Here’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.

By MARY ABBE, Star Tribune

Last update: July 30, 2008 - 11:52 PM

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.”

The Minnesota Center for Photography announced today that it is, after 18 years, discontinuing “business operations at the close of business on July 31.” MCP was one of five great artist-member organizations in the Twin Cities; its mission was “To support and promote the creation and appreciation of photographic arts.”

The closing of the Minnesota Center for Photography is just the latest of a series of high-profile public melt-downs of local arts organizations. It is likely not going to be the last such implosion.

The letter, sent out 7/30/08 by MCP’s board, reads as follows:

It is with regret that we must inform you that Minnesota Center for Photography is discontinuing business operations at the close of business on July 31st. Over the past six months we have unsuccessfully attempted to adjust our budget and raise additional funds to pay down debt and fund continuing operations.

The Board made this decision with reluctance and after attempting whatever we could do to permit the survival of MCP.

On behalf of the many stakeholders in Minnesota Center For Photography, we thank you for your continuing interest and support of MCP’s mission over the years.

Very truly yours,

Chuck Koosmann, Co-Chair

Mark L. Wilson, Co-Chair

Mary Abbe of the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s been busy of late. She’s the source of two of today’s Bullet Points of Failure (B.P.O.F.), both of which follow up on items I’ve been covering here on CAFA in recent weeks.

• In Anxious artists’ fears quelled, protest averted with attorney’s answers, Abbe writes to follow up on the MAEP kerfuffle. Apparently, on July 24 a group of artists attended the MIA’s annual members meeting, attempting to mount a protest, only to see it wither “under the weight of parliamentary procedure… Board president Brian Palmer, a Minneapolis lawyer, defused the situation by answering each question with judicial precision and disquisitions on the museum’s legal responsibilities. The Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program will continue unchanged and independent, he said. Questioners would need to ask the program’s coordinator why he resigned voluntarily if they wished to know.” And thus spaketh the passionate crowd.

• In SOS: Same old struggles at the MMAA, Abbe reports further on a story reported here previously, the resignation of Bruce Lilly, the director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art. “The resignation last week of Bruce Lilly,” she wrote, “the museum’s director for 11 years, highlights the St. Paul institution’s long-festering problems. Museum officials put a brave face on the situation, insisting that the organization would find a new leader, new quarters and more money. ‘It’s not easy, but the staff here is up to the challenge,’ said Natalie Obee, the museum’s business manager, who who stepped in as interim executive director.” Apparently, the museum has had a long cycle of debt–including an estimated deficity of $260,000 in 2007, on an annual budget of about $700,000–and is facing the loss of its current space (the second time it’s faced a move in the past five years).

(** = Bullet Points of Failure)

Having been away all this past week at a remote and top-secret rural retreat (no email, no cell phone, no Internet — ahhh!), imagine my chagrin at coming back home to find my local community on fire like Atlanta — at least as far as local artistic failure is concerned.

To clarify what I mean, here are a few bullet points:

• First off, it turns out, the local arts resignation I reported on last week — by Stewart Turnquist, a 31-year veteran of a unique artist-run program run out of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts — resulted in a groundswell of upset and concern in the local pool of artists, culminating in a community-wide meeting at the Institute today. I happened to attend this meeting, which inspired me only to muse on the nature of happiness and the arts at my yang-site.

• As you will recall from reading CAFA, I have reported on multiple local defections, failures, and collapses of arts administrators and organizations in recent months. Just to give a recap, in the past 2-3 years, prior to this past week that is, Minneapolis has seen the loss of three directors of two major arts institutions, the defection of a State Arts Board director after only one year, and the removal or resignation of five-six major curators at top arts institutions. It has seen the collapse of one major artist-member crafts organization (the Minnesota Crafts Council), the near-implosion of Minnesota Film Arts (which mounts the Mpls-St. Paul International Film Festival), the collapse of a regional Tony-Award winning theater, and the near-failure and rumored impending collapse of countless mid-sized arts organizations. (Rumors that are so common that it doesn’t seem right to pass them on, lest it keeps said orgs from rebounding. Just as an example, however, I will mention that this organization is emblematic; after failing to pay rent for three months this fall/winter, its director resigned and 3/4 of its staff was let go, and thus far no replacement has been hired.)

