Fine Arts Are in Survival Mode as Funds Dry Up

BALTIMORE, March 1, 2009, USA TODAY — Doreen Bolger sees her new exhibit of circus drawings by Pablo Picasso and other 20th-century artists as just right for the times.

The images of acrobats and clowns, says the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, are "uplifting and fun" at a time when the economy is in free fall.

Not so great is the $8 fee Bolger was forced to charge when the exhibit opened last week in the otherwise free museum. The museum has charged for a few special exhibits, but she had hoped this one could be free. Steep drops in the museum's endowment, contributions, government grants and gift shop sales, however, have made budget-balancing a high-wire act.

"There's rarely extra money in good times," says Bolger, whose museum opened in 1929, the year the Great Depression began. "We're already into the adversity mode."

The downturn walloping the entire economy has hit non-profit arts organizations especially hard. With millions of people scrambling to pay for food and other basics, a night at the opera can seem frivolous. So museums, symphonies, theaters, ballet companies and opera companies have cut staff, canceled performances, shortened seasons and, in some cases, shut down.

The worst may be yet to come.

Jesse Rosen of the League of American Orchestras says season subscriptions to performances, which are sold a year ahead of time, mask the full impact. "It's the second year when it catches up," he says.

That worries Jane Shannahan, a subscriber to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. The festival recently canceled a $1.3 million production of Les Misérables because of declining contributions.

"It's important to support museums, symphonies, the dance and theater," she says. "These are things we need in society. If we lose them, we are declining faster than we think."