Arts funding disparities show philanthropists’ priorities

A $30 million gift to the Metropolitan Opera – the Harlem School of the Arts closes for lack of 1/60th that amount. Pretty clear what big private funders value, and it’s not the American vernacular or immediately next generation of artists. There’s hardly anything jazzy about this post.

Ann Ziff’s gift of $30 million to the Met was announced in late March, and general manager Peter Gelb was grateful, telling the New York Times:

“The Met is sorely in need of cash . . .We really need it, and we need a lot more than that. . . it’s not enough to save us, [but] it’s a very timely and important gift.”

The Met has annual operating expenses of $300 million, and projects a $4 million deficit for 2010. Ms. Ziff, widow of William B. Ziff Jr., who the Times reports “assumed control of Ziff Davis Inc following the death of his father, the company’s co-founder” in 1953, and who himself died in 2006 — the year before his three sons made the Forbes 400 list as have net worth of approximately $3.5 billion — is a vice chairwoman of Lincoln Center and sits on the Carnegie Hall board. According to the Times, “Met productions typcally cost $2 million to $4 million each.” $30 million will cover, say, seven to 15 operas. But it’s only the start of the Met’s new $300 million fundraising drive — launched March 3 by African-American Met star Angela Brown, singing to 2400 Buffalo public school students in an effort to introduce them to opera and classical music. The Met has just completed its previous $170 million fundraising drive. Good luck, Met.

In comparison, the Harlem School of the Arts is currently closed, awaiting its board’s decision on whether to close for good. Founded in a church basement in 1964 by famed African-America concert singer Dorothy Maynor,

Dorothy Maynor.jpeg

the HSA has taught dance, music, theater and visual arts to 3,000 students annually. Its 2009-2010 budget was $3.6 million, cut $800,000 from 2008-2009, according to the New York Daily News. Its 28-week beginners classes cost $610, but many students received scholarships. $30 million, the equivalent of 49,180 class tuitions, would cover somewhat less than 10 years of the Harlem School of the Arts’ overall budget and serve countless thousands of students, their families and community.

HSA board chairman Christopher Paci is reported to have said,

As the economy turned and a number of our institutional donors cut back on their giving, our revenue from fund-raising shrank dramatically as our expenses remained the same.

No doubt the Metropolitan Opera had the same problem, as has every other cultural institution in America. That was only part of the trouble that led to the closing in December 2009 of another New York City arts establishment, the Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem, because its difficulties began with a 14-year-old student’s charge of sexual abuse by a choir counselor, which led to a law suit, the Choir losing its home and, oh yes, increased difficulty raising funds to pay off payroll taxes and penalties. An alumni choir survives, but isn’t training new students.

Further information on what arts philanthropists spend in order to take places on the boards of cultural institutions is available in this NYT article, headlined “Trustees Find Board Seats Are Still Luxury Items.” But luxury items are still in style. Ms. Ziff will be the next chairwoman of the Metropolitan Opera.

Obviously she has a passion for the Met, and everyone should be free to give their money wherever they want (though I reserve the right to despise people who leave fortunes to their pets). But doesn’t the Ziff case represent the giving gap between funding for the presentation of classical, mostl
y European artistry in America, and current, forward-looking training for Americans with limited arts education opportunities?

What if kids in Harlem still want to study music, dance, theater, visual art? When a neighborhood loses two independent educational arts institutions, does the likelihood of art coming from that neighborhood diminish? Does the quality of that neighborhood’s art, or life, suffer? Does the content of art that does emerge from the neighborhood change? Surely there are other, well-funded and well-run places those Harlem kids can go. Right? Painter Leroy Neiman donated $1 million in 2008 to open the Arts Horizon Leroy Neiman Arts Center — which was very nice of him. The Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts continues to teach music, dance and theater in East Harlem.

Maybe this seems like a non sequitor, but The Jazz Foundation of America has scheduled its annual “Great Night in Harlem” fundraiser for May 20, at the Apollo Theater. Tickets range from $55 to $1500. This supports the JFA’s Musicians Emergency Fund, which takes care of jazz and blues players mostly in their later lives, Who will fund schooling of Harlem’s jazz and blues musicians, or even its classical musicians, visual artists, dancers and actors of the future?

howardmandel.com
Subscribe by Email |
Subscribe by RSS |
Follow on Twitter
All JBJ posts

Share this:

Related