Press release form Toni Robin Public Relations on tomorrow’s unique art event in San Diego.

MEDIA ADVISORY
NEA Public Forum, March 13, 2 pm

March 13 is a big day for our arts and culture community.

Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), will make San Diego the first California stop in his national tour promoting the NEA’s “Art Works” initiative. Landesman is touring major American cities to promote the role of art in creating vibrant communities and spurring economic development. Learn more about Art Works here. The chairman’s public schedule will be posted in the Newsroom on the NEA web site at www.arts.gov

NEA ART WORKS FORUM
SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 2 PM
Mandell Weiss Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse
2910 La Jolla Village Drive
Free Parking and Directions

Please RSVP directly to Toni Robin, tr@trprsandiego.com, 858.483.3918

MEDIA is invited to attend a public forum featuring Rocco Landesman and some of our community’s most engaging leaders who will share how Art Works here in San Diego. This is a chance to hear remarks from one of our nation’s leading arts advocates and a vigorous defender of arts funding.

The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture is thrilled and honored that San Diego has been selected and provided this opportunity to showcase our vibrant arts and culture community.

Toni Robin
public relations / marketing
964 chalcedony street
san diego, california 92109
www.trprsandiego.com
e: tr@trprsandiego.com
t: 858.483.3918
c: 619.997.3918

From the official press release:

MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL APPOINTS TWO TO THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO
COMMISSION FOR ARTS AND CULTURE

January 25, 2010 – San Diego, CA – Mayor Jerry Sanders announced the appointment of two new Commissioners to serve on the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. “We acknowledge and appreciate these individuals and their willingness to give their time, talent and expertise to serve the City of San Diego,” said Sanders.

Larry Baza is a professional arts administrator with more than 32 years experience in advocating for the arts at the local, state and national level. He was recommended by Councilmember Marti Emerald and will replace Claire Anderson.

Baza has served on the boards of various non-profit arts organizations and provided his expertise as a panelist for arts commissions and foundations. In his professional career, Baza has directed and managed San Diego arts organizations and businesses including Centro Cultural De La Raza, Sushi Performance and Visual Arts, Fingerhut Gallery and Community Arts of San Diego.

His wealth of knowledge and experience includes affiliations, consultancies, site visits and panel participation with various arts organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, California Association of Local Arts Organizations, Chicano Federation of San Diego County, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture and the San Diego Community Foundation.

Currently, Baza is a partner in Noel-Baza Fine Art Gallery in Little Italy. He lives in North Park.

Todd Figi has a long and distinguished career as an arts and culture patron, advocate, entrepreneur and civic leader. Through his career in the art, gift and design industries, he became affiliated with many business and trade organizations and was recognized as a leader and generous donor including being named Man of the Year by the Young Presidents Organization and Man of the Year in the Gift Industry by amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research.)

His lifelong interest in the arts led him to be an avid collector of Latin American paintings, drawings and sculpture from masters including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Locally, he has served on the boards of the San Diego Museum of Man and the Museum of Contemporary Art, where he served as President from 2008-09.

Figi was nominated by Councilmember Kevin Faulconer and will replace Courtney Ann Coyle. He lives in La Jolla.

The mission of the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture is to vitalize the city by integrating arts and culture into community life while supporting the region’s cultural assets and showcasing San Diego as an international cultural destination. For more information please call the Commission office at (619) 236-6778 or visit the Commission website at www.sandiego.gov/arts-culture.

Thank you again, Los Angeles Times Culture Monsters:

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Arts groups large and small were the recipients of nearly $27 million in grants announced today by the National Endowment for the Arts.

In California, 189 grants totaling $4,295,000 were awarded to major institutions like the Los Angeles Opera (which got $120,000) and smaller ones, like the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica (which got $25,000).

Other winners included the Hammer Museum, which received $75,000 to support the touring exhibition of “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980,” and the Craft & Folk Art Museum, which won $10,000 to fund a show called “Race, Gender and Globalization.”

The Deaf West Theatre Company in North Hollywood was awarded $30,000 to produce a play, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's “The Visit.” South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa received $40,000 to help put on its annual Pacific Playwrights Festival.

