Feature Stories - July 2009

Breathing New Life Into Arts

Can Nevada’s arts and culture organizations survive the economy?

by Jessica Santina

    When the 2009 Nevada Legislature approved a painful 43 percent budget cut for arts and culture around the state, arts organizations, for the most part, took it in stride.

    “In a way, in the arts world, we hurt ourselves, because we’re so used to doing more with less,” says Jill Berryman, executive director of Sierra Arts Foundation, the local arts agency for Reno and Northwestern Nevada. “We’re always trying to load 10 pounds into a 5-pound basket. We don’t have a lot of waste.”

The Legislative Burden

    The Department of Cultural Affairs, which oversees the state’s museums, libraries, historic preservation efforts and Nevada Arts Council, only represents 0.5 percent of the General Fund budget – roughly $15.4 million. Governor Gibbons’ proposed cut of nearly 60 percent to the department would have eliminated jobs, grants and programs, including all funding for Nevada Humanities; the legislature managed to scale it back to 43 percent. Still, the cuts will have a serious impact on Nevada’s art community.

    Nevada Arts Council jobs were saved, but two staff members were transferred to administrative positions. The cuts mean shorter hours for state museums and libraries, the elimination of the “Exploring Nevada” video series, a delayed opening for the Nevada State Museum in Southern Nevada and minimum 20 percent salary cuts for more than 50 Department of Cultural Affairs employees. The legislature’s proposal at the time of this writing reduces grants to 33 cents on the dollar requested, with many grants suspended altogether.

    However, $50,000 in funding for Nevada Humanities, and the state’s Holocaust Council, were retained; proposals to close museums in Ely and Virginia City, and the Reno Historical Society gift shop and gallery, were rejected.

    “Arts and culture is indeed a business sector,” says Susan Boskoff, executive director of the Nevada Arts Council. “It employs people. It pays taxes, and its organizations own buildings and produce goods and services. Artists own homes and have kids in our schools … But they’re also really committed to enhancing our quality of life, and I believe anybody in the arts will say that we’re part of the solution.”

Arts Matter

    According to a study conducted by Americans for the Arts, the arts generate $166.2 billion per year in economic activity, 5.7 million full-time equivalent jobs and, at the state level, an average of $9.1 billion in state government tax revenues.

    Ask Northern Nevadans whether the arts can help get the state out of the red and they’ll point to Artown as proof that it can. Created in 1996 as a way to bring locals back downtown, Artown began as an experiment – a weekend-long, arts-themed festival. After drawing more than 30,000 people, the City of Reno made it a yearly affair that would last throughout July. Each year’s festival offers more events, features more impressive acts and draws more audiences than the previous year. The 2008 festival drew more than 350,000 attendees – 48,450 of them from out of town. Consumer spending as a result of Artown totals more than $13.7 million.

    Bad economy aside, it’s expected that the 14th annual Artown will draw record crowds at its more than 400 unique events. They’ll even be adding an extra day, dubbed “July 32nd,” to the schedule.

    Executive Director Beth Macmillan credits thorough planning, a longtime commitment to building financial reserves, strategic partnerships and a city council that makes the arts a priority for Artown’s continued success. Still, Artown staff members are aggressively seeking further contributions. “We have a lot of data and we do surveys every year, so we can demonstrate how Artown is good for business and the quality of life here. That’s really helped in our quest for funding,” says Macmillan, adding that they’re also having some success at establishing new partnerships – partly by asking for in-kind donations rather than money.

    Reno City Councilman and Artown board member Dave Aiazzi takes pride in Reno’s increase in arts and culture funding since he joined the city council 13 years ago. He’s convinced the arts can be a city’s salvation. “Gaming is not our future,” he says. “Reno will always be tourism-based, but people need to come here for other reasons, and for me, that’s arts and culture, and special events.”

    Aiazzi is pushing to hold cuts in arts funding back to just 5 percent this year. “It’s important, particularly now, not to cut funding for [the arts]. People really need it, and it’s such a small amount of our budget anyway, at just over $1 million, but it has such an impact.”

