buffalo version of the NEA controversy because of objections to the content of some of its art.

* Installation Gallery in San Diego faced local political criticism over the content of some work it sponsored and has been closed for more than 18 months. However, it recently hired a new director and plans to open within a month’s time, according to board member Randy Robbins.

* The Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans defies the trend. Louisiana’s oil-dependent economy broke into a recovery just as the economy in most of the rest of the country fell into the toilet. The Contemporary Art Center has just moved into a newly renovated building, owned by a board member. It will pay no rent for the next five years.

* New Langton Arts in San Francisco is also relatively unscathed. Director Renny Pritikin said that the arts recession that appears to be spreading over most of the country--with LACE as an early target--”hasn’t hit us yet.” “We had our best year ever last year from individual donors and we anticipate doing as well this year,” Pritikin said. “We are in the enviable position of not having to make up for corporate support because we never got any.”