On a particularly frigid Thursday night, a tiny eyeglass shop that also shows art seemed even tinier than usual, packed as it was for a poetry reading. The same night about 300 people attended an opening at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art, while downstairs in that building a 20-strong group gathered to plan an art show for February.
 

Wim Roefs, volunteer board chair of the 701 Center for Contemporary Art. The center opened in the fall of 2008 during the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression, but it has not had to cancel a single exhibition. Photo by Graeme Fouste

The next night, a retrospective by Columbia artist Jeff Donovan opened with a dozen artworks selling that evening alone. A few blocks away, the musical Rent was playing to a sold-out house at Trustus Theatre.

Then, on Sunday, about 1,500 people waited in line to get into the Columbia Museum of Art.

Doesn’t sound like the middle of a recession, does it? 

Admittedly, no one was throwing money at those poets and that was a free admission day at the museum, but people did buy Donovan’s art and did pay $25 a pop to see Rent.

Such is the state of the arts in Columbia in this state of the economy.

Everyone is pinching pennies — and a few arts organizations have had to lay off a few staffers — but that’s the norm in the arts. None have canceled art shows, concerts, plays or dance performances.

In fact, some new groups and events have sprouted during these tough times, such as the 701 Center for Contemporary Art, a series of art events on Main Street and dance groups. Two of the anchor arts organizations, the South Carolina Philharmonic and the Columbia Museum of Art, had one of their best years ever.

Overall, the picture isn’t bad:

• Attendance is stable at performing arts events.

• Public funding has not dropped significantly during the past year.

• Individuals continue to donate money, although at slightly lower amounts than in the past.

• Businesses have been slow in making donations and while most intend to continue giving warn they’ll be giving less.

“It’s been a mixed bag,” says Ken May, interim director of the South Carolina Arts Commission, a state agency that funds arts groups statewide. “Some groups had a great year [in 2009], but they may have a hard time matching that this year.”

Because of state budget cuts, the commission has held back 25 percent of its grant awards and started the new year by making an actual 5 percent cut. Because of declining tax revenue due to unemployment and people cutting back on spending, more cuts could be coming, he says. (For the commission itself, times have been harder. The commission laid off staff, left positions open and furloughed employees.)

The outlook from the Cultural Council of Richland and Lexington Counties is similar. Although the group itself, which raises about $200,000 annually and distributes it to arts groups, has been having a hard time, those it serves are hanging tough, says Andy Witt, council director.

“There isn’t a lot of alarm,” Witt says.

John Whitehead, director of the Columbia Music Festival Association, has a similar view. The association is an umbrella for several arts groups and runs a performance facility downtown.

“Everyone is in the same boat, but no one is saying they’re not going to survive,” Whitehead says.


A Unique Situation

When the recession hit with full impact in late 2008, the arts in Columbia were in a unique position.
 

Hip hop dancer Lavell Shaolin Marshall performs as part of local dance group Tribe SK during an art opening at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art on Jan. 7. Photo by Graeme Fouste

The Philharmonic was starting its season with a new music director and interest was high in what he would do. The Columbia Museum of Art was preparing to open, in March 2009, Turner to Cezanne, the most expensive exhibition it had ever mounted and one for which it would jack up admission to $15. Both organizations ended the year in good shape, with the museum setting all-time attendance records.

Against all logic, the city’s art scene actually expanded.

The most significant change was the 701 Center for Contemporary Art, which opened in October 2008 — the month the economy took a sharp downward turn.

A small art show series at Frame of Mind on Main Street developed a big following and also expanded beyond the little storefront into the street and other businesses and empty buildings. The Wideman/Davis Dance Company, in residence at USC, began putting down roots here and has had good support both from a group of supporters and audiences. The Unbound dance group and the S.C. Contemporary Dance Company started. A low-cost local series with music, dance and art called Playing After Dark started during the summer at the Columbia Marionette Theatre and has moved on to become a two-night event at the Columbia Music Festival Association performance space.

Even though the Center for Contemporary Art opened at what all say was a terrible time, it has not had to cancel a single show or artists’ residency. That’s due to a strong board and a large group of volunteers — the center has no staff.

“We didn’t start this with the idea that we would fail,” says Wim Roefs, CCA board president and owner of the private if ART Gallery. “But we are not voluntarily a volunteer organization.”

Trustus Theatre had one of its toughest years ever in 2009, but Rent has helped bring in new audiences.

The openings for exhibitions at the center (so far there have been seven shows) are frequently attended by several hundred people; concerts and readings have also had a good turnout. While traffic isn’t heavy during the regular gallery hours, it is picking up. During its first six months the center had about 6,000 visitors.

“I see people at [701 Center] events who I don’t see other places,” says Anne Sinclair, a board member and former member of Columbia City Council.
The Main Street events centered around Frame of Mind have included not only art, but also poetry readings, dance and music.

These are events with lots of volunteers and supporters, low cost and little money changing hands. Even on a recent night when snow threatened, the gallery was packed with people attentively listening to poets reading from the spiral staircase in the tiny shop.

“It’s a good recession-buster kind of thing,” says co-owner Mark Plessinger.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” he says. “The surprise is the number of people who come by, open the door and say, ‘I want to thank you for what you’re doing.’”


Making Due, Holding On

Between the big guys and the newcomers are the mid-sized organizations. They’ve had many ups and downs.
 

Jeff Donovan, Blind Nun, Pointing (2002, oil on canvas). Gallery sales have dropped sharply during the recession, but artists and gallery owners say the market is starting to rebound. Courtesy photo

For Trustus Theatre, last year “has probably been one of the worst years we’ve ever had,” says Kay Thigpen, producing director of the theater. The theater had to lay off one staffer and has made cuts everywhere.

