The Line Between High Art and Commerce: Blurry and Getting Blurrier

Was 2000 the year the arts sold out?

Artistic director Todd Haimes gleefully sold the naming rights for his Roundabout Theater Company’s new home to American Airlines, arousing envy and scorn. In San Diego, the Old Globe Theatre--long known for staging Broadway tryouts--took money from the Fox movie studio to stage a musical adaptation of “The Full Monty.”

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art stocked furniture by Charles and Ray Eames in its gift shop--the very designs on display in its galleries, and pieces made by Herman Miller, the manufacturer that sponsored the exhibition.

And then there was Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Museum, engaging in blatant biz-speak when he talked about “branding” the Guggenheim name and opening worldwide branches--including two on the grounds of, and paid for by, a Las Vegas casino.

Y2K could hardly be considered the first time that art cozied up to commerce--but it did seem to mark the first time they jumped into bed together with quite so much abandon, or amid quite so many questions.

Had the relationship already gotten too intimate? Or was it just getting started?

“Most of the people who are producing culture believe that there is an artistic life that is separate from the commercial life. This year we’ve had those lines blurred a little too much,” said Selma Holo, director of the museum studies program at USC.

Ethical and financial questions come up every week in Holo’s graduate student seminar, and they are issues she can’t ignore as she’s teaching the next generation of curators. “It’s a difficult moment because, on some level, not-for-profits are being asked to be very entrepreneurial,” she said. “At the same time, there’s a growing awareness that if this is pushed too far, then the issue of cultural and artistic integrity can be compromised.”

Holo’s arena--museums--is one where the mix of art and commerce has been particularly volatile in the last year. It actually started in 1999 with “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection.” That show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art got national attention first for its edgy content--including elephant dung attached to a painting of the Madonna. While New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to yank the museum’s city funding, another controversy raged in the art world. Advertising executive Charles Saatchi--who stood to benefit from increased exposure to his collection that would raise its value--happened to be the exhibition’s biggest financial backer.

Some critics felt the Brooklyn Museum had, in essence, rented out its galleries to lend Saatchi legitimacy and line his pockets. Others, including W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago professor and editor of the journal Critical Inquiry, thought the museum was simply disingenuous in initially downplaying Saatchi’s financial involvement. “They should have said, ‘We have a perfect right to go with an exciting collector and show his work.’ ”

The conflicts--or confluence--of interests was even murkier this year at LACMA. The show “Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention” was co-organized by the Library of Congress and the Vitra Museum in Germany. Vitra, however, a company that sells Eames Furniture and endows that museum, also sponsored the show. Further complicating matters, Herman Miller Inc., which makes and sells Eames furniture in the U.S., provided additional money to LACMA and other venues in North America.

Andrea Rich, director and president of LACMA, said she believed then, and believes now, that there was nothing improper about the sponsorship money. Herman Miller Inc. had no influence over the content of the exhibition, she said.

Now, the whiff of quid pro quo has descended on the Guggenheim’s major fall show, a retrospective devoted to fashion designer Giorgio Armani. Armani, it turns out, is a major donor to the New York museum, reported to have pledged $15 million a few months after the show was planned. Museum director Krens calls the situation “a non-story” because Armani is not specifically sponsoring the show of his designs.

USC’s Holo points out that Krens’ defense would be stronger if the exhibition didn’t seem so craven. It lacks any critical stance, she said, and called it a disgrace, echoing Times art critic Christopher Knight, among others. Even Mitchell--who argues that museums have never been above the commercial fray--said it seemed “really dubious for an art museum.”

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If a few museums are carrying on affairs with for-profit enterprises, nonprofit theater companies seem ready to draw up prenuptial agreements.

The American Airlines Theater--named in return for $8.5 million given to New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company over 10 years--was the most grandiose commercial gesture in 2000. But during the last decade or more, it has become common for commercial producers to try out their next big shows on nonprofit stages, including the Roundabout, La Jolla Playhouse, Mark Taper Forum and others. In return, the nonprofit companies get “enhancement money”--hundreds of thousands of dollars--that helps them produce a higher-quality show. The nonprofit might also get a portion of the proceeds if the play is a commercial success, as did the Old Globe for “The Full Monty,” currently on Broadway.

In business lingo, that’s a real win-win, which was the consensus at Act II, the Second American Congress of Theatre in June, a meeting of minds from commercial and nonprofit theaters.

The focus of the three-day conference was relations between for-profits and nonprofits, said Ben Cameron, executive director of Theatre Communications Group, which co-hosted the event, in Cambridge, Mass., with the League of American Theaters and Producers. “The agreement was certainly that we have common interests and that our fates are intertwined,” he said.

Even that marked a sea change from the first Congress of Theatre in 1974. At that meeting, for-profit and nonprofit sectors fought so rancorously--Broadway producer Rocco Landesman recalled the phrase “capitalist pig theater” being used--that another meeting wasn’t scheduled for 26 years.

This time around, the sides were remarkably chummy, by all reports. The talk wasn’t about who was selling the soul of theater, but about how co-production deals should be structured. At a public session, nonprofit artistic directors talked about what compromises they would make to get a play on a New York commercial stage. After first assuming that it was a work they believed in, they hypothetically agreed--among other things--that they would let a teenage pop singer a la Britney Spears take over the lead role, written for a preteen, from the actress who made it a hit in the nonprofit realm.

