DATE: Wednesday, March 5, 1997              TAG: 9703050002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   46 lines

THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM OF ART

When the Virginia General Assembly ended its short session late last month, Norfolk's Chrysler Museum of Art had gained $100,000 more in state funding than an expected $150,000 supplemental appropriation.

The extra $100,000 was welcomed by the museum's board of trustees and Norfolk City Hall. Funding the operating budget of the Chrysler is ever a challenge, as is funding the budgets of most arts organizations; the current budget is $4.1 million, and next year's doubtless will be bigger. The museum was compelled a year ago to cut 10 percent of its staff to bring outgo into line with income.

This season's windfall from the General Assembly is not an accident, of course. The additional $100,000 was requested by state Sen. Stanley C. Walker of Norfolk in the legislative session's closing days. The museum can count on support in Richmond from all members of the Norfolk delegation to the General Assembly, but Walker is especially well-placed to help the Chrysler, and help it he does. Walker has long been a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which he now co-chairs with John H. Chichester of Fredericksburg.

The $100,000 atop the $150,000 that Walker gained during the conference in which a handful of lawmakers reconciled differences between supplemental appropriations voted by House and Senate will boost the state's fiscal-1998 contribution to the Chrysler from $$621,816 to $721,816.

The added $100,000 brings total state aid to the Norfolk museum to $12,509,311, a sum that includes nearly $5 million for the museum's expansion in the late 1980s. The first state appropriation to the Chrysler - $50,000 - was made in 1979.

The Chrysler is a municipal museum, which opened in the early 1930s as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond is a state museum, the first art museum established by any state. It, too, came into being in the 1930s.

As a state agency that projects the visual and performing arts across the state, the Virginia Museum is routinely funded by the state - currently around $7 million a year. As a ``nonstate entity,'' the Chrysler cannot count on state aid. Along with many other museums that have sprung up in Virginia, it must solicit appropriations from the General Assembly.

Fortunately, the Chrysler's claim for state favor is strong. It contains the most important collection of fine art south of Washington, D.C. Of state grants to ``nonstate'' museums, the Chrysler gets a generous share, and it should.

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