LA Philanthropy Watch

MOCA issued a press release (dated today, though reported by Diane Haithman on the Los Angeles Times‘ Culture Monster blog yesterday, and featured this afternoon by Philanthropy Today) announcing a campaign milestone: $60 million raised since December 2008 (following a financial crisis that came to light in November 2008).  This wasn’t the big news – since a June 26 press release announced that MOCA had raised $56.9 million since December 2008.  More significant was the addition of four trustees, including two who had left the board following the financial revelations.

The returning trustees: Peter Morton and Gilbert Friesen, who credited his “confidence in Eli Broad” – including Broad’s accomplishments to date and vision for the museum’s future – with his decision to return to the board.  The new trustees are Lilly Tartikoff and Nancy Marks.

More details are available at the MOCA and LA Times links above; LA Philanthropy Watch reported on the $56.9 million results in July.

Save Film at LACMA has invited activists and members, Facebook fans and petition-signers to attend the Saturday, September 26 screening of a new print of A City of Sadness (a Taiwanese classic never released in the U.S. or on DVD).  Last week, LA Philanthropy Watch offered an insider’s look at the grassroots campaign Save Film at LACMA has waged, mostly via social media tools, to rescue LACMA’s venerable film program.  With Saturday’s screening at the museum, activist film fans may get a chance to meet each other, as well as to visibly demonstrate support for film at LACMA.

Check out the links at Save Film at LACMA and at LACMA for more details.

Update – Comment moved into post – Debra Levine – September 21, 2009

Peter, thank you for this posting. Our movement arises from a feeling in the community that Los Angeles has a unique history with this art form and that film must be well represented at our premiere museum.

You are spot on to note that now is the time for people to actually show up and mix and mingle — an important civic experience that is eclipsed by netflix, home cinemas. Hope all your readers will come out — see you at the movies!

Saturday, September 19, 2009 – The Petersen Automotive Museum will unveil an exhibit celebrating hot rods of SO-CAL Speed Shop at the grand opening of the Johnny Rockets restaurant located in the Museum.  I picked up this story from the blog at Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords.

Guest Post by Debra Levine, Co-founder of Save Film at LACMA

On July 28 an email from a film buddy popped into my inbox. The subject field screamed: “WHAT?” Ten minutes later, in a mild state of shock, I dialed LACMA director Michael Govan’s office and left a strongly worded message expressing my displeasure at the museum’s abrupt cancellation of its 40-year-old classic film program.

A month later, as co-head of a coalition called Save Film at LACMA, I faced Mr. Govan across a conference table for a “popcorn summit.”  After delivering the thick print-out of our 3,000-signature on-line petition, I spoke on behalf of the 4,000 “fans” registered on our Facebook page.

Ramping up this extraordinary grassroots movement was at times surreal and at others as disciplined as a war game. It lived almost entirely in cyberspace. Our real-world success, measured by the museum’s reversal of its decision for one year, boils down to passionate dedication and good writing.

In the days following the initial cancellation, I connected by email and blog to my founding partners. The initial team — a corporate public relations manager, a film critic, and I – forged a formidable communications effort, our individual skills melding powerfully. As a corporate writer specialized in marketing communications for investment firms, I know how to use language to entice and sell. I also write as a critic about dance and film.

We rolled out Save Film at LACMA across several internet platforms. Film critic Doug Cummings and I each leveraged our blogs:  filmjourney.org and artsmeme.com. We started a Facebook Fan Page and launched our petition. We connected immediately with the press, issuing engaging and informative press releases. A volunteer wrote and videotaped a humorous protest song and posted it on youtube.com. Many blogs and publications re-published this video on their websites.

On every channel we provided, people poured forth their feelings, proclaiming their deep personal attachment to the film program and their discontent over the unforeseen way it was terminated.

The key elements of the campaign’s success were:

• Good writing. Our team included three strong writers who co-wrote every significant communication. Every blog post, Facebook comment and press release was literate and readable.

