California Arts Council

The director of the California Arts Council resigned Thursday, opening the way for a search by Gov. Pete Wilson for a new head for the state's key public arts agency. Robert H. Reid, the council's director for the last five years, resigned effective at the end of next week. Reed, who had made it known weeks ago that he did not expect to continue in his position under Wilson, said he would take a long vacation before pursuing new opportunities.

With California still ranked last nationally in per capita state spending on government grants to the arts, advocates hope an improving economy will bode well for the first legislative bid in four years to address its lowly status. An Assembly bill introduced by Adrin Nazarian (D-Sherman Oaks) would dedicate $75 million a year from the state's general fund for the California Arts Council - up from the current $1 million. The bill, AB 580, passed the Assembly's committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media by a 4-2 party-line vote Tuesday.

At the 11th hour Thursday, Gov. George Deukmejian appointed four new members to the California Arts Council, 24 hours before the first council meeting of the year today in San Francisco. The appointments favor minorities, as was expected by observers, as well as rural communities, which was considered less likely.

PHIILLIP WALKER Blues guitarist and singer Phillip Walker, 73, a blues guitarist and singer who backed such stars as Etta James and Lowell Fulson, died of heart failure Thursday in Palm Springs, said Marc Lipkin, publicity director for Alligator Records. Walker performed for more than 50 years, recording many solo albums and touring with zydeco legend Clifton Chenier for two years. Walker was born in Welsh, La., on Feb. 11, 1937, and grew up in Port Arthur, Texas.

The Bowers Museum--which received a $10,000 grant from the California Arts Council in 1988--will not receive a penny of the $49,601 it asked this year. The museum's ranking by the CAC fell from 3 to 2 on the council's 4-point scale, bringing it below the minimum level to qualify for funds. No other previously funded group was denied a grant by the council this year, and none of the 21 groups being considered by the council fell so far in the rankings. Bowers officials are not surprised.

Harold Keith, 80, former chairman of the California Arts Council. The Rochester, N.Y., native began his career as an actor and maintained a lifelong interest in theater. He was a founder of the Los Angeles County Music Center and served on the board of its Center Theatre Group, as well as on the board of Los Angeles Free Public Theater. Keith created and operated Belkeith Jewelers in the Broadway department stores, building his chain to 30 outlets.

Joanne C. Kozberg, a powerful figure on the Los Angeles arts scene, has been elected chairman of the California Arts Council. Kozberg, a Republican appointed to the council in 1986 by Gov. George Deukmejian, is vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Music Center, president of its Blue Ribbon support group, which donates $1.

The California Arts Council is struggling to swim against a tide of red ink washing across state arts agencies in the East, South and Midwest, but the Sacramento council may face a new loss of more than $1 million in funding this year. And while arts council officials and state arts leaders ended last week with more optimism than they began it, the state arts agency could still be driven into an even more drastic budget crisis.

Los Angeles County Board of Education member Barbara Pieper was appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson on Friday as director of the California Arts Council. Pieper, a former mayor of La Canada Flintridge who was defeated by Bill Hoge in a hotly contested race for an Assembly seat in 1992, will replace Joanne Kozberg, who was recently named secretary of state and consumer services.

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.

It's "wait till next year" -- again -- for a bill in the state legislature that would have provided a boost of about $30 million a year for the California Arts Council and raised the state's per-capita arts funding from last in the nation to the middle of the pack. The bill, titled the "Creative Industries and Community Economic Revitalization Act," was put on hold until 2010 on Thursday in the Assembly's Appropriations Committee. Two earlier bills to increase arts funding had died in committees since 2005.

Marilyn Ryan, a founder and the first mayor of Rancho Palos Verdes who later became a Republican assemblywoman and then was appointed director of the California Arts Council, died Sunday. She was 75. Ryan died of congestive heart failure at her home in Laguna Woods, her daughter Cynthia Brickner said. Ryan became active in politics in her 30s when she joined the League of Women Voters and served as president of its Palos Verdes Peninsula chapter for two years. She took a special interest in land-use issues and in the late 1960s grew increasingly concerned about what lay ahead for the unincorporated area of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Already cut to the bone with the lowest per-capita budget of any state arts agency, the California Arts Council was spared further incisions Thursday under the austere state spending plan submitted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Overall, the agency would get a nearly 7% boost, from about $5.3 million to $5.7 million. However, almost the entire proposed increase relies on the expected goodwill of arts-loving motorists who voluntarily pay extra for their license plates to help fund the arts council.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed Charmaine Jefferson, executive director of the California African American Museum in Exposition Park, to the California Arts Council, and has reappointed another L.A. resident, Eunice David (wife of lyricist Hal David), who first joined the arts council in 2004. A third appointee is Karen Skelton of Sacramento, a former political aide in the Clinton administration.

Agency chief: Michael Alexander is the new chairman of the California Arts Council. The longtime executive director of the Grand Performances free concert series in downtown L.A. has been on the arts council since 2004; he succeeds Marcy Friedman of Sacramento.

The California Arts Council -- already the lowest-funded state arts agency, per capita, in the nation -- will take a $17,000 cut under the 2007-08 proposed budget submitted Wednesday by Gov. Schwarzenegger. Under the proposal, the budget will be slashed from $5,303,000 to $5,286,000. The biggest chunk of funding, $2.8 million, is expected to once again rely on motorists who voluntarily pay extra for arts-supporter license plates. The plan calls for $1.

With arts-loving motorists paying instead of taxpayers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed pumping nearly $2 million more next year into the budgetary tank of the California Arts Council. Since the state's budget crunch hit in fiscal 2003-04, California has ranked last in the nation in per capita funding for its arts agency. Under the plan Schwarzenegger unveiled this week, arts council funding would jump from the current $3.3 million to $5.1 million in fiscal 2006-07.