Art Czar’s Job Is a Balancing Act : San Diego’s 1st Arts Director Gets High Marks From All Sides

Victoria Hamilton has been this city’s unofficial arts czar for three years now, working in what one museum director calls the “Machiavellian” city bureaucracy.

As the first executive director of the fledgling Commission for Arts and Culture, she can be given much of the credit for getting the panel started and implementing a new system for funding the arts.

It has been a struggle. She was starting from scratch, attempting to establish the respectability of the commission (an advisory panel of 15 movers and shakers appointed by the mayor) and support small community arts and cultural organizations that had traditionally been ignored by the city.

Since the commission’s first year, 40 organizations, ranging from the Chinese Community Center to KPBS, have received funding from the city for the first time, while others, particularly museums, have gradually found it tougher to get city funds.

“My understanding is that they created the commission to open up the process,” Hamilton said.

Technically, the board was established in 1988 to give the city recommendations on how to spend its money on the arts and to oversee the allocation of funds. Previously, that role had been handled primarily by the private, nonprofit COMBO (Combined Arts and Education Council of San Diego County) as well as (in the later years) the Public Arts Advisory Board, a city-appointed group that, on a much smaller scale, was a predecessor to the commission.

“At the time, there was a feeling that the city needed to bring the (arts funding) function in-house and have a mechanism closer to home,” said Sal Giametta, assistant to Mayor Maureen O’Connor.

The general consensus was that COMBO tended to favor larger, well-established organizations. The new commission’s mandate was to find a way to spread the wealth.

Hamilton, who had worked with similar organizations in Santa Barbara and Tacoma, Wash., was given that task.

In a sense, Hamilton was placed in the middle, not only between the arts community and the city, but between the commission and the city, too. She works for the city, but answers to the commission, whose 15 members are independent, strong-willed individuals.

“She really has a balancing act,” said staff member Gail Goldman, the commission’s public arts director. “She has very powerful and important bodies to whom she is accountable, and that includes the City Council, the city manager and the commission.”

The commission’s main responsibility is to allocate more than $5 million in transient occupancy tax funds the city has designated for the arts. Because the money comes from the so-called “hotel tax,” some city administrators and members of the City Council believe the money should only go toward events that fill hotel rooms.

Hamilton and the commission have gone in a different direction, recognizing and recommending funding for many organizations that were almost ignored by the city.

The commission grouped organizations into three levels based on the size of their budgets. Level I groups have operational budgets above $2 million; Level II between $100,000 and $2 million; and Level III budgets of less than $100,000. Criteria were established for funding requests, including such factors as “administrative excellence,” community support, education programs and community impact.

The old system tended to favor the traditional bastions of San Diego culture, tourist attractions like Balboa Park museums and the Old Globe Theatre. In the first year of the new system, 23 groups received funding from the city for the first time, including groups such as Teye Sa Thiosanne (a West African drumming group) and Pascat (a Filipino dance group.)

“Small organizations and nonwhite organizations that have never been funded before are coming in and getting consistent funding,” said Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson, an actress, arts administrator and member of the commission.

Not surprisingly, many of the groups that traditionally benefited from the old system are not entirely happy with the new direction. They believe the bulk of the hotel taxes should go to groups that promote tourism. Visitors come to San Diego to enjoy the museums and established theaters, not community groups, they say.

“There is definitely more emphasis on performing arts and, in my view, that is not consistent with the development of tourism,” said John Roche, executive director of the International Aerospace Hall of Fame. “People don’t come to San Diego to look at alternative theater and dance groups. Those are community events.”

The commission is attempting to wean some of the older organizations from a reliance on city funds. While nobody is being cut off, the commission ultimately hopes to have each Level I organization get no more than 9% of its budget from city funds. Some are now receiving from 10% to 20% of their budgets from the city.

In the last year alone, the Aerospace Hall of Fame saw its annual funding from the city cut to $18,000 from $38,000. Meanwhile, other organizations, such as the La Jolla Playhouse and the San Diego Repertory Theater are considered under-funded because only a small percentage of their budgets come from city funds.

“It’s been frustrating” that the system hasn’t developed more quickly, said Alan Levey, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse. But he prefers the commission’s way of doing things to the days before the commission, when, he said, politics played a major role.

At least, “there is a process and the process is known,” Levey said.

Hamilton said the commission is still working toward bringing equity and consistency to the system. There haven’t been major problems, she said, primarily because the appropriation from the city has continued to rise ($150,000 in the last year to make the current budget $5.2 million).

“It is important for the health of the organizations to be able to count on (city funds) year to year, to know they will be getting a certain amount from the city,” she said.

It is testimony to Hamilton’s performance in her job that even those who are not overjoyed with the commission still praise her.

Roche, of the Aerospace Museum, is not happy with the new system, but he has nothing but good things to say about Hamilton: “I admire her. She’s in a very difficult position. She’s a very gracious lady, very cordial.”

Hamilton likes to say that it is her job to look at the big picture, to develop all aspects of the San Diego cultural scene. And that means developing programs at all levels of the community, from Sledgehammer Theater and the African-American Museum of Fine Arts to La Jolla Playhouse and the San Diego Museum of Art, not just those that are on the usual tourist routes.

“Providing for the quality of life for San Diego citizens also has to do with providing stability to our large institutions and finding ways to allow the small and mid-size organizations to grow, and to nurture groups and artists,” Hamilton said.