• As if that all isn’t enough, on July 16, the board of the Southern Theater in Minneapolis — a venue that presents works by local and national performance groups in town — announced it was placing its long-time (30+-year veteran) Artistic Director Jeff Bartlett on “indefinite leave.” By July 17, public responses to this news had come from a coterie of interested citizen/artists and from a long-time writer on dance in Minneapolis. The immediacy and intensity of the response from the public resulted in, on July 18, a response from the Southern Theater’s board, which cited the need to deal with “a huge financial deficit, a building badly in need of repair, faulty and problematic accounting practices, personnel issues, low staff morale, and complaints from artists” and the resulting need to restructure the organization.

• Finally (finally!), a press release came across my desk on July 18 announcing the resignation, after eleven years, of Minnesota Museum of American Art executive director Bruce A. Lilly.

I can’t think of anything else to say at this point, other than to quote the words of Henry Longfellow: “All things must change to something new, to something strange.” Be brave, Minnesota, this will all pass.

Lisa Boyle, the owner of the 4-year-old Lisa Boyle Gallery, has just announced on the Bad at Sports blog that she’s calling it quits.

“Why is it so GOD DAMNED hard,” she writes, “to sell a piece of art around here? I can’t help asking myself this as I soon join the ranks of civilians outside the Art World proper and close the doors on my [gallery].”

Boyle acknowledges that she’s in good company, as “a handful of my compatriots are shutting down near the same time. 40000 last December, soon Navta Schulz, Gesheidle and others. Closings here, closings in New York, even my friend in Boston are hanging it up.” This leads her to ask, as many have, “Whose fault is it?”

She ponders the oft-cited local (Chicago) presumed reasons–lack of collectors, lack of critics, lack of museum support, nepotism in the market, competition from LA and NY–and then she comes to a realization:

…here’s the big bad bald truth, people: I’m just not that good at running a gallery. No, thank you for your support and encouragement, and I truly appreciate your assessment that I have a “good eye”, I do! It’s just an unavoidable truth to me that we’re being flushed out of our excuses, me and all the other quitters, by the simple fact that there are a few people out there who have been able to sustain important programs and be happy running a successful gallery in Chicago and certainly elsewhere. In other words, it can be done, so there’s no use in talking about how hard it is to do it… Making a life (if not a living) out of selling arbitrarily priced objects that no one needs is a very competitive venture. Not as easy as it looks. You have to want it. I mean really super bad. If you are going to create a successful system of supporting artists, connecting with institutions, and staying happy and successful as an art dealer, you have to want that more than a lot of other things. Like more than a paycheck, for example. More than every single Saturday for the rest of your natural born life. More than healthy exposure to the sun. You have to welcome payment in the form of some awkward social cache rather than in money, and you have to not mind being chained to a desk between four white walls for years, with the exception of those times you pack up your wares, like a traveling salesman, and take the show on the road. All of these things have to be fun and exciting to you…

Lisa added that she’s going to be working, part-time, in an academic office at Robert Morris College–no doubt relishing a new sense of sanity and stability, even as she gets a regular paycheck. I will add it’s refreshing to hear someone actually come out and speak truth in this matter of artistic failure–in this case, of just one gallery; though her word could just as well be applied to the entire system of arts in this country.

To her words I will add my own: As it happens, I too have just announced I am giving up, in much the same way and for much the same reasons as Lisa, my own three-year quixotic (dayjob) pursuit of a life and career of support in the arts (to go to work in a more stable workplace, associated with academia, that is closer to my home).

The local arts community here is atwitter these days with talk about the recent failure of the Theatre de la Jeune Lune. With a reported debt of more than $1 million, the theater is closing after more than 30 years of presenting a particular brand of original, experimental, physical productions. The shutdown comes just three years after Jeune Lune won a Tony Award for best regional theater, thus emerging as a national creative force. Dominique Serrand, a founder, had this to say about the end:

“Today, we begin imagining a new way of working,” Serrand said. “Building upon our artistic legacy, and facing a different future, we are exploring ways to reinvent an agile, nomadic, entrepreneurial theatre with a new name that will create essential and innovative art for today’s changing audience.”

