Having already trimmed the fat to maintain a balanced budget in the current economic crisis, cultural nonprofits are getting dangerously close to the bone.
“In terms of arts organizations, most have shrunk 12 to 20 percent,” said Benjamin Krevolin, president of the Dutchess County Arts Council. “Most of that has been furloughs, staff cuts, benefit cuts. But it”™s begun to affect programming.”
The recent demise of The Hudson River Arts Festival ”“ which over the years enticed thousands to the Poughkeepsie waterfront ”“ was headline news in the local newspaper there. Krevolin said that programs for at-risk youth at the city”™s arts-themed Mill Street Loft are also gone, due to a lack of grants.
It”™s a scenario that has also played out in Westchester and Fairfield County, Conn.
Relying on ”˜friends”™
Last year, the Bruce Museum in Greenwich slashed almost $1 million from its budget ”“ forgoing exhibits of international loans that had been among the museum”™s hallmarks and that enriched the town”™s coffers; postponing projects; reducing staff 15 percent; and cutting pay for the remaining employees, although those salaries have since been restored.
Bruce Executive Director and CEO Peter C. Sutton describes the decision to carve $238,000 from the exhibit budget as a “very wrenching” one that has forced the museum to become even more ingenious and draw on the considerable collections of its neighbors for shows on Abraham Lincoln”™s image and Andy Warhol flowers as well as upcoming ones on the chameleonic photographer/performer Cindy Sherman and the classically erotic Vollard Suite of Picasso prints.
Says Sutton: “We”™re relying on our friends.”
At the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, which took an approximately $87,000 cut in its contract with Westchester County, weekend and senior-citizen programming has been reduced 20 percent while two major shows on landscape photographer Susan Wides and American symbolist painter Elihu Vedder have been postponed till next year. The budget ax has also claimed a collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that Hudson River Museum Director Michael Botwinick said “would”™ve been an extraordinary opportunity for us.”
He doesn”™t see the picture improving any time soon: “Even if the economy is reborn, nonprofits are going to lag way behind. If the stock market goes up 500 points, people aren”™t going to wake up and say, ”˜OK, let me write Michael a check.”™”
Krevolin agreed: “Nonprofits have been hit on every level. They”™ve been hit from the public/government sector and from the private sector, in terms of individual, corporate and foundation giving.”
”˜Starving and fat”™
Particularly searing for institutions like the Bruce Museum ”“ which could once count on major banks and investment houses to underwrite international blockbusters ”“ has been the evaporation of corporate dollars.
“We”™ve already seen a cautious tiptoeing back,” Sutton said. “But it”™s more a matter of perception.”
The banks and investment companies ”“ villains in the recession ”“ don”™t want to appear to be spending money seemingly frivolously on the arts. So to the extent they give, they do so to more overtly worthy nonprofits that support social causes, or they restrict gifts to a museum”™s educational programming.
The problem with restricted gifts ”“ which Krevolin said have been a big trend in corporate and foundation giving in the last seven years ”“ is that they don”™t necessarily address an institution”™s needs.
“An organization may have $20,000, but it”™s hamstrung,” he added. “It”™s both starving and fat at the same time.”
Compounding the problem is government uncertainty, Kerevolin said: New York state is still without a budget. And that has a trickle-down effect. The Hudson River Museum doesn”™t know how much money it will be getting from Yonkers, Botwinick said, because the city doesn”™t have a budget. And the city doesn”™t have a budget, because the state doesn”™t have one.
“It”™s making it hard for us to plan around the problem,” he said.
Even when an institution hasn”™t relied heavily on government support ”“ as is the case of the Bruce Museum and Connecticut ”“ cuts can still sting. Financial support for the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism has substantially diminished, and thus, so has the “important gesture” they make to the museum, Sutton says.
Riding it out
Cultural nonprofits have not helped themselves by failing to shore up staff and infrastructure during the economic bounce that followed the jolt of 9/11, Krevolin said. But Botwinick, for one, said the Hudson River Museum was able to strengthen its infrastructure in the middle of the last decade, though he added it”™s been a challenge since 2007.
Staff cutbacks are an even thornier issue.
“That”™s the recourse of last resort,” Sutton says. “But the places that ignore (cutting staff) do a greater disservice to employment in the long run.”
Amid the gloom, Krevolin sees a radiant opportunity for nonprofits to rethink and restructure. It may be that there will be fewer organizations offering more resources in the future, he said.
Certainly, it is a moment for the creative to become more so: Along with its two successful fundraisers, the Renaissance Ball and the Icon Awards, the Bruce Museum hopes to add a third this fall ”“ Dimensions in Dining, a dinner party with celebrities.
“We need to ride this out,” Botwinick said, “then be here in better times.”
And to take comfort in why they got into the arts in the first place. After a hard 12-hour day, Krevolin said, he was recently transported on the way home by the rapturous sounds of Mahler”™s Second Symphony on the local classical radio station.
Or, in the words of Sutton: “Art is a luxury. But it”™s a necessity of life, too.”
