After 20 years of nonprofit programming, this was supposed to be a time for celebration at HotHouse. Instead what’s been playing out at the music and performance venue since last summer is a classic institutional tragedy: a runaway board fighting a possessive founder while the organization they both claim to serve suffers for it. Seven months after the HotHouse board officially dismissed founder and executive director Marguerite Horberg, programming has been cut back, staff has been slashed from eight full-timers to one, and a call has gone out for $220,000 in donations to be raised by the end of the year–$70,000 of it by June 30. A public meeting held last month to kick off the fund-raising effort was, according to board president Martin Bishop, “derailed” by Horberg supporters who monopolized the microphone. Members have been asked to help “Re-ignite the HotHouse,” but the only thing blazing is the battle.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
What led to Horberg’s departure from the institution she grew from a Milwaukee Avenue bar to an internationally known performance center was the board’s desire to control finances. They wanted to bring in a business manager who’d report directly to them and demote her, as Horberg saw it, to artistic director. Bishop says Horberg agreed with the need for someone to run the business side–he claims to be stumped by her turn against this plan. But it’s clear that what she had in mind was a business manager who’d report to her. Bishop also says the organization managed its finances poorly, lacked appropriate insurance, owed taxes, and had no contingency plans or financial reserves. In 2005 the HotHouse budget was $1.6 million. Figures for last year weren’t available, but Bishop says the “optimistic” $1.4 million the board budgeted for 2007 won’t be reached. HotHouse is also in litigation with its landlord over the terms of its lease.
Horberg says she’s working on two new ventures: a HotHouse-style club in New York, slated to open in fall ’08, and a project on the south side of Chicago where music would be one component. She says she’s still waiting to get back equipment and personal property from HotHouse, including art, archives, photos, and records. According to Horberg, there are people who would like to step in, put together a new board, and salvage the organization in its current space, but she says “a lot of those efforts have been rebuffed.” Horberg says many of HotHouse’s funders signed a letter in her support last summer that the board ignored, and current board members “are not part of the community that built HotHouse or funded it. They’ve alienated most of the people who cared about it so much.” Former board member Angela Spinazze says she hasn’t seen any positive results from this board: “As far as I can tell, all they’ve done is bankrupt the place and lay off the staff.”
