While the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s CenterStage is slotted for an undeserved $25 million payoff from the city, and $500,000 a year of your tax dollars for the next, oh, forty or so years, we find out in Saturday’s newspaper how the city treats genuinely successful and popular “street level” downtown arts projects.
Excerpts below. Emphasis mine:
First Fridays gets UR touch
Its Modlin Center steps in to sponsor downtown artwalk
Saturday, Sep 01, 2007
By CYNTHIA MCMULLEN
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERIn a classic case of east-meets-west and vice-versa, University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts will be the presenting sponsor for the seventh season of Curated Culture’s First Fridays Artwalk.
The collaboration brings much-needed funding — $25,000 — to a small organization, says Christina Newton, director of Curated Culture Inc.
She also expects it to spread awareness of both organizations, whose audiences often tend to stay either east or west of the Boulevard.
Kathy Panoff, executive director of the Modlin Center, says one goal, as sponsor, is to let people know the depths of Modlin’s programming in the performing and visual arts.
She wants to cultivate the “super-hip” downtown audience, and Newton wants to expose First Fridays audiences to what the Modlin has to offer.
To that end, the Modlin Center will supply some of First Fridays’ talent this season. For example, chamber musicians eighth blackbird will perform in Art6’s main gallery Nov. 2.
The University of Richmond has taken a big role in local arts marketing, Panoff says, and this was the next logical step.
“A lot of people have had their eye on First Fridays. What I don’t want is for it to lose its grass-roots nature. It’s not overly institutionalized.
“We’re not trying to take it over, we’re trying to shore it up.”
That’s good news for Newton, who has big plans.
September’s Artwalk will be a soft opening, she says, as it’s so close to Labor Day.
The official season kickoff will be Oct. 5 which, in addition to the usual gallery openings, will include concerts by No BS Brass Band and Richmond Symphony’s Brass Quintet.
Holiday window displays are in the works for December.
“There’s so much new energy downtown,” Newton says. “People are much more engaged . . . the Historic Jackson Ward Association, Downtown Neighborhood Association, the police.”
Still, there are frustrations for First Fridays’ only (and part-time) staff member.
“Our efforts have made the greatest impact on revitalization,” she says, “but the city says there’s nothing it can do.”
First Fridays has an annual budget of $100,000. “We do it because we love it,” says Newton, “but at a point we’re getting pretty burned out.”
Cities are normally partners in similar programs, she says. “I think [city of Richmond officials] think because it’s happening, it will continue to happen.
“I’ve been trying to get a meeting with the mayor for a year and a half.”
City spokesman Linwood Norman says city officials would encourage her to work with the Arts & Cultural Funding Consortium. That kind of funding request goes through the consortium, he says.
Whoa, Nelly! The Mayor’s mouthpiece should get his facts straight. The “original members” of the Arts and Cultural Funding Consortium (a.k.a. the ones who get the bulk of any annual funding — Mr. Norman can access that list here) are forbidden to lobby the city directly. But Curated Culture is one of those “annual members” who get the scraps (if they are lucky and ask real, real nice) and can lobby the city in blank verse and in full makeup all day long if they choose.
But the mayor’s office would probably know that if they actually met with Newton, heard her out and picked her brain on what she and her low-budget operation is doing right. At present, the city is too busy OK-ing an unverifiable and shoddily-constructed plan to write 40 years worth of blank checks to a private organization of business people that has already wasted millions in public dollars and has a long history of being less than forthright about how it uses our tax money. You could call it “The Sixth Street Marketplace For the Arts” but, in reality, this expensive and sordid backroom deal has the potential to make that notorious booster-approved disaster look like the Taj Mahal.
Ah, but who do the city and the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation piggyback on when they need to find some sort of legitimacy within the downtown arts community for their CenterStage groundbreaking ceremony? Curated Culture’s First Friday’s!
And when push comes to shove, who helps out Curated Culture’s low-budget “street level” operation? Not CenterStage a few blocks down, but UR’s Modlin Center — a truly world class performing arts venue. Check out their inclusive and diverse calendar of events here [And don't forget that, in the original consultant's study for VAPAF's arts center, it was claimed that the Modlin would not compete with a downtown arts center because the Modlin was at "the University of Virginia in Charlottesville." That same consulting firm — with some interesting recent hires — still clears thousands per month to advise the project. As they say, you couldn't make this stuff up.]
So, if you are scoring at home, our wonderful city leaders can find the money to fund “party patrols,” and enable huge “arts” boondoggles that eschew professionals and community arts people. But they can’t find a dime for — or even, in the case of the Mayor, schedule an appointment to hear out — the one successful arts project that is already revitalizing downtown.
What’s wrong with this picture?