About 18 months ago I did an entry about the strange approach to arts funding in NYC. I was happy to see via the NY Times (free registration required) and the NY Sun that the city is moving to depoliticize the whole process.
In the past lobbying for funds diverted great deal of arts leaders’ time and energy. A number of people, including Mayor Bloomberg, are quoted as being pleased that with this change arts administrators can turn more attention to running their organizations. In the past, the mayor would regularly cut funding and the city council would restore it. Under the new plan, organizations would be certain what their funding was and know it much earlier, facilitating budget planning.
Part of the new funding criteria is peer reviewed applications assessing accountability and advancement of the organizational goals and impact. “What this does is tell groups, ‘You’re going to move forward, or we’re going to take away funding and give it to groups that are moving up,'” said Dominic M. Recchia Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Cultural Affairs Committee. “It’s a sign that you have to produce.”
According to the Sun article, even arts organizations located on city owned property will be held to these expectations. Historically, this group, known as the Cultural Institutions Group, has been funded at higher levels and had more of their funding guaranteed.
“To encourage good governance and counter the common complaint from other institutions that the CIGs receive their generous levels of funding without being held to any standards…Ten percent of an institution’s operating support will be dependent on a performance-based review process called CultureStat.”
The following bit really caught my eye.
“Several cultural leaders expressed surprise that the City Council would, in the interest of a more transparent and fair system, relinquish its power over the cultural purse strings. “I am really impressed that [City Council Speaker] Christine Quinn would, in a day and age when people need to raise money for their campaigns, take her member item allotments and give that to the peer review panel process,” Ms. Pasternak said.
Very interesting. I don’t know quite what to make of it not being really up on my NYC politics. I suspect that somebod(ies) is responsible for exhibiting no little wisdom and maturity in public service.
