With arts groups struggling all around us, an article in yesterday’s New York Times, “As Detroit Struggles, Foundations Adjust,” really caught my eye. It contained a warning for arts organizations and arts-lovers. Describing how their reduced resources made them change the way they operate, foundation officials said they were “being forced to pick winners and losers.” In some cases, the foundations were forcing mergers. As a condition of aid to ”Women Arise,” for example, the Hudson-Webber Foundation merged it with Matrix Human Services.
Then comes these key paragraphs:
Thus, the Hudson-Webber chief executive, David O. Egner, is asking himself whether Detroit needs both a world-class symphony and its Michigan Opera Theatre, and, if so, whether they could share an orchestra.
“These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking,” Mr. Egner said.
Hudson-Webber is a big foundation in Detroit. In 2007, the most recent figures available on its website, net assets totalled $174 million and it gave away nearly $8 million in grants. Of that, it donated $15,000 in operating support to the opera and $20,000 in operating support to the symphony, plus $200,000 of a three-year grant to support the symphony’s “summer initiative.”
But…
In the context of their total budgets, about $32 million for the Symphony and $12 million for the Opera, that’s not a huge amount of money. But both are running deficits even though they have cut their budgets substantially, according to published reports.
Foundations and their grantees often work hand-in-hand on initiatives. But forced mergers seem a bit much. Is triage really the work of foundations? Wouldn’t everyone be better off if collaboration — and mergers — were the work of the arts organizations whose future is at stake?
Just asking.
Here’s a link to the Times article.
It’s misleading to talk about forced mergers–foundations don’t have the power to force organizations to merge. Using funding to encourage behavior the donor likes isn’t new: donors have always faced a choice of which organizations and projects to fund, and have always applied their own criteria. Organizations seeking funding can decide whether the strings that come with it are acceptable. Carrot, no stick.
The recent article called As Detroit Struggles, Foundations Shift Mission published on March 22, 2009 in the New York Times has caused quite stir here in Detroit. As a practice, musicians and their representatives rarely comment on the activities of Foundations and Donors. After all, musician/artists have been the beneficiaries of patrons for literally millennia.
However, applying Darwinism to the Michigan Opera Theatre Orchestra under the guise of cutting expenses and merging the weak with the strong is counterintuitive to the very concept and fundamentals of the “giving” paradigm. For balance one could read Gina Neff’s piece called Foundation Culture. However, without getting into ideologies and social agendas, the idea of merging orchestras at this level is troubling and impracticable.
……..losing identity
It is not unfair to take this issue to the extreme, metaphorically speaking. Instead of merging two art museums, why not consolidate resources and save space by placing all the Rembrandt paintings over all the Picasso paintings so only one is visible? Better yet, why not toss all the Picasso paintings? After all, they are both art. How much art do they need in Detroit anyway?
The Michigan Opera Theatre Orchestra is an important part of Detroit’s culture. The musicians account for less than 8 percent of the total MOT budget. Layering orchestras will not solve anything. Let us try to preserve our cultural institutions in Detroit and around the country as we seek recovery. Applying a “survival of the fittest” approach to our important Cultural Institutions in Detroit at this time seems like piling on.