Late last month, with nonprofit endowments down by a third or more, donors despondent over their own losses, and ticket sales starting to go soft, more than 400 arts administrators gathered in GAR Hall at the Cultural Center for a meeting intended to steady their nerves.
In a follow-up panel, Collaboraction’s Anthony Moseley declared that “it’s time to dissolve the imaginary line between business and the arts.” Collaboraction, with a $500,000 annual budget, made $13,000 on corporate parties and events in the second half of last year, he said. They’re also looking at doing more coproducing, and at sharing resources like rehearsal space and costumes.
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Prompt Will Be Tardy
What happened to “When Then Was… Now!”? The exhibit of Jerry Pritikin’s photos and memorabilia from his years in San Francisco’s Castro district, including both iconic and unpublished images of Harvey Milk, the gay political pioneer assassinated in 1978, was due to open February 8 at the Gerber/Hart Library. But library officials, who issued a circumspect cancellation notice on February 2, would say only that Pritikin had decided to pull the plug.
The Field Museum’s John McCarter, who took a 20 percent cut to his $450,000 salary last month, might be ahead of the curve. At press time, the Senate had passed an amendment to Obama’s stimulus bill that would shut out arts organizations and museums, along with casinos.v