[Translation: We’re failing because the audience is drying up.]

Meanwhile, an editorial from today’s Charleston Post and Courier suggests that something similar is happening to a theater in that town. Jill Eathorne Bahr, the resident choregrapher at the Charleston Ballet Theatre, pleas, in a piece called “Arts need support more than ever,” for more support for the arts from a seemingly ambivalent public. “Raising money for the arts in today’s financial climate,” she writes, “can be daunting, thankless and endless. Federal and state funds continue to be pushed into the background. And the product, dance, is more difficult to sell.

“I believe there is room and potential funding for everyone, but it won’t be as easy to do what we’ve done in the past. We’ll have to … generate new interest and operate in an accepting and generous manner. It takes a driven group to carry off a high-wire act like this.”

Attached below is a piece, recently published on mnartists.org, that describes a public forum I attended on “The State of the Arts in Minneapolis.” In the essay, I attempt to dig a bit further beyond the usual propagandistic platitudes and oft-repeated old saws about art here in frozen Minnesota to examine what things are really like for artists and small art organizations here.

COMMENTARY: What is the State of the Arts in Minneapolis?

Commentary by Michael Fallon

Or, “The Future’s So Bright, You Gotta Wear Blinders:” arts administrator and critic Michael Fallon comments on the recent panel discussion about the state of arts in Mpls and makes a case for candor in our civic conversation on the subject
On the evening of June 12, the Minneapolis Arts Commission, “a volunteer body that oversees the city’s public art and promotion of the arts,” invited a panel of arts leaders (from a handful of the city’s most influential arts organizations) to participate in a discussion at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts with the aim of taking stock of “the current state of arts in Minneapolis, and how to move it forward?” The commission’s website describes the night’s agenda as follows: “Minneapolis has enjoyed an arts explosion in the last few years, but how do we use that momentum and continue to build Minneapolis’ reputation as a leader on the national arts scene?” mnartists.org asked arts administrator and critic Michael Fallon to attend the event and report back with his impressions on the evening’s conversation.

IF YOU HAPPENED TO MISS THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES of the recent panel discussion on “Minneapolis’ artistic future,” sponsored by the Minneapolis Arts Commission, you didn’t miss much. In what best can be described as an excruciating exercise of intensive local arts spin, early attendees to the event were treated to a host of thought-terminating clichés from Minneapolis City Council President Barbara Johnson and from representatives of the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Minnesota Orchestra, Loft Literary Center, Guthrie Theater, and McKnight Foundation.

Just to give a taste, the event began with a vague (somewhat desperate-sounding) appeal from Johnson to the scattered 65 or 70 audience members: “Please know the city views the arts as an essential part and great promoter of our community.” The panelists then unanimously echoed their convictions about the significance of the local arts community. “We’re in great shape,” said Jennifer Komar Olivarez, an associate curator at the MIA (filling in for the previously planned speaker, the Institute’s new director Kaywin Feldman). “Compared to other cities, Minneapolis is very impressive in terms of art,” agreed Philippe Vergne, chief curator at the Walker Art Center. And thus followed a succession of many of the same, shop-worn old saws that local arts advocates are prone to tossing off (usually without supporting statistical proof) when asked about the arts here. This is just a sampling of the glib, oft-repeated claims that were reiterated in the night’s opening remarks: Minneapolis is the “most literate city in America,” has the “most theater tickets sold per capita outside of Broadway” and the “widest array of artist service organizations in the country,” not to mention the “deepest sources of philanthropic support of the arts anywhere.”

