Leadership

There has been a real big push in the last month or so between articles and email exhortations to have President Elect Obama appoint a cabinet level secretary of culture. As I read these things it really appears that no one has really stopped to consider what the implications of such a position might entail. There was an article that appeared right after the idea came up at the National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) this summer. I have spent about 8 hours over the last three days, alas to no avail, trying to find it because it made a convincing case for being wary about instituting such a position. It might be that I am misremembering when it appeared and that is preventing me from finding it.

From what I do recall of the article, one of the points it made was that the effort would cost the President a huge amount of political capital because there is no national popular support of the arts. Education, Health, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, etc can all have cases made for their importance and people will go along. Government support for the arts has often been a contentious issue disproportionate to the actual funding it receives. It certainly isn’t a reliable survey method, but when you read comments on the articles about a cabinet level culture position, those against pretty much unanimously mention not wanting their tax dollars to go to the arts. If the Obama administration pushes for the creation of this position, there is going to be a great deal of public debate on the topic.

Now I will be the first to admit that short of some transformative incident, national support and appreciation for the arts will likely never emerge on its own. I don’t anticipate there will ever be a good time to institute this position so there may be no point in waiting. If the next phase of the economy is going to be creative, then we certainly want strong leadership in that direction. Arts and Culture could absolutely benefit from stronger central leadership and advocacy. I would welcome a scenario where everyone working in an cultural organization was better educated and equipped, working collaboratively with other entities and enjoyed the confidence of having support on the national level.

A Secretary of Culture would also benefit the country internationally since we don’t have a central person with whom foreign officials of similar portfolios can meet. There would be much rejoicing if Visa processes for artists were facilitated and that pernicious 30% tax on foreign performer income was adjusted.

The thing to remember is that the agendas of the government, no matter how sympathetic an administration might be to one’s cause, is unlikely to be synchronized with the agendas of the arts and culture organizations of the country. It is one thing to disagree with the initiatives of the National Endowment for the Arts because the worst impact they can have on you is to decide not to fund you. When you have a person making cultural policy decisions for the entire country, that is a different matter. And if you stepped up to call for this cabinet level position, your cooperation will certainly be expected.

There is the question of whose interests will this person predominantly represent. Both Hollywood and folk artists are home grown and national treasures, but money buys access and influence. Will the Secretary of Culture press for greater freedoms of artistic expression or fight to preserve and extend copyright and intellectual property protections at the behest of large corporations? Will live experiences and interactions with art be valued or more virtual experiences like television, film, internet and video games?

If one thing is supported, other areas end up lacking by simple default. What happens though if an administration decides something should be actively censored or undermined? Things can be declared as unrepresentative of the culture of the United States or simply un-American and we will have asked that someone be placed in the position of doing so.

Don’t think it will happen? Last year British Culture Minister, Marge Hodge, criticized The Proms of…well actually being too British and not inclusive enough of the multi-ethnic backgrounds of the country. Yes, multi-cultural focus is to be desired, but it could have easily gone the other way and people were still miffed at her comment. In 2002 another British culture minister, Kim Howells, stated the contenders for the visual arts Turner Prize had produced “conceptual bullshit.”

It is one thing if a senator stands up and criticizes a work of art but quite another when someone whose job it is to eat, drink and sleep arts and culture and theoretically knows what they are talking about makes damning statements.

Finally, don’t forget, there is no guarantee arts and cultural institutions will get any additional money. The budget can be cut regardless of the title the nation’s top arts official holds. In fact, for a number of years Congress will be able to claim they quintupled the arts budget without grant awards increasing a penny because all the money will be directed to the bureaucracy of this new Department of Culture.

So the question is, are you willing to accept the possibility of all this? As cynical as I may sound here, honestly as soon as I read about the NPAC proposal to have a cabinet level position, my first thought was of Gilberto Gil. In my mind, he is the Culture Minister to emulate in terms of striking a balance between the interests of the creators and consumers and promoting creative expression.

But I am also cautious. Given how we have discovered that the Justice Department and Inspectors General of many government offices have been subverted and suborned in recent years, there are no assurances anyone can offer me that my gravest concerns can be warded against.

I guess for me, it comes back around to where I started this post. If there is enough political will to make the position effective and credible to accomplish all the positive things we hope for, then I am generally willing to accept the potential for the negatives.

