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STATE OF THE STATE

Strange bedfellows: The
uneasy blend of politics and arts

by Gayle Worland

What has driven the NEA budget is politics — and some groups have made political hay out of it.

Along with the usual piles of mail that arrived in state legislators' offices on February 14, 1996, aides discovered thousands of heartfelt surprises: homemade valentines — cut, pasted, colored and doilied — pleading with the lawmakers: "Have A Heart, Support The Arts."

The cards - 7,000 in all - were a labor of love, produced by artists, performers, schoolchildren and arts groups and sent to 106 lawmakers' offices.

Rob Dwyer, executive director of the Quincy Society of Fine Arts, came up with the valentine idea as part of the Illinois Arts Alliance's grass-roots lobbying effort to increase public funding for the arts. "You should have seen the look on those legislators' faces" as they were presented with an armful of kiddesigned cards, says Dwyer. "Some of those valentines are just heart- stoppers."

Three months later, following Gov. Jim Edgar's recommendation, the Illinois General Assembly restored $1.2 million in arts funding in the 1997 state budget. The lesson? If you're asking lawmakers for a million or two, sometimes it pays to go straight to the heart.

Over the past few years, relations between the arts community and state and federal budget-writers have not been much of a love-fest. State general revenue funds for the Illinois Arts Council (IAC) fell from $6.7 million in fiscal 1993 to $5.5 million in fiscal 1996. Meanwhile, Congress took a hatchet to the National Endowment for the Arts budget, cutting NEA funds by 40 percent in '96. As a result, federal block funds to the IAC, which distributes arts grants across the state, dropped from $1.1 million in 1993 to about half that amount in 1996.

When state legislators pushed the Illinois Arts Council's fiscal '97 funding up to the $6.8 million mark last May, "it was a real vote of confidence for the 1,000 state organizations" that benefit from those dollars, says Alene Valkanas, executive director of the Chicago-based advocacy group Illinois Arts Alliance.

Support for the arts is increasing in state budgets across the United States. Yet in fiscal '96 Illinois ranked 40th among the states in per capita spending on the arts, according to a study by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. The Washington, D.C.- based coalition of state arts councils will release comparative 1997 figures in December, and Illinois may move up a notch — but nowhere near first-place Hawaii, which spends $5.16 per resident on the arts, compared with Illinois' 47 cents per resident.

Like their counterparts in Honolulu, Illinois arts groups are coping with huge cuts in federal dollars. Illinois is among the top five recipients of NEA funds; still, NEA direct grants to organizations in Illinois dropped to $1.97 million in 1996 from $4.67 million the previous year.

The NEA has become a political football in recent years, with opponents calling foul on works that quickly made it to the headlines: a performance by Ron Athey who, though HIV-positive, used needles to draw blood from his scalp on a Minneapolis stage, for example, or a photo by Andres Serrano depicting a crucifix submerged in urine.

Using these and a handful of other shock-art projects as an illustration of public funding gone wrong, U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other NEA critics threatened to abolish the agency altogether. In the end, Congress settled for a 40 percent cut in the NEA's current budget. The NEA staff shrunk and grants to states dropped 40 percent to 50 percent. Congress abolished all NEA grants to individuals, with three exceptions: creative writers, three "American Jazz Masters," and top folk artists, who can still qualify for a limited number of awards.

Prior to the 104th Congress, arts funding enjoyed bipartisan support. Arts advocates are waiting to see whether the past two years of anti-NEA sentiment will endure in the Republican-dominated House. During appropriations battles for fiscal 1996, House Republicans vowed to eliminate all NEA funding by fiscal 1998 — which begins next October. The Senate did not go along with the threat, but arts advocates worry the issue will surface again.

Tax reform is sure to take center stage in the new Congress, presenting arts advocates with yet another threat: the loss of breaks for charitable giving.

6 / December 1996 Illinois Issues

Only a day after the November 5 congressional elections, the NEA was analyzing the new House and Senate for arts friends and foes. "There seems to be a general sense that the upcoming Congress is going to be more moderate," says NEA spokesperson Cherie Simon. With the nationwide call to balance the federal budget, the Endowment's strategy is "to continue to educate" on Capitol Hill, and to make House freshmen aware of the positive impact NEA funding has in their home districts, says Simon.

