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The Rich Get Richer
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Business New Haven
4/30/2001
By: BNH
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The Regional Cultural Plan has launched something called the New Haven Arts Stabilization project (see story, page 8). The crux of this effort was to raise $5 million in public, corporate and foundation support to benefit eight of the region's largest (and richest) arts groups. A second key goal is to provide those groups with consulting and technical assistance to enable them to "stabilize" their futures through more professional financial management.
The eight are: The New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Shubert Performing Arts Center, Long Wharf Theatre, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Neighborhood Music School, New Haven Colony Historical Society, Creative Arts Workshop and (a little suburban flavor here) the Guilford Handcraft Center.
While each fulfills a different function, they are competitors in the sense that each must fight its own battles to attract scarce corporate support. Any effort that gets them all on the same page is a good thing.
The question is: Is this triage on the part of the funding community in deciding which arts groups will survive and which will wither on the vine? This effort is funded by all the usual suspects (SNET, UI, a couple of banks, Yale, the Community Foundation), and their decisions can be a life-or-death matter for smaller or marginal non-profits.
Those who run smaller groups can be forgiven for concluding that the fix is in. And one can debate endlessly the artistic-merit issue: Some musician friends argue that the NHSO is only the fourth-best orchestra in the city, following the Yale symphonies and Orchestra New England.
Historically, much of New Haven's artistic vigor has come from smaller or newer or more daring artists unafraid to take risks. Is this "stabilization" a potential death knell for them?
We're not sure. Regional Cultural Plan Director Elizabeth Monz argues the opposite: That having financially sound arts management at the top of the food chain will trickle down to benefit the smaller fry below. Maybe she's right. We hope so..
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