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THE CITY’S Commitment

Dallas loves the arts. But will we back up our fine words with real money?
By PHILIP SEIB |

With its usual flair for self-congratulation, Dallas has proclaimed itself one of America’s leading arts centers.

At first glance, this pride seems justified. The Dallas Museum of Art has been widely praised since its 1984 opening. The Dallas Arts District is becoming the envy of other cities, for both the vitality it will bring to downtown and its proof that arts and commercial facilities can coexist and strengthen the tax base. Arts organizations are standing in line to build new facilities and launch new programming.

But behind the glittering facade of Dallas’ newborn cultural vitality are substantial fiscal and policy problems that must be addressed promptly if this city is to maintain its momentum in developing the arts. During the next few months we will see just how deeply Dallas is committed to excellence and diversity in the arts.

To understand the challenge Dallas faces, a brief history lesson is in order. Dallas’ major arts organizations, such as the art museum and the symphony, were poised to begin their great leap forward in 1978. A $45-million “arts package” was included in the June bond election that year. City officials told arts supporters that a serious campaign wasn’t necessary; the arts proposition was certain to pass.

It didn’t. By a 54-46 percent margin, Dallas voters expressed their lack of enthusiasm for public support of the arts. Regrouping, the art museum and symphony organized well-financed, politically sophisticated campaigns in the November 1979 bond election. Because of this rigorous campaigning, which stressed the economic benefits the arts could bring to downtown, both measures passed. (The symphony, which had sought funds only for land in 1979, ran a second successful campaign in 1982 to secure bond funding for construction of a new concert hall.)

Since 1979, the arts in Dallas have been on a roll. The city council passed an innovative ordinance establishing design and use standards for the Arts District; the new art museum already has attracted more than a million visitors; the Dallas Opera is steadily expanding its season; the Dallas Theater Center has opened a new theater in the Arts District.

But because we are a diverse city, we face complex problems in setting arts policy. A city that has a wealthy museum capable of sponsoring major international exhibitions also should provide a decent environment for the young Dallas sculptor who wants to work and show his work in his hometown. A city with a growing grand opera season also should encourage the efforts of a quartet of local gospel singers. Cultural vitality depends on artists and arts organizations with a wide range of ethnic influences, financial wherewithal and artistic skills.

For example, what is the best way for Dallas’ Park and Recreation Board to encourage minority artists? Certainly, city funding for emerging minority arts organizations should be increased, but must this be done by reducing funds for the more established arts institutions?

Critics of the arts status quo in Dallas say the system has become top-heavy, with major institutions such as the museum and the symphony swallowing too much of the overall arts budget. In rebuttal, sup-porters of the majors say they need funding commensurate with the top-quality program-ming the public expects from them.

The logical, have-it-all way to resolve this debate would be to maintain the funding for proven arts organizations while devoting more aid to emerging artists and arts groups. To do so, however, would require ex-pansion of the city’s arts budget, which will not occur until Dallas leaders make up their minds about the quality and quantity of arts activity they want to see in Dallas.

Current controversies in-dicate just how far away Dallas is from resolving these matters. For instance, the fiscal 1986 budget presented by City Manager Charles Anderson provided arts organizations with only 75 percent of the funds they had requested. Some council members report-edly wanted even more drastic cuts in the arts funding.



dallas must put its money where its ego is. Budget-slashing is politically ex-pedient for politicians wanting to avoid a tax increase, but it can cripple a city’s arts com-munity that should be growing, not retrenching. Expanded arts offerings need an expanding financial base. Volunteer ef-forts and private donations can go only so far; tax dollars must support the city’s claims to excellence.

Budgetary gamesmanship al-ready is interfering with some of Dallas’ progress in the arts. The Dallas Museum of Art, for example, had requested a 21-percent increase from the 1985 budget, largely to help cover expenses generated by the new galleries built to house the impressive Reves collection that opens in November.

