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An artistic vision
BY ADAM REILLY
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A new report from the Boston Foundation — titled Culture Is Our Common Wealth — lays out rather ambitious goals for the Bay State’s cultural community. It calls for the creation of a state-supported grant program to help fund the creation and renovation of nonprofit arts facilities. It urges a sustained effort by the Massachusetts tourism and arts industries to formulate a cohesive cultural-tourism strategy. It suggests that state laws and regulations be altered to improve the financial bottom line for cultural nonprofits. And it argues that corporate and individual donors — most of whom contribute to the arts anonymously — should give by name, thereby pressuring other corporations and individuals to follow suit. (That’s only a partial list: many more recommendations are highlighted in the report’s 48 pages, which can be found at www.tbf.org/culture.) It’ll take an extremely high level of cooperation by the legislature, Governor Mitt Romney, and the business community — as well as the city and state’s culture and tourism sectors — for the vision outlined in Culture Is Our Common Wealth to be realized. But as Boston Foundation head Paul Grogan observed Tuesday, there seems to be "significant momentum" in the artistic and cultural sphere for the kind of systemic change proposed in the report. The post–September 11 economic downturn had a chilling effect on tourism in Boston, the ability of Boston-area residents to spend money on the arts, and the readiness of benefactors to make large donations. And the absorption of Boston institutions such as John Hancock and FleetBoston by larger multinational companies has prompted concern as well. For example, the FleetBoston Foundation — long considered a valuable ally for the local artistic and cultural scene — has already become a constituent part of the North Carolina–based Bank of America, which finalized its acquisition of FleetBoston last month. (Bank of America has promised to contribute $1.5 billion for the arts nationwide over the next decade, but final decisions on donations will now be made in North Carolina, not Massachusetts.) In other words, Culture Is Our Common Wealth — which builds on a 2003 Boston Foundation report that assessed arts funding in Boston and nine other urban areas around the US — comes at an opportune time. And Mayor Tom Menino’s presence at the report’s unveiling on Tuesday suggests that governmental will for the creation of a forward-looking arts strategy does, in fact, exist. When Menino — who recently merged the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs with the Office of Special Events, Tourism, and Film to create a new Department of Arts and Cultural Development — promised to push for the creation of a state-sponsored grant program for the arts, the crowd’s applause echoed off the domed ceiling of the Boston Center for the Arts. "This report highlights what we all know — arts are part of what makes Boston a great city," Menino said at one point. "Boston is rich in the arts." So far, so good. Now comes the hard part.
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