The trouble with cultural boards

The University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center has just released a damning study of the art world's construction boom during the Clinton-Bush years. It paints a ludicrous portrait of cultural institutions running wild, risking their futures on their ability to build and expand dazzling new buildings.

The Art Institute of Chicago, for example, spent $300 million on a new wing. Here in Philadelphia, the Kimmel Center (opened 2001) cost $265 million. Relocating the Barnes Collection (opened this year) cost at least $150 million.

On that evidence, our contributor Robert Zaller concludes that the Art Institute's expansion was a mistake, and so was moving the Barnes Collection. (Click here.) The Philadelphia culture consultant Nancy Burd, writing in the Inquirer, seems to agree: "Why do cultural organizations so often overextend," she asks rhetorically, "even in difficult financial climates and without proven fund-raising prowess?" (Click here.)

Me, I'm not ready to pass judgment. Whether or not these were wise expenditures remains to be seen.

An "'immature city'?

Philadelphia's Academy of Music was perceived as an extravagance when it was first proposed in 1840, especially in light of what one New York observer called "the immaturity of that city in population, wealth and musical culture"; today its cost ($500,000) looks like a bargain, even adjusted for inflation. And Philadelphia is no longer immature musically, at least in part because someone raised the funds to build the Academy.

On the other hand, Oscar Hammerstein's grand 4,000-seat opera house on North Broad Street, which opened in 1908 at a cost of nearly $1.5 million, was a white elephant from the start. It was saved from closing in 1909 only by a coalition of arts patrons who bought it for the Metropolitan Opera, which renamed it and used it until 1920, when the Met too sold the opera house at auction for less than half its original cost. The Met (as the hall is known today) has been shabbily declining ever since, lately used mostly by itinerant church congregations.

No one can predict the future. But sometimes you can give it a little nudge, which is what the Art Institute, the Barnes, the Kimmel and all those other construction-happy arts organizations hoped to do when they went on those building sprees. And they may yet achieve their goals. We haven't yet reached the end of history, after all.

She brought us Pavarotti

Since the future is unknowable, cultural leaders can basically choose from two approaches for running their enterprises, depending on their temperament. They can decide what needs to be done and try to find the money to do it (the approach taken at the Opera Company of Philadelphia in the 1980s by Margaret Anne Everitt, who brought in Luciano Pavarotti and countless sublime moments but teetered constantly on the brink of organizational bankruptcy).

Or they can find ways to live within the existing budget (the approach taken by Everitt's successor, Robert Driver, who balanced the company's books every year but rarely gave me goosebumps).

"Successful business leaders who serve on non-profit boards," writes Burd, "often forget that the principles of sound financial management that apply to their companies also apply to non-profits."

Checking brains at the door

Well, yes, of course they do. But the critical question is why so many high-powered business executives check their brains at the door when they join a non-profit board. To me, the answers are obvious:

— They lack an ownership stake in the enterprise.

— They perceive board membership as an honor rather than a responsibility.

— If it's a really prestigious board— the Philadelphia Orchestra, say, or the Art Museum— they're so dazzled by the prestige that they're terrified to speak up. Sort of like Clarence Thomas when the Supreme Court is in session.

This last point is especially worth pondering. As I've observed before, when arts organizations recruit board members, they typically presume that artists are flaky and business executives are hard-nosed. I would put it slightly differently: Artists are flaky about money matters and hard-nosed about artistic matters; business executives are hard-nosed about money and flaky about artistic matters.

Thus during the Philadelphia Orchestra's board debates about building a new concert hall in the '80s and '90s, it was the business types who typically waxed emotional— something like, "I've been attending orchestra concerts at the Academy of Music since I was a kid, and I want to go on attending them there." The musicians on the board, by contrast, said, "You don't know what an orchestra can sound like in a real orchestral concert hall."

Was Oscar Hammerstein wise to build his Philadelphia opera house? Obviously not. Was the Academy of Music a good idea? Obviously yes. Were the Kimmel and the new Barnes good ideas? Too soon to say.

But I submit that the risks are usually worth taking. This is what art is all about: taking risks for a creative vision, regardless of the cost. Money comes and goes; but you can't put a price tag on great art.

The real question isn't whether Hammerstein's opera house was a good or bad idea. It's whether, given the chance, he'd build it all over again. I'll bet he would.♦


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