Arts Organizations

The Summer Olympics are over, but L.A. arts organizations could be in a sprinter's stance Sept. 23, when the starter's gun will sound in a competition for $935,000 in federal arts-grant money. The winners will stamp an Angeleno imprint on next year's annual International Book Fair in Guadalajara. The fair, billed as the world's largest event for Spanish-language publishers, invites a country, state or region to create and program a special pavilion as guest of honor. L.A. is the first municipality ever chosen.

James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, was named president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, taking over the world's wealthiest arts organization, with a $5.3-billion endowment and $250-million annual budget, but one that has suffered management turnover in recent years. Cuno, 60, has led the Art Institute through its most ambitious expansion in its 130-year history. He will take over the vast Getty Trust, which consists not just of the museum — its most public face — but a grant-making foundation, a conservation institute and a scholarly institute.

Seemingly out of the blue and just two days after Christmas, the newly active Leo Freedman Foundation bestowed nearly $1 million on 12 arts groups and programs in its first round of grants. What a way to end a rather dismal year, dollar-wise, and begin a new one. Indeed, local arts institutions are bound to have their eyes trained on the Anaheim-based foundation in 1992 and beyond: With assets exceeding $12 million, its trustees say they will be doling out at least $500,000 in grants annually.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa doesn't agree with a proposal floated by the city's chief fiscal officer calling for eliminating government support for the arts as a way to address a $404-million budget shortfall, a top aide said Monday. Miguel Santana, the city administrative officer, suggested saving $10.7 million by doing away with the Department of Cultural Affairs as one of three options for the arts included in a wide-ranging, 219-page memo he sent to the mayor and City Council leaders on Friday with his ideas for closing the funding gap. The least drastic measure Santana offered calls for $1.3 million in savings while preserving all of the department's current functions, which include making grants to arts organizations and individual artists, partially funding community festivals, and running a network of cultural landmarks and neighborhood arts centers and theaters.

Compliments of the city, 17 local arts organizations recently were given an economic boost. The Newport Beach City Arts Commission awarded more than $34,000 to the groups in an effort to promote the arts in the city. "These awards provide an incentive for many small performing and visual arts groups to contribute to cultural growth in the community," said Karin Schnell, Newport Beach Arts and Cultural Services coordinator.

A Ventura County endowment foundation will receive more than $34,000 from a state agency to help finance local art projects. The Ventura County Community Foundation, which receives money from private and public donors and redistributes them to other organizations, accepted the grant from the California Arts Council last month.

Orange County arts officials whose organizations use the Irvine Barclay Theatre regularly praise it in terms of ambience, acoustics and general friendliness to presenters, performers and audiences alike. * Erich A. Vollmer, executive director of the Orange County Philharmonic Society: "It is an absolutely first-rate venue, particularly for chamber music. Some of the internationally known groups we've presented there share that opinion.

Arts organizations and labor union representatives meeting in Washington may be close to resolving differences over controversial proposed visa rules threatening to complicate the process of bringing foreign performers to the United States.

Los Angeles artists John Outterbridge, Caren Carson, John Valadez, Liz Young and Tom Knechtel have been selected to each receive $15,000 unrestricted fellowships from the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts.

The National Endowment for the Arts will award $14.5 million in federal matching grants to arts organizations for 1993--including $1.5 million earmarked for seven Southern California arts institutions. The seven grantees are Los Angeles' Music Center Opera Assn.

It's simple: Follow the tax money Re "Stimulus for L.A. mostly sits unspent," Dec. 26 The failure to effectively use hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus money is Exhibit A in the case that as much as possible, government should function on a local level, relying on federal powers for limited areas. All tax money originates locally. But we send it to Washington, let them remove their vig and return the rest with restrictions on how it can be used. To install left-turn signals, we tax local citizens, send the money to Washington, have the city submit a proposal to get some of the money back, and have a federal committee grant it back to us and another federal agency oversee it, creating several extra steps to put a signal at Sunset and Wilcox.

With some city arts centers on the verge of shutting their doors, the Los Angeles City Council agreed Friday to shift money earmarked for public art projects to keep classes and other cultural programs running over the next two years. City leaders have authorized as many as 4,000 job cuts to address a $485-million budget shortfall next year. Arts supporters pleaded with the council to intervene after the first pink slips were issued to employees at the William Grant Still Arts Center in West Adams, the Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center in Watts and the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro.

The Los Angeles City Council scrounged for money Wednesday to help keep the city's network of 25 neighborhood arts centers above water amid the current municipal budget deluge. Among the most promising ideas: changing current law to tap into a fund of $5 million created by the city's charging itself a 1% arts fee for every government-funded capital construction project. Rules call for that money to be used to buy artworks for public spaces and to pay for new cultural facilities.

The lead paragraph of The Times' Feb. 7 article, "A shifting canvas in Pasadena," states that the "city has carried out a tradition of giving back in the form of art." As the founder and artistic director of the defunct Pasadena Shakespeare Company, which performed 37 critically acclaimed productions over nine seasons, my experience is not consistent with the oft-repeated claim that Pasadena is supportive of the arts (at least in any meaningful way). Indeed, it comes as no surprise to me that the artistic canvas to which The Times refers is shifting -- or in imminent danger of sinking beneath the waves.

Struggling to cope with a severe budget crisis, the Los Angeles City Council will consider a proposal Wednesday that would strip the municipal arts agency of the guaranteed funding it has enjoyed since 1989. The idea of cutting off a direct pipeline between hotel tax receipts and arts funding drew an immediate outcry from arts supporters, reminiscent of one in 2004 that stopped then-Mayor James K. Hahn from eliminating the Department of Cultural Affairs and putting arts operations under the Recreation and Parks Department instead.

The Getty Foundation will award $3.1 million in grants to 26 arts institutions for their roles in "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980," a bonanza of exhibitions coming to Southern California in fall 2011. The grants nearly double the foundation's financial commitment to the exhibitions. Most of the grants, to be announced today at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood, will support art shows and catalogs initiated by an earlier, $3.6-million round of Getty research and planning grants.

The City Council delivered on its promise of a new friendliness toward the arts this week by approving a total of $35,000 to a pair of financially troubled local arts organizations. On a 3-2 vote Tuesday night, the council agreed to contribute $20,000 to the Grove Shakespeare Festival and $15,000 to the Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove, each of which is facing a budgetary shortfall well in excess of $100,000 for this year.

OSP. The acronym stands for the Organization Support Program, a study group formed by the California Arts Council, the state agency which awards more than $15 million in grants annually to artists and arts organizations. Both Organization Support Program and study group are suspicious labels--the kind that conjure up images of lots of paper changing hands and changing offices over an extended period of time, at great expense to the state and with no particular effect.

At the annual Golden Globe Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. gives away gold-and-marble statuettes. At its annual summer luncheon Tuesday, the group gave away $1.2 million in grants to arts organizations nationwide. Warren Beatty, Rose McGowan, Eva Longoria Parker and Dylan McDermott were among the stars who joined association President Philip Berk at the Beverly Hills Hotel to present grants to 29 film schools and nonprofit groups. The private, untelevised luncheon drew scads of celebrities and industry execs, who schmoozed over Champagne and fine food.

More than 600 arts organizations around the country can each look forward to receiving a big check in the coming weeks thanks to the latest round of grants announced Tuesday by the National Endowment for the Arts. The grants represent part of the $50 million in federal aid to the NEA from President Obama's economic stimulus package. The new grants, which total $29.78 million, will be dispersed among 633 arts groups. Arts groups in California will reap a total of $4.45 million from the latest round of grants.