Staying Afloat in the North

    According to Jill Berryman, the corporate funding Sierra Arts has come to rely upon has taken a nosedive. Its two major annual events, Brew Ha Ha, a beer tasting event, and its Academy Awards gala, Night of Arts and Oscars, each saw drops in attendance this year.

    “These two events fall in January and February, which happened to be the worst months of this recessionary period,” she says.

    However, Berryman says that this downturn hasn’t really caught them off guard. “We’ve been tightening our belts for the last two years,” she says. “We cut out probably 15-20 percent of our administrative costs.” She says these cuts were achieved through such measures as foregoing the traditional supply of bottled water in the office.

    Catherine Atack, executive director of the annual Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival at Sand Harbor, says last season saw a 7 percent reduction in ticket sales. She attributes this to a combination of factors, including last summer’s skyrocketing gas prices and numerous California fires that kept smoke hovering over Tahoe for weeks.

    “This year, in terms of sales, I expect that we’re probably looking at another 7-10 percent downturn from last year,” says Atack. “But we’re also seeing that people are deferring purchases until just before an event, which is difficult for any nonprofit that relies so heavily on ticket sales. They represent close to 80 percent of our total revenue.”

    Those deferred purchases make it nearly impossible to predict ticket sales until the actual performance dates. So while Atack says that by this point in the year, the festival would normally have already sold 15 percent more tickets, it’s still too early to predict whether this season’s sales will indeed fall short.

    This is the case for most local arts organizations. While people aren’t necessarily foregoing event attendance, they are being more selective about it. Jill Berryman points to the Broadway Comes to Reno series at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts as an example. “I know they didn’t sell as many subscriptions, but those numbers weren’t necessarily down for each show. People are just being choosier about what they want to see,” she says.

The Struggle Down South

    Southern Nevada has been particularly hard hit by the economy. A donation shortage caused the Las Vegas Art Museum’s closure in February, and state budget cuts are forcing the closure of the College of Southern Nevada’s Boulder City campus, a location for many arts and cultural events.

    Many speculate that Southern Nevada’s focus on tourist gaming and its too-rapid growth explain area arts organizations’ struggles. “We’re young in terms of longstanding cultural facilities and nonprofits. We’re not to the point where we’ve had huge orchestras endowed by ancestral families,” says Nancy Deaner, manager of the Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs. “But ultimately, I think that when we get to the end of this recession, the cultural community will be stronger.”

    Deaner says that her office’s budget has been significantly reduced, but they’ve managed to avoid cutting whole programs by making smaller cuts everywhere. They’re also collaborating with the Historic Preservation Commission, UNLV, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Clark County and others to stay alive. “We’re also working on a cultural plan that will be the map for how this office proceeds in the future,” she says. “It means partnering with the city and the community in a meaningful way. This is a great example of timing being everything, because it really can address this economic climate.”

    She suspects the museum’s closure was due in part to its location away from the city’s center. Hopefully, says Deaner, the museum can eventually re-open downtown. Meanwhile, three outstanding arts and culture projects are in the works: the Neon Museum, projected to open in 2011; the Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement in early 2011; and The Smith Center for the Performing Arts in spring of 2012.

    When ground broke on The Smith Center in late May, approximately 1,000 people received construction jobs. Ninety-five percent of the $475 million project cost has already been raised through a combination of public and private funding, says President Myron Martin. It’s estimated that The Smith Center will create $25-30 million in new spending each year, through ticket purchases, concessions and visits to neighborhood restaurants and hotels.

    The Center will house a 2,050-seat multipurpose main hall, a 300-seat cabaret theater and a 200-seat flexible studio theater for rehearsals, children’s theater and community events. Nevada Ballet Theatre and the Las Vegas Philharmonic will call The Smith Center their permanent home.

    “The Smith Center will serve as a cultural ‘Ground Zero,’ a place that nourishes new companies, provides a sort of incubator for arts and cultural institutions and elevates the artistic level of resident companies,” says Martin.

    Of course, the closing of the museum worries Martin, but there are lessons to be taken from it as well. “As devastating as that was,” says Martin, “it may have sent a message to people that they have to participate and give if they want great things to happen culturally in their community. People may realize that they can’t leave the business of sustaining cultural institutions to a handful of million-dollar donors.”