The commission has sponsored a variety of workshops, including seminars on how to write grant proposals, that has helped many of the smaller arts groups become more adept at working within the system.

“Organizations are becoming better grant writers and better marketers of their products,” said Thompson, who noted that Hamilton is a stickler for enforcing state and federal equal opportunity employment guidelines.

The workshops and other events have helped spark an unprecedented atmosphere of cooperation among normally combative groups.

The Old Globe Theatre entered into a cooperative agreement with the avant-garde Sledgehammer Theater, while the African-American Museum of Fine Arts has worked with both the San Diego Repertory Theater and Sushi Performance Gallery. The list goes on.

“Programs have to respond to the needs of the public,” Hamilton said. “A healthy, vibrant cultural city has things going on all over the place.”

Getting others--particularly political and business leaders--to look at the same big picture is one of Hamilton’s biggest challenges. That’s why Hamilton often sounds like a financial analyst when she talks about the arts.

“We need consistent education on how (the arts) benefit the city economically, how it affects the way a city feels about itself,” said Hamilton, who has also had an impact outside the city.

Before her arrival, there was “a lot of confusion” over San Diego’s role in sponsoring arts and over its attitude toward the arts in general, said Richard Huff, the director of local programs for the National Endowment for the Arts. He appointed Hamilton to the board of directors of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, which staged its annual convention in San Diego last year.

“She has brought a great deal of recognition to San Diego,” besides giving the city “credibility” in the national arts scene, which “it didn’t really have before,” Huff said.

Gaining national credibility was no coincidence, considering that Hamilton’s immediate goals included developing cultural brochures and working more closely with the local tourism industry to develop San Diego’s identity as a cultural destination point.

When people talk about Hamilton, “diplomatic” is the word most used to describe her. In a recent interview, conducted in her 10th-story office across from City Hall, she gave a sampling of these skills.

Her office is tastefully but sparingly decorated, with noticeably little art on the wall, except for some inoffensive prints and a piece of pottery on her credenza.

Asked if she was surprised by any aspect of the job, the 39-year-old administrator declined to comment, clearly unwilling to ruffle any feathers.

However, later in the interview she remembered something of her initial impressions about San Diego that she did want to say on the record: “One of the things that did surprise me was the lack of recognition of how rich and important the arts and cultural institutions are to the city.”

Given her position as the point person for sweeping changes, it would be easy to understand if Hamilton had become one of the most hated women in San Diego. Yet, it is almost impossible to find someone willing to publicly attack her performance.

“She’s been diplomatic and able to hear all sides,” said Stephen Brezzo of the San Diego Museum of Art. “She’s always been reasonable and rational and fair-minded.”

If Hamilton is criticized, it is usually for being too much of a bureaucrat. Her critics, who tend not to want to talk on the record, sometimes question whether she is a true advocate of the arts, or whether she is simply another government official, facilitating the views of the City Council.

However, the former dancer and choreographer (she focused on modern dance, mainly in college) bristles at any suggestion that her commitment to the arts is tempered in any way by her position. Besides the administrative positions with arts commissions in Santa Barbara and Tacoma, her resume includes a three-year stint as an administrator for an arts and history museum in Bellingham, Wash. Arts are her life, Hamilton said.

“I haven’t been anything else other than an advocate. This is the third public arts agency I’ve worked with. That’s on purpose. I think by working in local municipal government I can effect change.”

Her husband, Paul Hobson, is a visual artist who often works with local designers and architects. He was a studio assistant for 10 years for Herbert Byer, and he’s currently working as consultant on a Young at Art project, a musical playground proposed for Angier Elementary School.

In the interview, she was asked where she would stand if a controversy erupted over a piece of public art--not an unlikely occurrence, considering the city’s history. Committees in 10 different San Diego neighborhoods are identifying sites and developing plans for projects under the guidelines of a Public Arts Master Plan adopted by the commission.

“The process has been designed to allow for controversial, lively debate at the front end,” she said.

The commission is only an advisory group, and, as executive director, Hamilton is supposed to follow commission and city policy, not make it. However, sources in and around the commission acknowledge that Hamilton often plays a leadership role, helping to point both the commission and the City Council in the right direction.

It speaks volumes about her success in the role that in these budget-slashing days, no serious cuts have been made in the hotel-tax money allocated to the arts since the commission was formed.

Even last year, when then-City Manager John Lockwood’s initial budget proposal called for a complete discontinuation of arts funding, Hamilton managed to maintain her composure and successfully lobby to maintain funding.

“Victoria was very effective at rallying the community to educate the council on why the arts are important and why they deserve funding,” said Giametta, of the mayor’s office.

In the commission’s infancy, the City Council seemed wary of giving blanket approval to its recommendations.

In 1988, the council initially went against the commission and voted not to fund several groups, including the progressive Installation Gallery. The council eventually reworked its position after heavy lobbying from commission members.

This year, the council approved all the commission’s funding recommendations.

Better than some, Hamilton realizes that arts funding is always a tenuous situation.

“We’re taking the first steps,” Hamilton said. “Every time I feel like I’m frustrated, I remember how old we are. I recognize it’s going to take time.”

Hamilton recognizes that patience is a must, especially in light of the fact that the commission was designed to operate with six full-time staff members but has been stuck at four since its inception. And this year, the council cut a $500,000 special-projects fund, which was used to help sponsor community activities.

“I’ve given myself five years,” she said. Then, her diplomatic side taking over, she reconsidered. “Maybe seven years.”