Reading the recent news about performing arts organizations is depressing. This afternoon, I heard, over the car radio, yet another woeful story of a desperate organization having to cut back. It got me started musing:

what if I had $10 million dollars to give away this year????


Whom would I give it to?
Would I spread it around to numerous organizations?
Give to to one -- or to a handful?
What aspects of the organizations mission would I want to emphasize?

My own list is tentative, but reflects severa organizations whose work I respect deeply today, and one that was of great importance to me in the past.

$4.5 million to -- New York City Opera: a fund to help get them back on their feet. I haven't been to NYCO for 20 years, but it was really important to me at a certain stage of my life, as were its relatively low ticket prices.

$3 million to -- Miami City Ballet: to rebuild the endowment, permit them to avoid layoffs, and to pay for a return to live music

$1 million to -- Palm Beach Dramaworks, to create a new and larger theater in an already existing space in the downtown Cityplace district.

$1 million to -- Palm Beach Opera, to fund their educational programs, incrreasing payments to orchetra, chorus, and other local performers.

$0.5 million to Harid Conservatory -- a first rate residential ballet school -- for endowment

This is fantasy, of course. But it's a kind of fantasy that helps you to understand which organizations you really value.
And which ones touch you most personally.

So, how about it? What would YOU do with your $10 million dollars. (Only one rule: it must be donated by the end of 2009. Whatever is left, you have to give back to me. )

I'm assuming this means $10M for the arts only, because if I had that to give away now, almost all of it would go to human services.

With that in mind, a pile to NY Theatre Ballet, two-fold: a project to film and preserve the Tudor legacy, and the rest a small endowment toward its operating budget.

Another pile to subsidize reconstructions and film both coaching sessions and performances. The two names that come to mind are Doug Fullington and, after reading Marc Haegemann's article in the latest Dance View, Yuri Burlaka, with Marc as photographer and critical eye.

An endowment for Seattle Chamber Players for new commissions.

A travel budget for Alexandra

I would give whatever amount NYCB needs to rescue eleven broken hearts. Then I would give the rest to help get DTH back on their feet/points. That will require some matching grants, in case some of you can't think what to do with your ten mil.

Interesting question.

I'd set up scholarships for gifted students at arts and music schools.

Absolutely!

LiLing, thanks for reminding me about Dance Theater of Harlem.

SanderO: do you have any specific model in mind for your scholarship program?

This is a pretty good start so far. One virtue of "what-if" questions like this is that they make me think about the institutions, projects, and outcomes I value most. It also forces me to do some triaging, since one can't support everything. And -- once it's MY money -- I want to make sure it's spent and/or invested as wisely and productively as possible.

I agree.



And I agree with this too -- Tudor!!

I am not an educator nor a parent, but I can tell you what I have heard about the disappearance of art and music programs in the public schools. When I attended them in the last century we had robust music and art programs which are fouind only at the best schools I suppose.

You can't nurture creativity in the arts without exposure to them and we are not doing this for children. What we are getting is more and more hollow "pop" culture today.

Look at the difference between here and Venezuela.

With $10 million, set up a ballet think tank for professional ballet teachers. A full scholarship, 4 year program for the training of teachers of classical ballet including partnering, character, acting and music studies. There would also be a training program in the art of ballet accompaniment. The facilities exist, the children are in place but the education of teachers is a hope and dream for the future. If you train the teachers, the children will come is my dream.

SanderO, I wholeheartedly agree! I'd give the money to organizations (like Roberta Guaspari's famous East Harlem Violin Program) that provide instruments and musical instruction to low income public school children. A few years ago I heard an interview with a father who was absolutely heartbroken when funding for the program at his daughter's school dried up and she had to hand back her violin. (I seem to remember that he lived in Poughkeepsie.) He was inconsolable -- it really meant something to him that she could play the violin for him.

Guaspari's program inspired two films -- the documentary "Small Wonders" and "Matters of the Heart" starring Meryl Streep. Her original program lives on through Opus 118 Harlem School of Music, which partners with six Harlem public schools to provide in-school music instruction. Here's Opus 118's website.

The Ford Foundation has set up an arts-in-the-schools advocacy program, which you can learn about here.

I would donate a good chunk of that money to the Paul Taylor Dance Company. They lost their lease on Broadway due to soaring rents and the expansion of the Banana Republic beneath them. I don't know what their new space on Grand Street is like, but I hope it's working out for them.

I'd give a good chunk of money to the setting up of an Ashton Foundation. Specifically to recording what people remember who created roles, or were actually coached in them by Ashton himself. And not only principals. Dancers far lower in the rankings have valuable contributions they could make - but they are never asked and so many of Sir Fredericks ballets exist now only in bowdlerised versions, robbed of many of their important details. And some of them are on the verge of being lost forever.

I would be tempted to spend it experimenting with different formats for presenting the arts in ways that might attract new people to them. Douglas Boyd, the Colorado Symphony's principal guest conductor, made an impassioned and convincing sermonette after a recent concert on why the arts would lose their meaning if they were "dumbed down" to increase popularity, which leaves as the only alternative finding ways to interest more people in exploring them. Not that I personally have any great ideas. But I just can't believe that most people, if they could experience the beauty and power of music and dance in the way that I have been fortunate enough to, would not find themselves changed for the better by it.

Social vs. private support maybe?...centralization..government involvement.? (I think I'm starting to sound like certain class I took during my teen years.. )

I would spend the $10 million on arts appreciation and education for elementary school children.

Besides providing a component of what I think should be included in good basic education and nuturing young potential talent, I don't think you can really expect to have any real critical mass of adult audience for the arts without exposure early. Most people are not going to be any great talents, but I think almost anyone can enjoy the arts whether recreationally or as an audience member given some exposure and a bit of education.