Last week, when the whole world was tanking, I dialed up Renaissance Society board member Joe Tabet to get a report on the benefit he chaired last month for the Hyde Park-based contemporary arts group—and an opinion on what the failing economy means for nonprofits.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The financial crisis will have donors snapping their purses shut, Tabet predicted. “I think 12 months from now it’ll be a lot more difficult than it is right now. Not-for-profits will have to reach out and communicate.” Even if the worst-case scenario—a banking meltdown leading to a global panic—is headed off, groups that rely on donations “have a lot of work ahead of them.” “Financial institutions have been strong supporters of the arts,” Tabet said. “But Lehman’s gone, LaSalle was purchased, Washington Mutual has been taken over. Development people will have to be more active than ever.”
The Renaissance Society may be a case in point. This year’s benefit netted $200,000 less than the record-breaking haul of $510,000 logged last year. Development director Lori Bartman says the drop is partly attributable to the 2007 auction having been spiked with several high-priced items—a collage by Arturo Herrera that sold for $42,000 and two other pieces that went for more than $30,000 each—while most of the 2008 offerings carried more modest estimates of $15,000 or less. (The highest bid this time around was $18,000 for an Andre Butzer oil.) A bigger factor was the lack of sponsors willing to underwrite the event, whose costs in the past were covered by the likes of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers.
There’s no such thing as “typical” at the Renaissance Society, but the current exhibit, Bolero, is esoteric enough to be representative. The installation by Francis Alys, a 49-year-old Belgian artist living in Mexico, consists of a large room with plywood walls standing in the center of the gallery, its inner walls lined with hundreds of framed stills from a sweetly nihilistic animated video called Shoe Shine Blues. To watch the video, you climb a staircase to the roof of the installation, where you can flop down on one of several mats positioned before a screen. A second video by Alys, Politics of Rehearsal, juxtaposes a Schubert solo and a striptease. (The show runs through December 14, and the Millennium Chamber Players will perform a related concert of work by contemporary Latin American composers on Friday, October 10, 8 PM, at the U. of C.’s Bond Chapel, 1025 E. 58th.)
Care to comment? Find this column at chicagoreader.com.
