The Foundation Center released a report on foundation giving the other day, and it confirmed some of the trends I’ve read in the tea leaves: for arts institutions, the worst impacts of the recession are probably yet to come.
For a start, the report put paid to the dire predictions by some Cassandras that the arts would suffer more than other types of grantees, which was based on the notion that arts were going to be seen as expendable compared with health, human services, etc. That may yet happen, but in the numbers we have, it is not true for foundation giving — which, admittedly, is a small part of funding for arts groups.
According to the Center, in 2008 — the first year of the recession — the arts received a larger share of the pie: 12.5% of total dollars vs. 10.6% in 2007. Museums, followed by performing arts groups, received the largest portions — 34% and 30%, respectively.
Meantime, giving to human services and to science/technology actually declined.
The bad news is that the arts are not enjoying the proportion they had ten years ago: in 1998, the arts received 14.8% of grant dollars. (Unfortunately, the chart I have goes back only to 1998, so I do not know if that’s a peak.)
And, worse, the lack of an overall decline in grant dollars — which actually grew 5.4% — suggests that foundations, many of which use a three-year rolling average to determine their annual payouts, probably had to cut grants in 2009, 2010 and …
In 2008, the biggest arts funders were the Packard Humanities Institute ($173 million), the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation ($130 million) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ($122 million). Go Kansas City!
The Architect of the Capitol received the largest 2008 award — $156 million from the Packard — followed by $60 million given to the Crystal Bridges Museum (at left) by guess who?
That’s a segue to a consistently troubling aspect of arts in America, at least to me. The West (only 9% of grant dollars) and the South (13%) continue to lag behind the Northeast (16%) and the Midwest (14%) in giving to the arts.
The South’s total was no doubt boosted by the Walton Family Foundation’s gifts to Crystal Bridges — when that’s taken out, the South is behind, too.
If we who love the arts want to ensure their future, we need to make sure that all parts of the country have exposure to great art.
You can find a press release about the study here and a highlights PDF here.