Sunday, December 12, 1999
One arts group hogs Pig profits
Why is ArtWorks best beneficiary?
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Here's just a little of what I want to know about the Big Pig Gig being plotted for this summer:
How come one organization with not much of a track record is being allowed to make a run at hogging the profits? And why do the creating artist and pig patron lose all reproductive rights to their work?
Parading pigs is a terrific idea, although Cincinnati can't expect the millions of fans a few hundred artful cows drew to Chicago last summer. A couple of dozen cities knew a great idea when they saw one, and there will be fiberglass farm animals, fish, fowl and fauna across America in summer 2000.
I'd find the Big Pig Gig a lot more exciting if the profits were going to the best possible cause.
The main beneficiary of the pig project will be ArtWorks, the summertime program that employs teens in art projects. One of the best examples is the spiffing up of Mirror Lake in Eden Park. More accurately, the beneficiary will be the still-to-be Art Opportunities Inc., which ArtWorks plans to become.
Good for ArtWorks for serendipitously making the right call (to Enquirer columnist Laura Pulfer) at the right time to get first crack at the pigs. “We were going to do flamingos,” says Tamara Harkavy, ArtWorks coordinator.
Shame on the Big Piggers thinking pig but not thinking big. If only they'd taken a hard look at the whole hog and come up with a philanthropic plan intended to electrify the town.
It will be nice to smile at our pigs. But wouldn't it have been grand if we could have been swept up by the excitement of what they are accomplishing?
The majority of profits from the pig auction will create an endowment for Art Opportunities, whose mission will be to promote emerging talent in the region and beautify Hamilton County and Northern Kentucky with public works of art.
Pig Gig co-chairs are Joe Hale of the Cinergy Foundation and Melody Sawyer Richardson. Mr. Hale points out that auction profits will be an even split between ArtWorks and a pig patron's non-profit of choice.
True. But ...
Dave Dougherty, ArtWorks board president, notes “ArtWorks needs to benefit in a big way.... Most of the big corporations we've approached know full well they're expected to designate their proceeds to ArtWorks.”
And, Ms. Harkavy points out, profits could be spread pretty thin if everybody gives to a different organization, as in Chicago. Better that it go into one endowment where it could pack some financial punch.
True again. But what makes ArtWorks, which is a perfectly fine endeavor, the most worthy organization to be recipient?
Last summer ArtWorks had a budget of $367,000 and served 137 teens. Requests for statistics about program results went unanswered.
Just for comparison, Art Links, on a $300,000 budget, serves 10 times that many kids with programs including Adopt-a-School, Art Bus, the Yo! Arts mentoring program and ArtAbility, which brings arts experiences to children with disabilities.
Another reason that ArtWorks should be primary recipient, Ms. Harkavy says, is that money reaches other organizations through ArtWorks grants.
Not true. ArtWorks doesn't grant, which implies that money is given to organizations for projects. ArtWorks sub-contracts. It's a huge difference, and when pressed, Ms. Harkavy agreed. “If we begin to do other projects, we would start granting,” she amends.
ArtWorks deserves the money, Ms. Harkavy and Mr. Dougherty say, because ArtWorks is administering the project. “It's a huge amount of work,” Ms. Harkavy points out.
And there's significant risk, Mr. Dougherty adds.
Was any other entity approached and offered a piece of the pork pie in return for a little sweat equity?
“No,” Mr. Hale says, sighing.
Chicago's cows were administered by a neutral party, the city's Office of Cultural Affairs.
It is not insignificant that in Chicago, patrons and artists kept the creative rights to the work. Here they become the property of the Pig Gig. Not only are artists asked to donate their time (a $1,000 honorarium covers materials and transporting the swine), they must give away their ideas, too.
There's more than a little muttering going on at some arts organizations.
Arts companies generally don't have a lot of loose change, and folks are grumbling about having to ask their patrons to underwrite when they'd rather ask for funding for a project of their own. They're also squealing about being invited to donate auction proceeds to another, essentially unproven, arts group.
Complaints will remain anonymous because while there are a lot of them, the arts companies can't afford to offend the Big Pigs applying the pressure.
A little of that pressure lifted this week when Greater Cincinnati Foundation awarded $35,000 to Art Opportunities to help support the cost of pigs to small, non-profit organizations. (I hope they all have grant proposals ready for the foundation by its Feb. 15 deadline for the second-quarter awards.)
It's too late to ask why, when ArtWorks very smartly saw the opportunity, the people talking big pig didn't consider any other options.
It isn't too late for the folks buying swine to pool their remaining Pig Power into an endowment for regional arts in schools programs, overseen by Greater Cincinnati Foundation. Funds would be available to the dozens of equally worthy in-school arts programs across the Tristate.
And it's not too late to make sure this isn't a one-trick piggy. Why not commit to annual projects that would celebrate our sense of fun, play to cultural tourists and feed an arts-in-schools endowment?
There are a couple of natural themes coming up in the openings of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the new Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art.
BUDGET VICTIMS: Earlier this week, city council members Phil Heimlich and Pat DeWine leveled their sights on ArtWorks as a likely place to start trimming away at the city's predicted budget shortfall.
Local arts advocates would be advised to see this for the warning flag that it is.
Jackie Demaline is the Enquirer's theater critic and roving arts reporter. Write her at Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; fax, 768-8330.
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