    Beth Barbre, executive director and CEO of Nevada Ballet Theatre, says Las Vegas’ experiences aren’t unique. “It’s been a difficult year for everyone, from the New York City Ballet to companies smaller than ours,” she says. The company’s “bread and butter” show, The Nutcracker, which represents more than 50 percent of the season’s sales, lost more than a quarter of its attendance in 2008. Still, a proactive approach that began last fall has resulted in some real expense-saving measures, which Barbre says will only improve their outlook.

    Also on the horizon is the CityCenter’s $40 million public Fine Arts Program. Throughout the resort and hotel, guests will find a range of stimulating, avant-garde public art pieces from such acclaimed artists as Nancy Rubins, Maya Lin, Jenny Holzer and Henry Moore.

    Patrick Duffy, president of the board of the Las Vegas Art Museum, arts commissioner for the City of Las Vegas, board member of the upcoming Neon Museum and avid art collector, says the CityCenter project will help to ignite a sort of cultural renaissance for Las Vegas – at a time when it’s most needed.

    “People ask how I can say that when gallerists are leaving due to a lack of support. But I’ve worked with gallerists for 20 years, and I know that they eventually find a niche. They may go elsewhere, which isn’t unusual. But when you open a gallery in a city like Las Vegas, you take a chance. You have to cultivate an audience and become part of the community. Many people have been able to sustain themselves, even in this tough economy. If you listen to what the community wants, it can be the rudder to get you through difficult waters.”

A Rural Exception?

    Elko is home to the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, a week-long arts festival celebrating life in the rural West. This past January marked the 25th birthday of the event presented by the Western Folklife Center. The center also maintains a museum, hosts numerous exhibits and events, and provides several educational programs around the region. Yet one-third of its entire year’s $2.5 million income comes from the gathering.

    Executive Director Charlie Seemann points out that Elko’s economy is fairly stable, thanks to its chief industry, gold mining. “The local economy hasn’t necessarily translated into stronger support for us, but unemployment isn’t as high, and housing prices aren’t down as much,” says Seemann.

    Still, he admits that a big chunk of the Western Folklife Center’s corporate funding has disappeared in the recession. The center receives one-half of 1 percent of the Elko room tax, which has, of course, dwindled. That has forced postponement of several programs until next fiscal year.

    The Churchill Arts Council and its home, the Oats Park Arts Center in Fallon, are also doing remarkably well considering the economy. As Executive Director Valerie Serpa explains, “After performances, we do exit surveys with our audiences, and have found we’ve developed a following of folks from out of town – places like Reno, Carson City, Lake Tahoe and even Sacramento.”

    If you’re surprised by the success of an arts center in Fallon – especially in this economy – you’re not alone. Serpa meets with this attitude all the time. She attributes this strong following not only to the arts center’s beauty, but to the rural nature of the community; parking’s easy, and the performers are very down to earth and interested in comingling with audience members after shows. The center also lends itself naturally to hosting private events, and rental activity has increased in the last year as well.

    She adds, however, that the center has seen roughly a 10 percent downshift in visitors. “Our seasons begin in September, and last year, attendance took a hit right away, and it didn’t seem to matter whether the events were ticketed or free. But since November, all our performances have been really close to selling out.”

Light at the End of the Tunnel

    There are reasons for optimism – such as President Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will provide $250,500 to the Nevada Arts Council, to be distributed through SNAP (Sustaining Nevada’s Arts Programs) grants.

    Boskoff also notes another interesting trend: the formation of several new arts organizations – especially choruses, bands, writing groups, theater troupes and international or other cultural groups. “That says to me that during times like these, people want to come together to share common goals and interests, to create beautiful things.”

    There are also valuable lessons that have come from the bad economy. “Everything is on a pendulum, and sometimes things swing too far to one extreme or the other, and there has to be a way to self-correct,” says Berryman. “I think the economy has made us more thoughtful about doing things for the sake of doing them, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

    “In the Great Depression, the arts actually lurched forward, and some art forms were developed then – big band music, the first Walt Disney movie, the proliferation of radio,” says Beth Macmillan. “It may have taken longer if not for the Depression. People needed to feel good, and I believe the arts can do that again.”

Jessica Santina
Jessica Santina is a freelance writer based in Reno.