Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 23, 1991 TAG: 9103230038
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Too many good people are losing their jobs. Too many good organizations are struggling to survive. There's plenty of news, but most of it seems to be bad.
The problem is a fiscal crisis. It is tied to the economic recession, though there are other factors too.
So far, the crisis has cost at least 18 people their jobs in arts or arts-related organizations. The Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts alone has laid off eight people and is down to three full-time staffers plus a handful of part-timers.
The Arts Council of the Blue Ridge has lost 80 percent of its staff and is in danger of folding altogether.
The impact of the crisis is particularly noticeable at the council's headquarters in Center on Church. They're new quarters, occupied less than a year. Just a few weeks ago, the space was busy all day and many nights. Now it's a sad and kind of spooky place to be.
Rooms are vacant. Desks are empty and transparently tidy on top. When the telephone rings, a recording often answers instead of a real person.
Only the director, Susan Cole, remains. Everyone else had to be laid off when the board of directors failed to raise enough money to keep the place running at full staff.
The crisis seemed to strike suddenly. Just a few months ago, the arts were thriving in the Roanoke Valley. People talked about ideas, not finding money to pay the light bill. They planned projects, not job searches.
It had been that way since Center in the Square opened in the winter of 1983-84, bringing five cultural institutions right to the people and the streets of downtown Roanoke. It was a landmark event. It showed that the community valued its cultural assets and realized their importance to the so-called "quality of life."
Other things started happening. The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra acquired a professional manager and, in the person of Victoria Bond, a charismatic conductor. The arts council got a professional director - Susan Cole - and soon acquired a can-do reputation both in programming and as a service organization for artists and arts organizations.
Mill Mountain Theatre reorganized and expanded its professional staff. The Harrison Museum of African American Culture established itself firmly on the scene. The art museum brought in Ruth Appelhof as director and boldly expanded its staff. Center in the Square, though still in its infancy, burst out of its walls and filled a new annex.
Budgets climbed at all the arts organizations. Marketing and development people appeared on their staffs. And the programming was great.
Ray Charles came and performed Quincy Jones' "Black Requiem" with the Roanoke Symphony and a wonderful community chorus. On the stage of Mill Mountain Theatre, Florida artist Al Bright created an original oil painting while a combo played jazz to inspire him and an audience looked on in astonishment.
A newly adventurous Mill Mountain Theater tackled works by Athol Fugard and Stephen Sondheim. The arts council brought in Lenny Pickett and Spalding Gray and successfully reached new audiences with its Rainbow Splashes and Brown Bag Arts programs.
The art museum offered chamber music in its galleries and invited bankers to read Dr. Seuss to children. John Cage, a titan of 20th century art, appeared for a show of his paintings and music. There were imaginative and offbeat exhibits in the museum's old Alternative Gallery.
The Acting Company brought stage training and experimental plays. Cinema buffs could see fine films on the Grandin Theatre's screens and offbeat art on the walls of its gallery.
It was fun. It was unprecedented. This newspaper established an arts beat to try and keep up with everything. Even the business community seemed to catch on, finally realizing that it paid to take prospects to a symphony concert or play or on a tour of Center in the Square. And to support the arts financially.
Not that there was ever enough money. In the arts, there never is. But enlightened contributors made it possible for the arts in the valley to attain new levels of activity and excellence.
Everything began to come apart last year. The recession commonly is blamed, though growth-oriented management and myopic fund-raising practices probably made certain arts organizations more susceptible than they had to be.
At any rate, corporate and individual contributors, stung by the economic turndown, announced that they would stop or significantly reduce their giving to the arts.
That was the first blow. The second was delivered from Richmond. When it became clear that state revenue was going to fall far short of projections, Gov. Wilder made dramatic cuts in the budget. They all but erased the state as a significant financial supporter of the arts in the Roanoke Valley, aside from what little is earmarked for the purpose in school funding.
Despite today's bleak conditions and a gloomy fiscal outlook for the next year or so, it is possible to detect the proverbial silver lining. There is nothing like a fiscal crisis to make you clean up your act.
Arts organizations will be looking very closely at themselves. There will be some streamlining of operations and even some rethinking of fundamental missions.
Maybe the art museum should go back to being an art center. Maybe the arts council will have to abandon its innovative but costly programming and concentrate on service.
With any luck, the fiscal crisis also will start some fresh thinking about raising money. It is clear now that reliable sources aren't so reliable when times are tough.
The arts in the Roanoke Valley in time will regain and even surpass the level of that thriving time before the crisis. That's the good news. The bad news is that so many of those who helped to make it all happen in the first place won't be around for the revival.
by CNB