It would be a fine thing if the vaunted art-city status that Minneapolis grants itself were provably true, and if the lip-service served up regarding support for local arts actually had the solid basis in fact that people claim. Unfortunately, the truth, as it can be empirically shown, is less sunshiny than I’m guessing any of the evening’s panelists are willing to admit. Minneapolis—unlike many cities around the country (including its neighbor, Saint Paul) and, notably, unlike most other cities with a reputation for arts friendliness—actually provides little practical support to the arts. Minneapolis offers almost no city funding to arts organizations and artists (beyond the requisite occasional public art project) and has no staff dedicated to overseeing arts development or planning. But, as was not the case with the optimistic spin offered up at the recent panel discussion, you don’t have to take my word for it. This bleak assessment of the lack of practical arts support by the city of Minneapolis actually comes from scholar and economist Ann Markusen, author of a national study investigating how various cities support the arts. Here’s what Markusen uncovered about Minneapolis in her 2006 paper, “Cultural Planning and the Creative City”:

In Minneapolis … the City Council abolished its Department of
Cultural Affairs in the 1990s, leaving only a small Office of Cultural
Affairs with responsibility for public art and publicly supported arts
programming, moved under the umbrella Community Planning and
Economic Development Department. There is also a separate City of
Minneapolis Arts Commission, but it has few powers and little
political clout, and is in general ignored by the more powerful arts
institutions in the City [this has important ramifications, as explained
below]. Cultural affairs departments and offices have suffered
relative resource losses in recent decades as taxpayer revolts and
higher priority placed on everything from public safety to
economic development have squeezed their shares of the public purse.

Markusen further explodes the myth of Minneapolis’ abundant arts support through a point-by-point comparison of urban arts policies around the nation. As opposed to the other, more truly arts-friendly cities—Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and several others—revealed by Markusen’s research, Minneapolis has no dedicated arts funds to support local arts activities, no central planning mechanism or agency to manage arts development activities around the city or region, and there is little sympathy for the arts reflected in urban planning and economic development initiatives. It’s telling that, unlike what you’ll find in some cities, for the City of Minneapolis, cultural policy has little standing. There are few formal avenues for interaction between arts organizations or artists and city planning departments with regard to the management of land use or the city’s zoning laws, which do not permit the mixing of commercial and residential use. Such restrictive policies about urban zoning make it needlessly difficult for artists and small organizations to survive in the region; specifically, these sorts of policies tend, over time, to foil artists’ and small arts organizations’ attempts to create affordable live/work spaces. Further, Markusen explains, in Minneapolis, it appears that “larger arts and cultural institutions have garnered the lion’s share of city commitments in terms of land, parking garages, and support from state bonding funds.” Generally, allocating such a large proportion of civic resources to a few big arts institutions further leaves small organizations, neighborhood arts centers, and individual artists out in the cold. (It is important to point out here that the bulk of the panelists work for just such large organizations which have been among the few beneficiaries of the city’s narrow arts policies, and that may help explain their allegiance to the group-think about local arts.)

If you are beginning to feel your blood pressure rise upon reading all of this, you will begin to get a sense of how I was feeling after the first round of statements by the panel. Fortunately for my health and yours, however, it was at that precise moment that the panel moderator, Fox 9 news anchor Robyne Robinson, stepped in to begin directing panelists toward a more measured assessment and constructive discussion about how the city is doing regarding the arts. “We can sit here and repeat over and over how great things are,” Robinson said, “but then you hear these constant complaints from artists. If things are great, why is the discontent there? Do we just have too many artists and are unable to feed everyone?”

McKnight Foundation program director for the arts, Vickie Benson’s response to this question—voicing her particular concern about the well-being of individual artists locally—represented the first genuine moment of the night, and her remarks elicited an outburst of loud applause from the audience. “We can’t forget,” Benson said, “about the artists who live with poverty, who have no health insurance, and who face a lack of retirement money. We can’t forget about the artists who bring so much vibrancy to our community.”

Other panelists, at first, weren’t quite so willing to immediately validate the local artists’ disgruntlement. “We cannot please everybody,” said Philippe Vergne, slightly testily. “We make choices and, by nature, this is discriminating. Discontent of this sort is not just present in Minneapolis. It happens in L.A., it happens in New York. It is in the nature of what we do.… Desire is important. We need desire or art dies.” Jennifer Komar Olivarez of the MIA agreed: “If you look at the broader picture, our role is to set a certain standard, a bar for local artists to aspire to. We can’t be everything to everybody.” Still, Robinson, to her credit, persisted in asking about the city’s role in supporting smaller organizations and individual artists. She kept dancing around this point throughout the next hour or so of discussion, digging for a more human, more specific response, asking for panelists’ assessments of the current state of affairs which might go beyond feel-good spin. And, as a result, over the course of the evening the discussion grew increasingly realistic about the state of the arts in Minneapolis and about its immediate prospects in the current times and near future.

