Where's a bailout for the arts?

While government bailouts are being offered or considered for financial institutions, the auto industry, homeowners and so many other needy and worthy sectors, one group is quickly and rather quietly falling apart: our nation's arts organizations. In the last few months, dozens of opera companies, theater companies, dance organizations, museums and symphonies have either ceased operating or suffered major cash crises.

As someone who has made a career out of fixing troubled organizations, I know that the problems faced by arts groups are often related to poor management and governance. I also know that the difficulty in improving productivity in the arts is central to our financial challenges: It takes as much time to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony today as it did when the piece was composed, and the same number of actors are required for "Hamlet" as when Shakespeare wrote it. Unlike other industries, the arts cannot cover the cost of inflation by improving worker productivity.

This is why subsidies -- in the form of government grants or private contributions -- have long been required to help arts organizations balance their budgets. Well-managed groups have typically been able to find the money required to operate if they create interesting programs, market them aggressively and build strong donor bases.

But these times are different.

Many organizations that spent years building large endowments to provide more stable sources of support have seen them decimated. A number of our most loyal donors have watched their own investment portfolios be depleted and cannot provide their traditional funding. Our audience members cannot buy as many tickets as they have in the past.

This perfect storm has already weakened our nation's arts ecology. Over the last several months, the Baltimore Opera Company, the Santa Clarita Symphony, Opera Pacific, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and others have called it quits or come close to it. There probably will be a torrent of additional closures, cancellations and crises in the coming months.

We are losing the entertainment and inspiration we need more than ever during this terribly scary time. As we try to rebuild America's image abroad, we are losing our most potent goodwill ambassadors. As we reshape our economy, we are losing the organizations that teach our children to think creatively. And as we celebrate the diversity of our nation, we are losing the voices that have traditionally helped change society's thinking.