ARTS AFFAIRS OF THE ARTS: WHO WILL RULE?

When Mayor Annette Strauss led the charge recently to set up a Cultural Affairs Department outside the purview of the Park Board, it was Just the latest and most visible eruption of a long-smoldering power struggle between the City Council and the Park Board. For years, arts and cultural affairs has been one of the most politically important areas of the Park Board, and the council has coveted that political importance.

It’s easy to see why. The seven-member Park Board is the only governing body in the city outside of the City Council that has direct power over a city department. That gives it, at least in matters within its domain, a stature on par with the council. More importantly, its relative autonomy allows the board to function almost independently of City Manager Richard Knight. City Hall insiders have long speculated that that situation doesn’t sit well with either Knight or Strauss, who, as a former Parkie herself, has more than a passing interest in the Park Board’s work.

Caught in the squeeze this time are local arts supporters who like the idea of a new department controlled by the council because they want to exercise some muscle of their own. Their argument is that it doesn’t make sense for the same board that oversees the mowing of park land to also run the city’s new $81.5 million Meyerson Symphony Center. “There will be a much tighter focus on the arts and cultural affairs with a new cultural affairs department,” says Terry Fassburg, chairman of the Dallas Coalition for the Arts.

For all intents and purposes, arts groups have been preparing for this move for years. Strong lobbying groups like Fassburg’s have realized that their bread is buttered on both sides, and have worked hard to win supporters on both the Park Board and the council.

Some of those lobbyists feel that they’ve had more luck at the City Council level. Last year, the council restored funding for the arts to the tune of $357,000 more than the Park Board, bowing to Knight’s austerity plan, had budgeted. One arts gadfly even maintains that the council deliberately appoints people to the Park Board who are weak on the arts so the council can have more de facto control of the city arts programs.

The new Cultural Affairs Department, if the council approves it, will report directly to the city manager. And that worries Park Board member Réné Martinez, who fears that the new department won’t be as responsive to the minority community as the Park Board has been in matters artistic. “This board has been unanimous when it comes to cultural diversity,” he says. Martinez insists that a fifteen-member arts advisory panel that will be formed to guide the new department would he a gutless nonentity in terms of the city’s arts groups minority involvement. ’This city will go backwards at least ten years if we do this,” he says. Martinez fears that what he calls the white-male-dominated big arts groups such as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Dallas Theater Center “are going to say, ’It’s back to business as usual.’ That is, hiring your friends and never having to look back over your shoulder.”

But Keith Nix, the immediate past chairman of the Coalition for the Arts, retorts, “Rene Martinez is playing an old tape. We will not permit the good-old-boy network to take over the arts.”

Martinez is not convinced. “Do you think that when it gets to he budget time,” he asks, “the city manager will have time to listen to a staffing and funding problem of an arts organization when there are so many bigger items on his table? Of course not.” Park Board member Gerald Henigsman agrees: “The big survive,” he says, “the little get eaten.’” But Nix stands firm. “We were always in competition with garbage and police and fire. The way to handle that is to educate the public that arts and culture is not frills, it’s essential.”