In short order, Robinson asked whether there were inflated expectations for large Minneapolis arts organizations as a consequence of the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of expansion many of them have undergone in the past five years. (Some panelists admitted there has, indeed, been some tension and growing pains in the wake of recent redevelopment.) Robinson also asked about the potential for large locally-based businesses—which have given tons of corporate money to support these expansions—to exert undue influence on arts programming at the organizations on the receiving end of their largesse. (Most panelists sidestepped the question, instead arguing about the relative merits of “blockbuster” shows. I feel compelled to point out here that I suggested evidence of such corporate influence on arts programming was already beginning to emerge in an essay I wrote more than two years ago.) Robinson—again, to her credit—pressed the point, asking if the panelists’ organizations ever worry about “selling out” in the wake of their recent expansions (which the panelists again, for the most part, side-stepped). Then, she followed up with a question about whether the small organizations in town have suffered from competition with the large institutions (ole!).

As the discussion progressed toward its conclusion, and these expert panelists became less and less able to answer the hard questions about the struggles of the larger art community in Minneapolis, I could tell that Robinson was beginning to circle the truth. When she asked about the financial challenges facing the arts community in the current economy and, specifically, about whether the big organizations had contingency plans to deal with the difficult fiscal realities of the times, the panelists all—to a person—gave grudging nods. “We talk a lot about it,” admitted Vergne. “It’s a very constraining moment…. We’ve been much fatter in the past, but at the moment we are on Weight Watchers.” The other panelists spoke about the various ways that their organizations have been readjusting their activities to cope with declining support and increased costs, even as they grapple with the high expectations that a tapped art public has for these highly visible (and expensive) institutions. Then Vergne continued: “We have to change the way we operate and change our rules of engagement. If we don’t, we become dinosaurs and die.”

And so, the curtain had at last been lifted, revealing a reality beyond our blind faith in the region’s art supremacy. Now, perhaps, a real discussion can begin.

Addendum re: Minneapolis’ Failing Arts Future (June 24): The New York Times noted today that the Dia Foundation has announced the hiring of noted Minneapolis arts booster Philippe Vergne to take over directorship of the struggling foundation. Vergne’s departure marks the fifth high-profile Minneapolis arts leader to leave the city within the past year. Others include former Walker director Kathy Halbreich and chief curator Richard Flood, state arts board director Tom Proehl, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts director William Griswold.

With the scattered attention span and the fickle and dimming memory of the Internet and its attendant (Alzheimer’s-striken) institutions, I was only mildly surprised to discover in recent weeks that some of the publications for which I’d written arts profiles, reviews, features, and other articles in the past ten years were rapidly expunging their online journalistic databases of recent writing by me.

Therefore, in order to preserve at least a small part of local (Minnesota) art history for purposes of research and novelty, I am building on this blog-page my own live-link personal online database of some of the more than 170 pieces of arts writing I’ve completed in the past decade-plus. (Note: To finish listing all the available story-links is going to take just a little bit of time, so please be patient and check back often.)

Here’s a study in contrasts that reveals something about the extreme conditions facing the arts and arts organizations these days.

In Minnesota, where governmental arts funding has been flat for the past six years or so, and other forms of support are slowly shrinking (such that most arts organizations that I’m aware of are having financial problems; some severe), lobbyists and advocates have hit on a novel (and controversial) way to prop up the state’s struggling arts orgs: A new constitutional amendment to levy a new sales tax. And even stranger, they’re doing it in partnership with environmental protection advocates.

“This November, the things we treasure here in Minnesota are on the ballot,” said Ken Martin, director of the Vote Yes Minnesota campaign, a coalition of 200 environmental, conservation, outdoors and arts organizations. “This [amendment] will protect our waters, land and way of life. If we don’t act now to protect these great natural and cultural resources, they will be lost forever.”