• Tonality. The campaign hit the right note for its audience: a serious, educated group of art and film lovers. The tone was light, positive, inclusive, and humorous. We disallowed ranting or rudeness, but nearly all comments were astonishingly courteous and passionate. (We ranted behind the scenes!)

• High-profile participation. Our greatest success and the cornerstone of our campaign was a beautifully written, passionate letter by Martin Scorsese published in the Los Angeles Times. This gave our movement clout, credibility, exposure and gravitas.

• Hewing to the message. Our clear position was that the film program wasn’t broken; it was in dire need of proper marketing. We adhered to this message in the face of the museum’s counter assertions that the program was pathetic, fading away, suffering from a diminishing audience of geezers.

• Social Networking. Facebook (now 4,000 fans) is a hungry animal demanding constant monitoring and care (I fed the beast for a month!). But it was key to spreading the word worldwide.  We also put out a Twitter feed (now 200+) on all significant press coverage.

• Online petition (now nearly 3,000 signatures). We almost wept at the fervent messages some of the signatories wrote above their names.

• Blog.  Our Save Film at LACMA blog let us publish and control our message.

• Press/media relations. We achieved a coverage trifecta: Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. We also got covered in a broad swath of industry-focused publications and blogs.

• As other causes seek my help with similar grassroots movements, I muse on my still-fresh experience. I believe that our template is only replicable by a passionate advocate pushing on a daily basis, urgently fostering creative ideas, never being dissuaded, and fervently believing in the righteousness of the cause.  Yes, Save Film at LACMA succeeded based on a strong set of skills, but the secret sauce has been passion.

[Debra Levine is Creative Director of Levine & Associates, Consultants for Marketing Communications, and an arts journalist who blogs at artsmeme.com.]

The August 28 Wall St. Journal featured a profile of Eli Broad, who talked about two of his philanthropic interests, education reform and the arts.  The Broad Foundations focus on education, science and medicine, and the arts.  Among the education initiatives the foundation funds are: charter schools, including both KIPP and Green Dot schools (each of which has a presence in LA), Teach for America, management training programs for administrators in urban areas, and a prize for large urban school districts that improve student performance.

Mr. Broad’s negative views of public education in Los Angeles explain why the Broad Superintendents Academy has only placed one person at LAUSD.  “If we put 10 fellows in there, they’d leave because they’d have to work with a terrible bureaucracy, a regressive teachers union and a mayor that talks a good game but isn’t really interested in taking over schools,” he tells the Journal’s Naomi Schaefer Riley.  He also suggests getting rid of education schools, which he believes have “the lowest ranking students at a university.”

In the video I posted, Mr. Broad suggests that American K-12 education was the best in the world in the ’50s and ’60s, but it deteriorated in the 70s and 80s. He believes this has had a huge negative impact on American competitiveness. His reform agenda includes: a longer school day and school year, incentive compensation for teachers (including differential pay for math and science teachers), a national math and science curriculum, public school choice, and charter schools.

The Journal article also mentions Mr. Broad’s belief in “the democratization of the arts” and his views on risk-taking and philanthropy.

On August 31 (while I was away) LACMA Director Michael Govan sat down with members of Save Film at LACMA – at a meeting dubbed the “popcorn summit” – to discuss creating a more viable and robust film program.  Last July LACMA announced that its film program would be suspended in October; subsequently, after securing funding for an extension, the museum announced that the program would continue through June 2010.

In an interview with the LA Times, Mr. Govan explained that a new film program, as envisaged, required at least $5 million in new funding to create an endowment.  The Museum announced development of a Film Club as “a $50 add-on” to LACMA membership and noted that most of the 2,700 signatories of the Restore LACMA’s Film Program petition were not museum members.  Meanwhile, Save Film at LACMA reprinted a Wall St. Journal op-ed that contrasted the museum’s tentative support for film with its reported commitment to “grand projects like Jeff Koons’s ‘Train,’ which will dangle a full-scale, 70-foot-long replica of a 1943 steam locomotive from a 160-foot-tall crane. The cost of what is being reported as the most expensive work ever commissioned by a museum? Twenty-five million dollars.”