A recent revelation that Guthrie Theatre director Joe Dowling makes over $680,000 in salary and benefits in 2007 has a lot of people grumbling. As of this writing, there are 156 comments on a Star-Tribune article on Dowling’s pay. Some commenters defend the salary in the context of the Guthrie being at the top of the theatre game as opposed to the local sports teams who are not performing too well and get paid much more and receive public funding for stadiums. Others are saying his pay is ludicrous and that the theatre should not be receiving any more public money if they can afford to pay him that amount. Of cited is a desire that proceeds of the tax passed last month to benefit the arts not go to the theatre.

Dowling is purported to be the highest paid theatre director in the country. I don’t have my passwords to the latest salary surveys with me to check but I will assume it is correct or nearly so. A couple years ago, I asked if a musical director of a symphony was really worth X times as much as the musician. (I can’t seem to find the entry, so it might have been another highly placed position in a symphony.) Looking at the same comparison on an annual basis between Dowling and an actor or perhaps ticket office clerk, I would say Dowling wasn’t worth it.

However, looking at Dowling’s history at the Guthrie, that is another matter. He has spent the last 13 years there. Twelve of those years the theatre has been in the black. He retired $1.8 million in debt, expanded audiences and guided the organization to construct a new facility on the Mississippi River. ($100,000 of his 2007 salary was a bonus for doing so.) In this context, he is someone the board of directors will want to keep around. Whether they could do so for less might be the question but they would certainly be fools to immediately pay whomever eventually replaces him close to his departing salary. I daresay there are few in the country capable of directing the Guthrie at the level it currently operates.

As something of a comparison, this past November it was revealed that the highest paid university president in the country was David Sargent at Suffolk University. It raised quite a ruckus when it was learned he makes $2.5 million when the median salary for presidents is about $500,000. There were some extenuating circumstances like the fact he has worked for the university since 1956 and has been president for the last 19 years and never taken a sabbatical in that time.

Is longevity and dedication worth that much? Is it worth that much in light of the rising cost of college educations and the declining value of personal assets?

Given the tough financial times, people are especially sensitive to any indication people receiving public monies are squandering it. There is some indication that Dowling is responsive to the needs of the organization. According to the article when times were tough back in 2003, he took a voluntary 20% pay cut. Now assuming he was making around $300,000 at the time, (I don’t use Guidestar often enough to spring for the Premium membership necessary to view 990s from that far back.), that is a $60,000 cut.

For a lot of theatres, that number probably represents a position or two. Given his most recent salary, the same percentage would probably represent four or five positions. In that context, you can see why people commenting on the article are suggesting public and personal funds be directed toward the less affluent arts organizations. It is people’s right to spend their money where they feel it will do the most good.

I would argue though that the Guthrie Theatre isn’t just any ordinary theatre. It’s founding has a place in theatre history at the start of the residential theatre movement with the intention of being an alternative to Broadway. It is ironic then that the first salary comparison the article makes it to New York. The Guthrie is meant to set a standard, and by many measures it does, but Broadway is apparently still the gold standard. So if the Twin Cities and surrounding region feel the organization has lived up to the promise of it’s founding and has cultivated a high quality product for audiences without commercial success being the sole driving force, they ought to be proud and support it.

This is an entirely different issue than how much the people responsible for creating this state are being paid to do so. There are far too few great theatres around to damn the organization for how much the director is being paid. It is perfectly valid to be identify the Guthrie as a source of Minnesotan pride and ask the board to engage in a conversation about the appropriateness of the leadership’s salaries. I am afraid it would get lost in the noise of a hundred other issues that spawn objections, but it would really be exciting and interesting to have someone lay out the case for why the pay is justified.

Because you know, everyone is focused on the issue of why he gets paid so much more than everyone else for the work he does. No one in the article or comments asks why it is everyone else puts up with getting paid so much less for the work they do. That is the conversation the Guthrie should start.

N.B. – January 6 – Editorial in the Star Tribune defending Guthrie board’s decisions regarding Dowling’s salary. Additionally notes that in the larger world of non-profits, Dowling comes in at #14 in the Minneapolis area.

Amid all the press about the Obama victory last week and the extremely slim margin of votes separating Norm Coleman and Al Franken in Minnesota, you may have missed the news that Minnesotans passed a constitutional amendment to increase the sales tax 3/8 of 1% to fund the cleaning and maintenance of Minnesotan lakes, parks and wildlife areas and to fund the arts.