The theme of the campaign is “Protect the Minnesota you love.” …

“This state is on a directional course that is no longer acceptable,” he said. “We have to convince people that voting for this amendment is not only the right thing to do, but it’s also the legacy that we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.”

The estimated financial impact on each Minnesota family (because of the 3/8 percent increase in the state sales tax) is estimated at $56 per year. A number of prominent Minnesota figures and politicians have already endorsed the measure, which goes to vote in November.

At the same time, in Arizona, a bill intended to protect arts education from looming budget cuts (along with PE classes), was vetoed last week.

The governor [Janet Napolitano] noted that course cuts already are typically decided upon by local school boards during public meetings. …

Napolitano also called the measure “an empty promise” because it offered no additional state funding to help school districts provide programs teaching the arts, vocational education and PE.

[Bill sponsor Rep. Mark] Anderson countered that the bill had “broad, bipartisan support,” and said its intent was simply to send a message to school districts contemplating course reductions.

It’s been awhile since we’ve looked at what’s going on–funding-wise–across these art-hating United States. Shall we have a quick look-see?

Florida – You’ll Have Your Budget Cut by 50-80 Percent, and You’ll Like It

This quote, by Rep. Carl Domino (R-Jupiter), pretty much says it all: “The bottom line is at least they weren’t zeroed out,” he said. “That shows continuing support for history and culture.”

In a May 6 story titled Florida Legislature OKs cuts to cultural affairs, historic resources, the Palm Beach Daily News reports, “State funding for culture and historic preservation will fall sharply under the belt-tightening budget approved Friday by the Legislature. The Division of Cultural Affairs, which administers grants to cultural organizations, will get nearly $6 million — down from last year’s $12.5 million — while funding for the Division of Historical Resources, which oversees grants for history museums and historic preservation, will drop from $7 million to nearly $1.2 million. That’s a plunge from two years ago, when the state earmarked $32.7 million for culture and $18 million for history.”

According to one arts administrator, Florida’s arts groups will have to be “resourceful” to survive the economic downtown. “It will be survival of the fittest companies,” he said.

New Jersey – Things Even Worse Than During the Great Depression…

Favorite quote: “…the ideal [is} that art, with a capital A, should be incorporated into public buildings, as a high-ceiling barometer of culture in a civilized society. The irony is that the Statehouse Annex was built in the earliest days of the Depression. Still, art was not sacrificed. Not then, and not when the building underwent extensive renovation in the mid-1990s… [NJ Secretary of State Nina Mitchell] Wells seemed pained to explain why the arts and history funding under Gov. Jon Corzine’s proposed budget was being cut anywhere from 25 to 100 percent from a variety of programs.” –Mark Di Ionno, in a Star Ledger column titled “The irony here is art itself”

According to the story, “The New Jersey State Council of the Arts will lose nearly $6 million of last year’s $21.5 million in funds, a cut of 27 percent. The Newark Museum will see $2.3 million disappear from last year’s $4.7 million in funding. The Historic Commission will lose all $189,000 it paid out in project grants for history teachers and researchers. It will also lose $1.1 million from its supposed stable funding source, the hotel/motel tax, reducing its grant budget to $2.7 million. That’s 30 percent less than last year for the hundreds of volunteer-supported local history museums and societies around the state.”

And Let’s Not Forget Pittsburgh…

According to this story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Hempfield Area school district, facing budget shortfalls is eliminating world language at the elementary level, and limiting middle school art and music to one nine-week instructional block per school year, and cut the daily activity period high school students use for club participation.

According to the story: “At a special meeting Thursday night, administrators said their primary goal is to provide a ‘rigorous curriculum’ that meets the needs of all students, but a review of existing programs was necessary to put the focus on early intervention to ensure proficiency in reading and math and increased instructional time in the core content areas.

“The proposals outlined last night would affect four world language positions, three art positions, 2 1/2 music positions, two guidance counselor positions, two assistant middle school principals and one librarian.”