LA Philanthropy Watch initially posted on this issue on July 29.

Update – Comment moved into post – Debra Levine – September 11, 2009

Hello. We are glad that the philanthropic community is following the LACMA story. Ours is a cautionary tale for a publicly funded entity to stray far — indeed to rupture — from public support. The film program was not broken; from a cultural and intellectual perspective, it was world class. It was, however, in need of better positioning and marketing. Our movement — run on the internet for zero $$ cost, the only cost has been our labor — has contributed strongly to a higher level of public awareness of this program. We continue to monitor Mr. Govan’s scheme for film at the museum and wish him the best.
Thank you,
Debra Levine, co-founder, Save Film at LACMA

LACMA’s recent decision to end weekend film programs highlights the financial straits many arts organizations find themselves in.  Deep into this recession, as many nonprofits face extraordinary financial challenges, there is some evidence that arts institutions – fine arts and performing arts – are more vulnerable to declining revenues when there is an economic downturn than are other areas of the nonprofit sector.

On July 24 at Charity Navigator, in a post about layoffs at nonprofits, Sandra Miniuti noted, “As previously discussed in this blog, arts charities often suffer worse than other types of nonprofits during a recession.”  In just such a discussion on May 1, 2008, Emily Navarro wrote, “When the economy starts to turn sour, consumers cut back on their unnecessary expenses. Charitable donations in general are often the first to go when recession looms. Some donors will still open their wallets for charities helping the less fortunate, but what about those organizations whose missions are less humanitarian in nature, like arts organizations? Most donors would rather give their money to a food bank or homeless shelter than an opera or orchestra.”

Ten months ago, Mike Boehm wrote in the LA Times of the financial challenges confronting arts organizations.  Speaking of music and dance companies, he suggested that attendance had declined in 2001 and never fully recovered; he spoke of dance as “the canary in the coal mine.”  In contrast, he thought that museums “have had an easier ride,” though that’s not saying it hasn’t been bumpy.

On June 16, the Washington Post reported on two studies showing declining audiences for museums.  (Hat tip to Charity Navigator again.)  One study of eighth graders by the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that “the percentage of students who reported visiting an art museum, gallery, or exhibit with their class decreased from 22 percent in 1997 to 16 percent in 2008.”  A study by the NEA found that fewer adults were visiting museums.  “American audiences for the arts are getting older, and their numbers are declining, according to new research released today by the National Endowment for the Arts.”

On July 13, Barclays Wealth released the results of a survey of 500 high net worth investors in the United Kingdom and the United States.  While overall giving among this group declined an average of two to three percent, the report revealed that three-quarters of those surveyed had not decreased their charitable giving; more than one in four had increased giving.  “When asked where they would make cuts if the downturn continued, respondents identified luxury goods, eating out, holidays and travel and staff as more expendable than charitable giving.”

While this represented good news for philanthropy (if not for the restaurant and travel industries), not all philanthropic causes fared equally well.  Health and medicine, children’s charities, and the environment rated highest – with commitments from individuals surveyed to do more in these areas.

In contrast to their commitment to humanitarian, environmental and social causes, high net worth individuals looked less favorably on religion, arts groups, and animal organizations: “The future is less certain for the traditional recipients of charitable donations, such as the arts and religious organizations.”

Finally, on July 22 two professors of management at UC Davis published a study of  how tax incentives affect charitable contributions.  The results revealed that donations to some types of charities are much more sensitive to levels of charitable deductions, than gifts to other types of charities.  The study found that contributions related to health, human services, and public and social benefit – “charities that provide basic goods and services to humans” – were less likely to be affected by tax incentives, than were gifts related to private education, arts and culture, the environment, animals, and foreign affairs – “charities that appeal to higher human needs, animals, and the environment.”