The battle over federal arts funding is a fascinating illustration of two fundamentally different views of government's role. Oddly, these views are embodied by two representatives from neighboring districts in the northeast corner of Illinois. Chicago Democrat Sidney R. Yates is one of the best friends the arts have on Capitol Hill. Republican Philip M. Crane of Mount Pleasant is one of the worst foes.

Yates has been fighting against cuts to the NEA since the agency was severely threatened in 1981. Now 87, he has been such an outspoken advocate of government spending for music, theater, dance, opera and other performing arts that the Illinois Arts Alliance named its yearly arts advocacy award after him.

Crane, who represents a wealthy, solidly Republican slice of suburban Chicago, spent two years in Austria at the University of Vienna in the 1950s. But apparently his experiences in Mozart's adopted hometown didn't convince him of the potential glories of state-funded arts; in 1990 he first introduced an amendment to abolish the NEA and predicted the death of the agency by the end of the decade. In the view of many conservatives like Crane— as well as some liberals who say public funding leaves the arts open to censorship — government has no place paying people to make art.

But federal and state support for the arts '"are two different animals," says Kimber Craine, communications manager for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. "What drives the NEA budget and what drives state budgets are very separate things." Craine notes that in most states the level of arts funding is directly proportional to the state's overall fiscal health.

"What has been driving the NEA budget for the last couple of years is politics — and some groups have made political hay out of it," says Craine. With its tiny budget and focused mission, the NEA makes an easy target for federal lawmakers eager to make a point — or a headline. State legislators, on the other hand, "generally understand what that money is doing in their communities. They're closer to it. They see it working in programs in their districts' schools, through local arts organizations, or in arts festivals in their community."

That's the strategy of many arts supporters: Let the message hit 'em close to home — or in the pocketbook. "Research shows that the arts are a collection of small businesses," says Valkanas of the Illinois Arts Alliance, which has used data from Dunn & Bradstreet and Coopers & Lybrand to illustrate the economic impact of the not-for-profit arts industry in Illinois. Arts organizations in Illinois generate $699 million in total activity, are responsible for 16,800 full- and part- time jobs and put $5.8 million each year in state income tax coffers.

Some businesses, too, find that allying themselves with the arts has big PR payoffs. All the same, corporate and individual giving to the arts and humanities is stagnant, according to a 1994 report by the President 's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Increasingly, arts organizations have to compete with health and human services groups for scarce charitable dollars.

Odd as it may seem, might the arts community be the victim of its own success? "We think of it as a success problem," says Jennifer Neiman, spokesperson for Americans for the Arts in Washington, D.C. Since the NEA's inception in the mid-1960s, the number of arts groups has increased from 500 to nearly 4,000 — and, as a result, so has the competition for underwriting dollars.

In all of fiscal 1996, for example, the Illinois Arts Council received 1,903 grant applications for visual arts projects. Only 65 of those received funding. With an $8 million budget this year, the IAC funnels state and federal money to grantees in every state Senate district but one, says IAC Executive Director Lori Montana. Grants range from $100,000 to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for general operating support, to $1,950 for a ceramics artist-in-residence in a Schiller Park school, to $2,500 to help underwrite Meredosia RiverFest '97. To show that arts dollars are being put to use in their own backyard, every organization that receives an IAC grant must send a letter of acknowledgment to its state representative and senator.

With demand for arts funding outpacing supply, arts advocates are looking at new ways to team up with other government agencies. The trend is to develop projects that benefit both parties — such as an arts program cosponsored by a drug enforcement agency, which teaches kids art skills along with discipline, teamwork and self-respect.

The Illinois Arts Alliance plans to find more friends in the business community with a new CD Rom presentation that members will take to their local chambers of commerce, Rotary Clubs and the like.

In its recent report, "Working Together," the Alliance studied four Chicago neighborhoods and the suburb of Schaumburg to see how the arts are faring there. Each area has a vital arts community that supports itself mainly through earned income — sales profits, box office receipts and such.

But performers and visual artists alike know they need to forge more partnerships with business and community leaders in order to grow.

Valentine campaigns or not, arts supporters understand that, for affection and sustenance, they can't count on government alone.

GayIe Worland, a native of Rockford, is a free-lance writer in Washington, D. C.

Illinois Issues December 1996 / 7