Robert Brustein, artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre and drama critic for the New Republic, was in a shrinking minority of those unhappy with the trends.

Sure, these deals seem like sensible business arrangements, he said. “But these [nonprofit] theaters aren’t businesses.” Focusing on developing a money-making hit takes companies away from their mission: to present classics and nurture new work and talent. “When you let the profit-making enterprise--corporate or Broadway or whoever--begin to dictate what you program and how it’s presented, then you’re in the brothel, as Jean Gene^t would say.”

It’s not as bad as all that, says Cameron.

“I was in the USSR in the early ‘90s. They were putting cars in the [theater] lobby. And they were inserting corporate references into text,” Cameron said. “In ‘Three Sisters,’ they would say, ‘If we could only go to Moscow--and if only United Airlines would take us there.’ ”

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Of course, a handful of high-profile cases doesn’t signal a cultural sellout. Only the largest 70 or so nonprofit theaters--out of 1,100 nationwide--are likely to ever collaborate with Broadway producers, according to Cameron. And generally speaking, arts organizations earn about half their income; of the unearned half, only 10% comes from corporations or foundations, the rest from individual donors.

So why does it seem that every season brochure is laced with corporate logos?

“There’s an increasing commercialism in all aspects of American life,” said Gigi Bradford, executive director of the Center for Arts and Culture, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “Just as companies have improved their abilities to market themselves, so have they improved their ability to market their philanthropy and upped the ante on their philanthropic marketing requirements.”

In other words, corporate donors want more bang for their buck.

Rich has witnessed this during her five years at LACMA.

“Corporations are no longer willing to just give the money, go away and be quiet,” she said. They argue over details like the size of a logo and its placement. “And top billing. Does it go above the line, below the line? Will they allow another logo on this if someone else gave?”

Any discussion of money and the arts eventually comes around to the National Endowment for the Arts, and how the United States funds--and doesn’t fund--the arts. Even though the NEA allocations have increased in recent years, they are still not at pre-Culture War levels. State and local arts funding is up as well, but there is a lingering impression that government sources can’t be relied upon.

Add to that the rapid pace of economic change. As businesses merge and split, relocate and reorganize, corporate giving goes by the wayside. At LACMA, corporate donations are down since 1996, and now make up only 6% of its exhibition budget.

What grants are available tend to be program-specific--money for a particular exhibit or outreach program, not for general operating expenses. As Cameron put it: “It’s hard to find money to turn the lights on.” At the same time, nonprofits have grown in size and ambition, with a commensurate growth in their expenses.

So, what’s an ambitious--or financially struggling--nonprofit to do? Turn down $8.5 million over 10 years?

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Most arts administrators believe they can have commercial relationships without compromise.

A partnership between a nonprofit and a corporation isn’t cause for concern, says LACMA’s Rich, so long as it’s the right deal.

“If we had a corporate sponsor and they came in and said, ‘We want you to put up this painting and that painting, and our CEO doesn’t like naked poses, so take that down,’ then it would be a serious, real, factual problem.”

She uses a litmus test she developed while executive vice chancellor at UCLA. When making a decision that might be open to criticism, she would call colleagues into her office and tell them: “I want you to pretend you’re the House Un-American Activities Committee. I want you to grill me and see how well I can defend this.” If she couldn’t defend it, and feel good about it, she wouldn’t sign the deal.

Rich concedes that museums have to learn to be more transparent in their dealings--disclosure dissipates charges of conflict of interest. In the case of the Eames exhibition, Rich wrote a column in the magazine for museum members about corporate sponsorship and curatorial integrity.

There are also laws that govern what institutions must do to keep their nonprofit status. And institutions have to set guidelines for accepting donations. This year, the American Assn. of Museums adopted standards governing special exhibitions. The guidelines call for the museums to maintain complete curatorial control and financial transparency. Still, it’s easy to see that no set of rules can fit every circumstance, and except for violations of nonprofit law, the guidelines are just that, guides not absolutes. In the end, arts institutions that take corporate money and then feature that corporation in some way can only say to the public, “Trust us.”

“There are judgments that have to be made,” said Frank Hodsoll, an arts consultant who was chairman of the NEA from 1981 to 1989. “Most of the better people in the not-for-profit arts recognize that they have a mission which is very different than for-profit arts. Not-for-profits have to first pursue an art form that is consistent with their talent and dream and vision. And second, they have to survive.

“That’s different [from for-profits], but it doesn’t mean you don’t have interrelationships that can be exciting and powerful. And it also doesn’t mean that on occasion that some not-for-profits won’t have to be careful that they don’t become adjuncts to the industry.”

Nonprofits have shifted the way they think of themselves, explained Beth Bradley Fox, executive director of ARTS Inc., a Los Angeles arts service organization that connects artists with resources in the private sector. For 30 years, the arts had a handout mentality, she said. Now they’re getting a handshake mentality.

She sees this trend as empowering because arts organizations finally realize they have something of value to offer the business world. There are appropriate deals to be made. But toes may get stepped on, she concedes.

“We’re just getting used to this new kind of dance,” Bradley Fox said. “The real question is, who’s leading?”

And does the dance floor have any boundaries?