This is relevant to our discussion insofar as it shows that donors are relatively less committed to the arts, come what may, than they are to social services and humanitarian causes.  This represents more bad news (relative to some other areas of the nonprofit sector) for the arts – especially since donors may regard this as a time when urgent social needs are an even higher priority than usual.

I don’t have much to add except to note that the debate that LACMA’s recent announcement invited – about film as an art form and LACMA’s commitment to it – while vitally important, is only one data point in a misfortune of larger dimensions: many arts institutions are making painful cutbacks to their programs as revenues diminish.

In a July 28 memo to staff, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Director Michael Govan announced that LACMA will be ending its weekend film program by November.  The LA Times, which features this story on page one, reports that the museum’s “cinematic centerpiece” has lost money in recent years as audiences have diminished.  The Times’ story notes a competitive environment today – from scores of film festivals to DVD sales of art-house films – that differs vastly from the cultural milieu of four decades ago, when LACMA began screening film classics.

“As we scale back our budgets, this is a good time to slow programs and spend more time thinking about how to build a more sustainable long-term foundation for the presentation of film at LACMA,” said Mr. Govan in his memo.  “My hope is to reemerge with a major commitment to film that helps define LACMA’s curatorial mission.”

Cari Beauchamp, writer, historian and documentary filmmaker, offers scathing criticism of this decision at Native Intelligence (one of the LA Observed blogs).  She reviews the unique contributions of the LACMA program, praises Ian Bernie as a “master curator of films,” questions Mr. Govan’s claims of million-dollar losses, and offers critical commentary on the way LACMA has treated film audiences.  Most intriguing of all, she reports hearing that the announced closing may be “only a ruse to get people to pay attention – that by shutting it down maybe something better will bloom.”

Update 1 (July 30, 2009): In today’s LA Times, Kenneth Turan inveighs against LACMA’s decision to shutter its film program, suggesting that is demonstrates “contempt for the current programming….”

His commentary parallels Cari Beauchamp’s.  In addition to a special appreciation of LACMA’s film program, both Ms. Beauchamp and Mr. Turan share a joy of film as an art form with an intimate connection to Los Angeles.

Cari Beauchamp wrote, “Part of the joy of LACMA films is the gems that you would see nowhere else. Yet the message from on high is loud and clear: Films are not considered ‘art’ at LACMA.”

Mr. Turan comments, “To shut this program down, in Los Angeles of all places, betrays both a disdain for the most vibrant of popular arts and a demeaning narrowness of vision about what Los Angeles wants and needs.”

Update 2 (from August 7, 2009 LA Times): “In the wake of the chorus of disapproval that greeted last week’s announcement that he was red-lighting the 40-year-old weekend film series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, museum Director Michael Govan has some good news: Potential donors have stepped up, interested in helping underwrite the series.”  Editor’s note: See Save Film @ LACMA blog for continuing coverage of this issue.

The Huntington Library is in the midst of a celebration of the expansion and reinstallation of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art with an exhibition of Downstream: Colorado River Photographs of Karen Halverson (from May 30 through September 28, 2009).  The exhibit also features selected images of the Colorado River region from the Huntington’s archival collection, including photographs from John Wesley Powell’s Colorado River expedition of 1871 and from Mildred Baker’s journey on the river in 1940.

The Museum of Contemporary Art announced in a June 26 press release that it has raised $56.9 million since December 2008, including $15 million from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The press release describes these results as a “dramatic turnaround” for the museum, which it certainly appears to be – coming after MOCA’s endowment declined from $38 million to $6 million in recent years.

“This is the biggest turnaround of any cultural institution in recent history, ” said Mr. Broad, a life trustee at the museum.  “MOCA has attracted nearly $57 million in just six monts, clearly demonstrating this institution’s importance to the local, national, and worldwide arts community.”

This story was reported by Bloomberg and picked up by the Chronicle of Philanthropy on June 30.