Anderson recommended only a five-percent increase. Rather than cut back operations, the museum then had to ask the Park Board to approve a temporary admission fee to the Reves collection. Museum visitors (except museum members, who will not be charged) will have to pay $3 to see part of the permanent collection. This is a substantial alteration in museum, and thus city, policy. Admission fees clearly will diminish arts audiences at a time when those audiences should be expanding.

The art museum has the resources to withstand unfavorable budget decisions, but smaller arts organizations might not. Many mid-sized and small arts groups were staggered by the city manager’s budget recommendations. They had anticipated encouragement as they worked to expand their offerings, but instead they were being told to limit their efforts.

If the arts are important, they must receive appropriate funding. If city leaders truly want Dallas to be an arts center, they must recognize the amount of work and money needed. So far, they haven’t. Sophisticated, long-range policy planning in this field has been lacking. When it comes to the arts, Dallas talks a very good show, and that’s about all.

As part of Dallas’ development of a comprehensive arts philosophy, the city’s Division of Cultural Affairs (formerly the City Arts Program) prepared a cultural policy paper that ostensibly will guide city council action on arts matters.

Principally the creation of Cultural Affairs director Jerry Allen, the cultural policy paper offers a high-minded definition of what the city’s relationship to the arts should be. As philosophy the document is invaluable because it articulates (in the bureaucratic jargon City Hall documents seem to require) a recognition that the arts are essential to a city’s life. But in practice, the policy’s effectiveness will be determined by the willingness of the city staff and the council to adhere to the spirit the cultural policy paper enunciates.

As often happens when arts professionals are forced into political maneuvering, enthusiastic idealism needs the seasoning of a healthy dose of pragmatism. If there is a weakness in the work of Allen and his colleagues, it is that they lack the political adroitness needed when dealing with the Dallas City Council.

The arts need to be “sold” to council members; these politicians have to be able to tell their constituents why tax dollars are being spent on the arts. Making this case, however, should not be solely Allen’s responsibility. The entire arts community must coalesce around this issue.

The cultural policy paper, if it becomes the basis for actual budget policy, could contribute substantially to expanding the city’s arts spending. Perhaps its boldest statement is this: “It is the City’s policy that the floor of annual City support should be at least equal to the reasonable annual operating cost of the institution’s facilities.”

In plain language, this is a guarantee of enough city aid for arts groups to have their own homes. Providing this consistent, measurable base of fiscal support would encourage proliferation of arts groups throughout Dallas.



SUCH EXPANSION of arts offerings is precisely what Dallas needs if it is to have a cultural life that is diverse, rather than reliant on the fortunes of a few major arts organizations. Again, the basic question remains: Will city government back up its fine words with real money?

Further questions about City Hall support for the arts arose during planning for this year’s bond campaign. Some city council members and other politicians apparently saw political gain in alleging that the arts are merely frills rather than necessary parts of the community’s life. This is a notion many thought had been laid to rest in the 1979 bond contest, but it keeps turning up.

Fortunately, in council members’ town hall meetings on the bond package, constituents spoke up for including arts propositions on the November ballot. Despite some protests about funding “posies, penguins and Pagliacci,” the largest arts bond proposal-$28 million to purchase 5.2 acres in the Arts District for future arts development (such as an opera house, a Dallas Theater Center site and a community arts showcase) -found a spot on the ballot.

Still, this is no time for complacency. Arts supporters must remind voters again and again of the positive benefits of the arts, as they did in 1979 and 1982:

●the value of educational arts programs to children;

●economic benefits (such as tourist dollars) the arts bring to whatever neighborhoodthey are part of;

●the reduced tax burden for individualswhen the Arts District raises land values andthus commercial tax revenues downtown;

●the stimulation provided to everyonewho can choose from among a wide array ofarts offerings.

Politicians’ memories need jogging about these established arguments, but the general public also must give more thought to the role the arts play in a community’s life.



ARTS EDUCATION is yet another aspect of cultural life that is in increasing jeopardy. Many of the education “reformers” who shout “Back to basics!” at every opportunity seem to have decided that cultural literacy is not as essential as linguistic literacy, and therefore the arts can be dismissed as extracurricular surplus.