Arts Go Fishing And Catch Some Money
You may be wondering, as I was, how the arts and culture became a part of the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. According to a couple sources, sport fishermen and hunters found a common cause with the arts. On the Pioneer Press website, Chris Niskanen writes (my emphasis)

“A small part of the general fund (about $10 million) goes toward arts funding (out of the state’s $34 billion budget), but about one-third was cut during the state’s budget crisis in 2003. The hunting and fishing community at first opposed arts being added to the amendment, but saw arts supporters had similar arguments for funding. The alliance ultimately helped the amendment pass the Legislature and, perhaps, will help it pass on Nov. 4.”

Bait Your Hook With A Powerful Lure-Arts and Culture

But the quote I really liked came from an article Artsjournal.com linked to in which columnist Jay Weiner writes,

“As it was, the pioneers of the amendment idea — the sportsmen with bullets and hooks — were wary enough of the arts being included … until they saw the political power of the statewide arts and cultural organizations.”

My first thought upon reading this was that if this is true, the Minnesota arts community should be the envy of the rest of the country. Every state should be lucky enough to have an arts community with enough political clout to help get a constitutional amendment passed. Of course, that influence didn’t magically appear, the state arts community would have been working on cultivating it over the course of years and probably decades.

If you have any ambition of trying something like this in your state, read Niskanen’s piece which addresses the arguments for and against the amendment.

You may also want to read Weiner’s article which addresses the apparently mocking suggestion that the Minnesota Vikings should have gotten on board the amendment so they could get a stadium. Weiner points out first that as fervent as sports fans in Minnesota are, they never seem to rally behind their teams politically. The other thing he mentions is that berating the arts and parks people perpetuates an environment which keeps sports fans from forming coalitions. Some interesting thoughts on the whole from a sports writer.

This Sunday, Honolulu Symphony principal conductor Andreas Delfs expressed some strong sentiments about the way his organization had been treated by the city. The symphony performs in the city owned Blaisdell Hall and was bumped out last year by the production of The Lion King which did not help their tenuous financial situation in the least.

Said Delfs in the Sunday newspaper article,

“I’ve never worked with an orchestra that was so good and that got so little respect from its city. I’ve never seen a city treat a major cultural and educational asset so poorly. And I think it’s been a long tradition — I don’t want to blame anyone in particular — of taking this orchestra for granted and not realizing how good it is. The people who make our lives difficult don’t really know what we’re doing.”

One of the problems the symphony is facing is that the city is limiting how far out they can schedule dates which the symphony says prevents them from engaging guest artists who arrange their appearances years in advance. Delfs says it is because the city is skeptical about the symphony’s financial stability. Another thing that makes the symphony anxious is the looming threat of another extended run of a Broadway show that might displace them from the performance hall, and in all probability, from existence.

The symphony sent out a letter to its supporters asking them to contact government officials. The letter reiterated most of the details in Delfs’ interview and expanded on their perspective of the situation.

“Blaisdell Concert Hall was always intended to be the home of the Honolulu Symphony.In fact, it was one of the reasons for its construction. The presentation of symphony concerts was a major contributing factor to its architectural design. There are by-laws allowing for the Symphony and other local performing arts organizations to have preference in securing their dates.The City and County of Honolulu continues to negotiate to bring in acts during the Symphony’s prime season. By our rental agreement, the City is required to offer an alternative venue when the symphony is bumped out of Blaisdell Concert Hall.The alternative venue offered to the symphony is the Waikiki Shell which requires amplification, provides no outdoor coverage or protection for audience or orchestra, and is unsuitable for live classical symphony performances.”

However, according to an excerpt they quote from The Honolulu Symphony: A Century of Music by Dale E. Hall, the symphony doesn’t enjoy the same relationship with the city that other symphonies do.

“The Symphony is not a “favored tenant,” a status particular performing groups sometimes enjoy in city charters. According to the standard rental agreement, the auditoriums director “may give preference” to Hawaii-based non-profit organizations, but has “full authority” in scheduling, taking into consideration “a diversity of events” and “possible financial return to the city and the overall benefits.”

This is unfortunately the latest of many problems the symphony has faced since I started writing about them three years ago. It is something of a shame because unlike the recent situations in Jacksonville, FL and Columbus, OH, the Honolulu Symphony musicians, administration and board seem to be getting along okay. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is the first time a principal conductor has gone to bat for the musicians during the difficulties of the last few years. If any have, I doubt they had Delfs’ pluck.

(Though I wouldn’t doubt my Inside the Arts compadres, Messrs. Spigelman and Eddins would be equal to the task, I hope they never have to face this situation.)

