Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 10, 1992 TAG: 9201100367
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BUDGET PLANS DEMORALIZE ARTS GROUPS
Gov. Doug Wilder's plan to abolish the Virginia Commission for the Arts has been overshadowed by more dramatic elements of his budget proposal - things like employee layoffs, tax increases and multimillion-dollar spending cuts - but it has set the arts community abuzz."It's just another psychological and moral blow," said Sally Rugaber, chairman of the Roanoke-based Arts Council of the Blue Ridge. The recession has struck hard at Virginia arts organizations such as the council, which had to lay off 80 percent of its staff last year.
"They [the commission] have an overall view of the state," Rugaber said. "They were someone you could call and get good advice."
The commission disperses state and federal funds through grants to artists and arts organizations around Virginia, though its capacity for doing so has been sharply curtailed by recent state spending cutbacks. Its appropriation has dropped from a high of $5.3 million in 1989-90 to $1.5 million for fiscal 1992.
Melody Stovall, executive director of Roanoke's Harrison Museum of African American Culture, said winning a commission grant "helps you stay on track. It shows you're headed in the right direction."
Roanoke Symphony Executive Director Margarite Fourcroy said the commission has been "instrumental" not only in building Roanoke Valley cultural life but in opening it to "a true cross section of our community."
To abolish the commission would be "a grave mistake" in the view of Jere Hodgin, artistic and executive director of Mill Mountain Theatre. "I have a lot of concern about what this says about the state and its priorities."
Wilder's proposed 1992-94 budget includes about $1 million for Virginia artists and arts organizations, but abolishes the commission and transfers responsibility for dispersing the funds to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
"As long as the function is being met somewhere in the state, then I'm happy," commission Chairman Edwin S. Clay III said, though he added that, personally, he'd like to see the body kept alive.
Clay is a library official in Fairfax. He said there are questions, including that of whether the museum would be acceptable to the National Endowment for the Arts as the agency through which to channel general-purpose federal arts money into Virginia. The commission has been passing along about $500,000 a year in federal money for the arts.
Don Baker doesn't care for the idea, regardless of whether the museum is acceptable to the NEA.
"I don't think the Virginia Museum has a history of including the western part of the state in its thinking," said Baker, artistic director of Lexington's Lime Kiln Arts. "It would take a major change in the way they do things. I have no trust that that will happen."
The commission's own record is not perfect in that regard, in Baker's view. He said its policies and practices could stand to be reviewed and perhaps overhauled, "but abolishing it is not the way to do it."