THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: Glenn Allen Scott
LENGTH: 72 lines
Virginia is tightfisted in its support of most arts and cultural programs from Bristol to Virginia Beach. It should do better than it does, because arts and cultural institutions help bring tourists, businesses and residents to Virginia and retain people and enterprises already here.
Virginia's population is 6.6 million. Attendance at cultural and visual- and performing-arts programs aided by the Virginia Commission for the Arts runs about 6 million a year.
State funding for the arts commission is but $2,248,305 this fiscal year. That's up from previous years, but only because of energetic lobbying by Virginians for the Arts. That citizens' lobby, led by Virginians who are themselves generous contributors to the arts, blossomed in the 1990s in response to (1) Draconian cuts in the commission's funding during the administration of Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and (2) Republican Gov. George F. Allen's announced intention to chop the commission's shrunken budget yet again, by 50 percent.
In 1995, the commission aided 6,300 programs - artist residencies, performances and special events in elementary and secondary schools. The commission's grants to schools were complemented by $4.6 million in private funding for public schools' arts education.
That alone is a compelling reason for Virginia to boost state largess to the commission. But there is another: Not-for-profit arts and cultural groups within the state employ more than 7,800 people (for comparison, the projected but postponed $3 billion Motorola semiconductor plant near Richmond is expected to employ up to 5,000 workers). Old Dominion University researchers calculate that Hampton Roads arts and cultural organizations annually add a quarter-billion dollars to the regional economy.
The General Assembly earlier this year increased funding yet again for the commission; the state appropriation will be $2,668,305 in FY97. But the commission will be unable to give out more money in 1997 than in 1996 because it won't have more; the state's increase covers a sharp drop in funds to the commission from the National Endowment for the Arts, an agency that many in and out of Congress seek to abolish.
Congress has whacked 40 percent from NEA's budget - mainly because about a dozen programs among the 100,000 underwritten directly or indirectly by the agency since the late 1960s were judged offensive. NEA's grant to the Virginia commission, $681,200 this year, will fall to $432,000 in FY97.
FY96's $3,939,505 in state and federal funds to the arts commission was spread thinly across the commonwealth. Much of the money was doled out in small servings to schools (example: $300 for teacher incentive grant, E.B. Stanley Middle School, Abingdon).
Municipalities and counties got modest amounts - for example, Chesapeake, Norfolk and Virginia Beach each received $3,750.
A handful of major performing-arts groups - among them, Virginia Opera ($74,800), Virginia Symphony ($74,800), Virginia Stage Company ($72,200), Richmond Symphony $74,800) - got substantial grants.
The state isn't as stingy with money for arts and cultural institutions as its pennies-per-capita annual appropriation to the Virginia Commission for the Arts suggests.
The state has budgeted for the excellent Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a state institution, $6.8 million in FY97 and $7.2 million in FY98.
And Virginia's direct grants to nonstate institutions in FY97 will total $7,096,056. Among the beneficiaries is the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, which contains the most-important collection of fine art between Washington and Atlanta; the Chrysler will get $621,816 in FY97 - not enough, given its merit, but winning approval for even that sum wasn't easy.
Meanwhile, the state ought to be allocating at least $1 per Virginian per year to the arts commission. Virginians for the Arts hopes to persuade future legislatures to raise the state's contribution to $1.50 a head. And that's not too wild a dream. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot. by CNB