Business picked up at the end of last year and the start of this one with Rent, which is selling well, but also came with a high royalty rate to pay.

“It’s [our] biggest selling show since Angels in America, and that sold out the run before it opened,” says Jim Thigpen, artistic director. (Angels was about 15 years ago.)

This season, the theater is doing more musicals than ever before — four compared to a usual maximum of two, but the musicals being presented keep with the theater’s mission to be a bit on the edge.

Some, like Rent, are also bringing in new audiences, which is important when regulars are cutting back.

“With Rent, we’re seeing a lot of people we’ve never seen before,” Jim Thigpen says.
“When you look around the country and see how many theaters have closed, it is discouraging,” says Kay Thigpen. But, she adds, “I’m fairly optimistic about this year.”

The Columbia Classical Ballet did not do well with A Streetcar Named Desire in late 2008, but it bounced back with an original ballet, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, last year.

“Overall, we’ve been stable,” says Lee Lumpkin, Classical Ballet board president. “We sold as many tickets, but we sold cheaper tickets.

“I think we’re all cautious,” she adds. “I’m thrilled to be upright.”

Workshop Theatre also saw stable attendance from 2008 through 2009, although it blew off the doors with a sold-out run of The Producers. Still, those with memberships are often opting for lower-cost membership levels.

“We knew we’d have some cuts,” says Sandra Willis, director of Town Theater. “Because of that, we redoubled our efforts to get more sponsors and ads for the playbills. We set out to make that up through out own efforts and were successful in doing that.”

The Columbia City Ballet has had financial struggles for years, some of them dating back to a ballet built around the paintings of Jonathan Green in 2005. The company’s most recent original production, inspired by the band Hootie and the Blowfish, also barely broke even.
 

Ansel Adams, Frozen Lake and Cliffs, The Sierra Nevada, Sequoia National Park, California (1932). The Ansel Adams exhibition at the Columbia Museum of Art set a record for one-day attendance at an exhibition on Jan. 17. Courtesy photo

One reason the arts groups haven’t been hit harder is that nearly all have run tight financial ships — not that most didn’t do that before — and are getting significant levels of funding from attendance.

“Looking at the grant applications we’ve been getting, most have a high ratio of earned income to grants,” Cultural Council chief Witt says. “They’ve been very responsible to make sure they’re here for you.”

Arts groups are, by and large, accustomed to working with little money.

“You struggle along and make it look like you have money,” says Whitehead of the Music Festival Association.

Columbia has almost no art galleries that survive solely on art sales. City Art Gallery — the top floor is a gallery, the bottom a big art supply store — has done well downstairs, not so good upstairs.

“We have a loyal clientele for art supplies and we’ve run a lot of specials,” says Wendy Wells, one of the owners. “But art sales are about half what they were. We’ve had better years [than 2009], but this year will be better.”

For if ART Gallery, it was “absolutely horrendous” for a time, says owner Wim Roefs. But sales have picked up in recent months, he says. Individual artists echo the theme, saying sales dropped drastically between 2007 and 2009, but that things have started picking up more recently.


Anchor Groups Kept Hope Up

One reason Columbia arts groups made it through the year better than some is that two of the biggest organizations, The Columbia Museum of Art and the S.C. Philharmonic, had high-profile years. While around the country many big arts groups were cutting back, those two were scaling up.

At the end of 2008, Morihiko Nakahara began his first season leading the orchestra. The young music director, who has been out and about a great deal since he was hired in early 2008, got people excited about the orchestra.

“Someone warned me to be prepared for a little backlash, but that didn’t happen,” says Rhonda Hunsinger, Philharmonic executive director. “Clearly there’s been excitement. It couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

During Nakahara’s first season, the orchestra “programmed aggressively,” she says, with more diverse music and sometimes more musicians.

For the current season, the Philharmonic scaled back a little — although it might not look like it when the orchestra brought in soloist Wu Man, a Chinese lute player, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. (The latter brought in new audience members, but was not a runaway hit. It simply broke even.)

The Philharmonic has held its own, but “we’re postponing a growth leap,” Hunsinger says. “My great fear is having to scale back.”

The greatest against-the-tide story has been the Columbia Museum of Art. During the worst economic downturn since it opened 60 years ago, the museum had its best year ever.

The museum was the opening venue for Turner to Cezanne, an exhibition from the National Museum of Wales that includes paintings by Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Vincent Van Gogh. The museum raised its admission price during the show to $15, but that didn’t keep people away and in fact encouraged many people to buy a museum membership. The museum set all-time records for attendance (145,000) and membership (4,500).

“It blew every projection out of the water,” says museum director Karen Brosius.
When the Philharmonic decided in 2006 that it wanted a new music director and when the museum about the same time committed itself to Turner to Cezanne, the economy was riding high. Neither organization knew these things would happen during a horrible financial crisis.

“The show really was a godsend,” Brosius says.

While the museum doesn’t expect all those folks who became members during Turner to Cezanne to re-up their memberships, the museum has kept interest and attendance high with a popular exhibition of Ansel Adams photos that opened in early fall. In a few weeks, the museum will open two exhibitions focused on African-American art, and Brosius expects these to tap into some new audiences.

The museum’s has also kept a close watch on its income. After Turner to Cezanne closed, it doubled regular admission from $5 to $10; it is also charging or charging more for some lectures and concerts. These increased prices have not backfired.

“I think we navigated through treacherous waters,” Brosius says.

It may be that the beacons of the arts — lighthouses such as the art museum and orchestra — have provided the guiding for all the arts. If their lights had dimmed, the course for all the arts might have lead to some rocky shores and disasters for everyone.


Jeffrey Day writes about the arts for various publications and at his web site Carolina Culture by Jeffrey Day at carolinaculture.org.

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