I can appreciate the position the city is in. The face a choice between the income from a 6-12 week run of a Broadway show versus the uncertain future of an organization that has been facing an uncertain future and having a hard time paying the bills for a number of years. (Disclosure: They owe my facility money too, though not so much that we would refuse to rent to them once they clear their account.) It has been a long, anxiety filled period for a lot of people. I have a lot of sympathy for them.

While catching up on the Fractured Atlas blog, I caught this link to WNYC’s Soundcheck Smackdown about the need for arts organizations to cultivate younger leaders. One of the first phrases tossed around was about being on the “wrong side of 60” meaning that the leaders of some of the most prestigious/large organizations need someone with the gravitas of experience leading things.

One interesting comment that was made was that the appointment of 27 year old Gustavo Dudamel as conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic might alienate the audience who would be concerned by his apparent lack of experience. It was immediately noted that given there is such a concern about the graying of orchestra audiences, you may not want to continue to cater to their perceptions. (Though they do fund the organization in the short term and that can’t be ignored.) Later in the program a caller noted that Zubin Mehta was only 26 when he became music director of the L.A. Philharmonic and host John Schaefer opined that perhaps LA has a talent for identifying promising leaders.

Some of the issues that come up in the discussion between Schaefer and guests Lee Rosenbaum and Barry Hessenius had to do with pay, both that younger people have an expectation of making more but will accept less than A – list leaders. Given the finite resources of the 90% of organizations that don’t operate at the level of the elites, it can be difficult to attract and retain talent. But this much we knew already, eh? Hessenius notes what I have discussed in earlier entries. The organizations with the most youth involvement are those who allow young people a greater role in decision making — something the arts haven’t done as a whole.

Following a link from an entry on the Non-profiteer, I arrived at a site with a report about Non-profit leadership. The summary of the study was so similar to the Building Movement report I cited last month, I initially thought it was the same one mirrored by a partner in that 2004 study.

Come to find out this study, Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out is brand spanking new having just come out this year to report a survey of 5756 members of members of Idealist.org and constituents of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. They also held six focus groups across the country with 55 non-profit staffers who had never been executive directors.

This survey included a much larger sample size than Building Movement’s (though they certainly acknowledge BM) but generally gets the same responses. People feel they need to balance their work and personal lives, they aren’t terribly keen on becoming executive directors, don’t feel they are being mentored or have many professional development opportunities. There are some nice charts graphs and charts on the report home page, (on the Myer Foundation website by the way), that summarize many of the results. Top two of five reasons not to become Executive Director-Don’t want Fundraising responsibilities and Would Have to Sacrifice Work-Life Balance.

There were two results that I hadn’t seen before that I thought were interesting. First is that 10% more people of color were desired to become executive director than whites and people of lower income were wanted to become executive director than people from middle and upper class backgrounds. I should note that a large number of those belonging to the surveyed organizations are associated with social service/justice, health services, environmental protection/justice organizations rather than specifically with the arts.

The second finding I found interesting was that people of color and women felt they needed more education and training time before becoming executive director than white men who tended to feel they were ready now. The surveyors attribute this more to the fact that more men than women and people of color hold senior positions and are being groomed to be executive director in twice the number. They believed women and people of color felt the need to be over-educated and burgeoning with experience in reaction to this.

I should point out the survey also notes that a large portion of their sample were unemployed (11%) or in the first year (43%) of their career. I do feel women and people of color need better representation, but I don’t want my entry to serve as fodder for protest when the numbers are so slanted. I think this mix is fine for reporting aspirations but not necessarily for reporting the reality of a situation. For example, only 4% of those surveyed said they were being groomed to be executive director. However in a 2006 survey of executive directors conducted by the same group, “52% of executive directors reported actively developing one or more people on their staffs to be executive directors someday.” The relative lack of experience in this sample needs to be taken into account when looking at some of these results.

One thing I liked about the Myer Foundation website is the resource page. I will admit to only taking a cursory glance at a few of the blogs and other resources but I liked what I saw. For example, this entry on The Bamboo Project Blog that suggests using a webcam, computer and internet calling services like Skype to turn Baby Boomers retirees into long distance mentors and recording the sessions to create a mentoring library. (The use of which will require the cultivation of learning as a value among non-profit leaders, of course.)

There are also a number of links about retirement planning. The lack of which emerged as a motivating factor on many fronts in both this survey and the one Building Movement did a few years ago.