That theory not only deprives school children of an important part of education, it also undermines the future of all arts institutions. If we allow our schools to turn out a generation of culturally ignorant graduates, the arts will have no constituency. This threat might seem more remote than the latest City Hall controversy, but few things could be more damaging to the arts as a whole than shortchanging arts education.

In all these matters, chances for a brighter future for the arts rest with the public. On arts issues-about which most public officials know very little-citizen opinion can and should lead politicians’ action, rather than vice versa.

If they are to wield increased influence, arts organizations and their supporters must pay more faithful attention to politics. Too often, arts leaders have had to rely on damage control after adverse decisions by park board or city council members.

Given the millions of dollars at stake each year, the failure of arts organizations to closely monitor City Hall borders on negligence. This year’s turmoil surrounding the bond election, the budget and the cultural policies paper undoubtedly could have been better controlled, if not altogether avoided, had arts groups involved themselves in city decision-making at its earliest stages.

For example, a major battle has been fought this year about how much of public arts institutions’ utility bills the city should pay. The City Hall infighting over this issue (which is still unresolved) might have been avoided if arts supporters and politicians shared common assumptions about the arts.

If more people get involved in promoting the arts, we will have more reason to hope for a consistent, logical and ambitious arts policy emerging from City Hall. The arts in many ways are similar to transit, land use and other issues-they all will develop best only if guided by comprehensive, long-range planning.

The city must go beyond the philosophical outline of the cultural policy paper to tackle questions such as these:

The future impact of the Arts District on downtown growth. The district has given a new look to part of downtown by enforcing strict design standards, setback requirements and use limitations. The feel of the district (as evidenced by the Dallas Museum of Art) will be more horizontal than most of downtown, creating a sense of breadth Dallas long has lacked. Land prices in the district have skyrocketed, providing the city with additional commercial tax revenues. Tourists now have something other than the Kennedy assassination site to visit in downtown. Nearby areas such as State-Thomas are more attractive for residential development because of the proximity of cultural activity. The future of these spin-offs from arts activity will be a good measure of the overall success of the Arts District.

Relationships between arts institutions. The newly formed Dallas Coalition for the Arts brings together several dozen arts organizations of all sizes plus some corporate arts supporters (such as Frito-Lay, Neiman-Marcus and ARCO). The group’s principal purpose is to lobby on issues such as the city’s arts budget. The test for the coalition will be to see if arts organizations’ rivalries (usually about fundraising) can be set aside long enough to let this new effort capture the attention of politicians and the public. In the long run, the coalition could stimulate valuable interaction among arts groups, such as by encouraging established arts organizations to lend managerial expertise to the efforts of emerging arts efforts. Whatever the coalition’s specific projects turn out to be, this new arts unity should increase the clout of arts interests.

Relationships between arts institutions and individual artists. No major arts institution can flourish by neglecting the very roots of artistic life: persons dedicated to creating art. Grand buildings do not themselves bequeath excellence. The roots must be nourished, or all else will wither. Foundations and corporations that support the arts should develop more channels for providing aid directly to working artists outside the aegis of a symphony or a theater.

Expanding arts constituencies and changing public attitudes. We must remove once and for all the notion that enjoyment of the arts is merely a kind of elitism. No one should have to be rich to have access to the arts. Certainly, tickets have to be sold to concerts and costs of many arts exhibitions have to be covered, but much more can be done for free. In the Dallas Arts District, for example, emphasis is placed on accessibility-making the arts a part of everyday life rather than a phenomenon to be enjoyed only on special occasions. Noontime concerts, weekend jazz festivals, outdoor sculpture displays and other activities should flood Dallas, destroying the barriers between the public and the world of art.

These matters never will be resolved ifbattle lines are drawn pitting arts enthusiastsvs. politicians, with the public left to occupyno-man’s land. The task for organizationsand individuals concerned about the arts isto make courtship of the public a continuingendeavor, something not unlike a permanentpublic relations campaign, and then use thatpublic support to influence political decision-making. This will require a tremendousamount of work, but it is the only way Dallasever will reach the position of arts leadershipto which it aspires.

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