Flash-in-a-pan recalled
Posted by: admin in Art is the first thing that goes out the window, Minneapolis art town blues, Ah Minneapolis..., Struggling small art organizations, Art market decline, Artistic failure in AmericaHere’s a local media follow-up story to my previous post regarding the closing of the Minnesota Center for Photography (fragments are quoted below). The locals have been fairly quiet, on the whole, about the loss of this center–perhaps shell-shocked after a spate of bad news in the local arts community, perhaps resigned for much more to come. (If I were a betting person, I’d place even money on the MMAA to become the next artistic failure victim; this gives good reason for us to read Glenn Gordon’s homage, on The Thousandth Word, to the museum’s permanent collection show, now up at the beseiged museum.)
Some excerpts of the Strib’s story on MCP:
Arts group another victim of economy
Hard times force the closing of a cornerstone of the local art scene, the Minnesota Center for Photography.
The Minnesota Center for Photography (MCP) is permanently closing its doors today after 18 years, a victim of tough financial times and staff departures.
Founded above an auto repair shop on Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis, the nonprofit organization grew into one of the Twin Cities’ most important showcases for photography, especially by Minnesota artists….
Four years ago it moved from dingy basement digs in Uptown to a sunny, renovated building in northeast Minneapolis — a move that signaled the emergence of Northeast as a gallery mecca not seen since the Warehouse District’s heydays in the 1980s.
As recently as January, MCP had a staff of five and a projected annual budget of $970,000. But its finances deteriorated in the past seven months as the board pared the budget to $650,000, executive director George Slade resigned, staff members left for other jobs, and one was laid off.
“It was sort of a perfect storm” of trouble, said Mark Wilson, co-chair of MCP’s board of directors. The board voted Monday evening to close. The remaining two staffers were informed Tuesday…. “The most distressing thing is that there is such a passion for the organization’s mission in the community. It got to the point where we didn’t see long-term sustainability and didn’t think it was appropriate to solicit more funds.”…
News of the closing startled but did not surprise members of the art community, where rumors of financial difficulties had circulated for months….
Corporate and foundation support remained stable at about $100,000 a year, Wilson said, but individual support plummeted following a three-year expansion campaign that ended last summer….
“I don’t want to blame anybody,” Wilson said. “We had a good run and a lot of people did a lot of really good things for us.”
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August 7th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
this dead horse just insists that it’s a Romero flick, so I’ll say it again…warehouse district of the 80’s -for profit… NE of today, non-profit. And the domino’s go clickety clickety clickety click……
August 7th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
That Mary Abbe piece contained two misstatements in its description of me (which were corrected in the next day’s edition of the Strib)–I had served as the artistic director since summer 2003, never as the executive director, and I had not resigned as of the Center’s closing on July 31. MCP’s last executive director, Laura Bonicelli, did resign earlier this year, and no replacement had been named.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
You said this before? I don’t think you said it to me, but it’s possible there is a bit of truth to your assessment, with a bit of tempering. That is, things may be somewhat worse now, as a number of these orgs now currently struggling and tanking were around in the 1980s and survived through then (only to bite the shit today)…
August 7th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Thanks for weighing in, George. You know, in an earlier draft of this blog post I had provided a correction to Abbe’s misstatements, but then I wondered if perhaps she knew something I didn’t about your status (since MCP had been silent about what was going on over the past few months as it tried to deal with its problems)… I appreciate your setting the record straight here. And hey, I should add I’ve been meaning to contact you of late. Perhaps we can do lunch or coffee some time? I’ll email you–assuming you MCP addy is valid for awhile longer… Otherwise you can email me at admin(at)artisticfailure(dot)com.
August 9th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I thought I mentioned it over cocktails at some point. Kinda my dead horse that I love to beat, for-profit baby, for profit is the way. But then again I’m one of those filthy republicans….
August 9th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Ah. I guess I’m unsure what exactly you’re advocating. Do you want a return to the locally thriving for-profit art market that existed in the 70s-80s? That would be great, but it would require a return to pre-Reaganite thinking on taxes. That is, most of the for-profit galleries of that era were killed by Reagan’s 1986 tax act that closed the tax loop hole for purchases of art (and ended the boom in corporate and other art purchases)… I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to go back to that.
So are you advocating for the revocation of non-profit status for arts organizations? Since that would effectively kill off 90-95 percent of ALL arts organizations–including community children’s choirs, ballet schools, community art centers, most likely the arts institute that you work for, and lots of other organizations that even diehard Republicans take advantage of–and would eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, end billions of dollars in economic activity, and cripple an entire industry, causing negative ripple effects across the economy, I can’t imagine that’s what you’re suggesting. (Even the Bushies, the Helmses, the Hatches, and the Giulianis never were so heartless and reckless to suggest such a thing…)
What exactly are you suggesting?