New Blood a Must for : O.C. Arts, Tomlinson Says

A “leadership gap” threatens the future of the county’s art scene, making it vital for arts groups to seek out “tomorrow’s leaders,” the president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center said Wednesday.

The president, Tom Tomlinson, suggested that one way the center itself might attract such leaders is to “broaden (the scope of) who we reach and represent” by becoming less “market-driven” and more active “in the business of creating new product.”

His remarks indicate a significant turnaround by center leadership. Tomlinson’s predecessor, Thomas R. Kendrick, often said the center could not afford to engage in any commercially risky ventures.

Speaking on a panel about the economic and cultural aspects of local arts, Tomlinson told a luncheon audience of about 150 business people that founding board members of local arts organizations “have been wanting to move on.”

But “we don’t see people like you knocking on our doors to get involved,” he told the members of the Orange County Forum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan informational group that regularly sponsors panels and speakers.

“There’s ample opportunity to become involved,” Tomlinson said, “and not just philanthropically but as volunteers.”

“I don’t want to make it sound as if (the center) in particular has (board members) insisting that they want to do something else,” Tomlinson said during a subsequent interview. “Our people are very committed and have been for a long time and are very concerned about the institution.

“But through natural evolution, people gain other interests over time, and we want to make sure that as that happens, we have other members in the community becoming involved.”

The difficulty with attracting new supporters, particularly among younger adults, stems from ongoing cutbacks in public school arts education, Tomlinson said.

“Potential new leaders younger than I am,” the 44-year-old said, “had significantly less arts in education programs in their youth and don’t make the instant connections with the arts that people my age or older might because of early training.”

He said that early this year, the center formed a six-member task force to begin dealing with that issue.

“We need to broaden (the scope of) who we reach and represent,” he told the luncheon audience “. . . and we need to be out in the community perhaps more than we have been in the past. Whether that means an additional facility or a change in programming, I’m not sure.” (Center officials long have discussed the eventual construction of a second theater, but no date has been set and groundbreaking is unlikely to begin in this decade).

Tomlinson said the center--which reaps 80% of its income from earned revenue, primarily ticket sales--is “perhaps more market-driven than we should be. We should be helping in the business of creating new product.” He cited the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a leader in commissioning major new works, which gets only 67% of its income from earned revenue versus donations.

The only works the center commissioned during Kendrick’s tenure were a short fanfare by composer William Kraft marking the center’s opening in 1986 and a co-production with the La Jolla Playhouse in 1990 of a revival of a musical, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Under Tomlinson, the center has commissioned Ballet Pacifica of Laguna Beach to create a youth ballet to be part of the center’s 1995-96 outreach program.

On the topic of private donations, Tomlinson sited a 1994 study in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a national trade publication. Orange County did not appear on its list of 50 major metropolitan areas ranked according to per capita private charitable contributions.

“We have a long way to go to come up to the national standard,” Tomlinson said.

Tomlinson’s very presence on the panel could be seen as something of a departure, as Kendrick did not attend such events. But Tomlinson played that down. “It’s just a (difference) in how we function,” he said.

*

Joining him on the panel were Peter C. Keller, executive director of the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, and Bonnie Brittain Hall, executive director of Arts Orange County, a newly formed countywide arts council.

All three extolled the virtues of governmental arts funding. Hall said National Endowment for the Arts and California Arts Council grants to groups in the county totaled $935,000 last year.

The center is privately funded but, Tomlinson acknowledged, “if organizations that perform in the center did not have government money, their programs would change significantly, I’m sure.”

The panelists said they are not concerned that government arts grant administrators will become arbiters of taste or that government bureaucracy will take control of the arts.

NEA grant recipients are chosen by “peer panels” of artists, not untrained administrators, said Tomlinson, who has served on such panels. “There isn’t a bureaucracy out there. It’s people in the field, in the trenches making decisions.”