The Center Theatre Group of Los Angeles received $35,000 to help produce the Lisa Kron play “Five Questions.” The theater will co-produce the play in partnership with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, which won its own grant from the NEA. The Berkeley Rep was awarded $30,000 to produce “Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West,” a new play by Naomi Iizuka.

Nationwide, the NEA will distribute $26,968,500 to support 1,207 projects. For a state-by-state list of the grants, click here.

– Kate Linthicum

Photo: Shoshannah Stern and Matthew Jaeger star in “Children of a Lesser God” at the Deaf West Theatre in North Hollywood. Credit: Michael Lamont

Here is the original post:
California arts groups will receive more than $4 million in NEA grants

From the LA Times Culture Monster:

In the arts, composers, writers, painters, sculptors and performers grab all the glory, but they also serve who sit and wonk.

And we, the people, are invited to watch 'em in action Friday as the National Endowment for the Arts presents a live webcast of its daylong Cultural Workforce Forum. From 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, an assortment of academics, federal bureaucrats, and staffers from private think tanks and research organizations will assemble in Washington, and in cyberspace at www.nea.gov. They'll attempt to elucidate, ponder and talk about how to broaden and improve the statistical evidence supporting the notion that what those composers, writers, painters, et al do is not just fluff and filigree, but part of the dollars-and-cents fiber of the country….

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Ever think about the bigger picture of the arts in San Diego in contributing to the local economy?

If so, this surprising report from the U-T’s Nancy Gao on the recent National Endowment for the Arts grants in California sorted by city (courtesy of the federal economic stimulus package) gives a lot to think about.

Stimulus money disbursed by the National Endowment for the Arts:

San Francisco: 37 grants, totaling $1.4 million

Los Angeles: 15 grants, $1.05 million

Pasadena: 4 grants, $175,000

Long Beach: 3 grants, $150,000

Monterey: 2 grants, $100,000

Oakland: 2 grants, $100,000

San Jose: 2 grants, $100,000

Santa Clarita: 2 grants, $100,000

Fresno: 2 grants, $75,000

San Diego: 2 grants, $75,000

While there are some fairness issues worth discussing in terms of the allocation process, what strikes me as karmically interesting is that almost everyone I met while in San Diego was radically anti-tax and therefore radically dismissive of the merits of funding any kind of “art” with public dollars, especially local taxes.

So isn’t it interesting that as a region, San Diego will now get less than its fare share of its own money back from the feds for art? I should say, get some of what San Diegans (and their kids and grandkids) are going to be paying off for the next fifty years?

Not that I would even try to prove a direct causal connection, but if you think about where does that $1.4 million dollars in San Francisco is going to get spent (instead of wallowing in the usual immediate southern California taxpayer victimhood) you may see my point as a karmic one.

Instead of San Diego print shops, designers, equipment rental agencies, metalworkers, paint shops, art stores, tile setters, coffee shops, general contractors (and a few others I’m forgetting, I’m sure) getting some additional business so they can in turn pay for San Diego gas, food, rent, utilities, cable and taxes (!), that money is now going to San Francisco print shops, designers, equipment rental agencies….

Hmmm.

In case you’re wondering, that list is what I immediately remember from my own public art project in San Diego, dedicated in the spring of 2006, so I have a somewhat unique perspective on the issue of taxpayer funding for public art.

As one of the lead artists on the project, we cut our own “take” to something like $4 or $5 an hour to bring this project into fruition on a tight budget, while the aforementioned people all got paid the better part of full market price for their work. The community got all that money pretty much right back, right away.

My point is that NEA grants aren’t any different than funding any other kind of project with public money, in terms of who benefits. Its like the military presence in town. If the military spends money on people, or a project, someone in the local economic sphere earns the money.

I have personal experience here to offer as example. As a professional artist in San Diego, I received a contract to create exhibit components for the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot Command Museum there. What did I spend the money on?

My mortgage payment, gas for my truck, three local vendors, a paint company in Los Angeles, Home Depot, coffee shop, burrito shop, farmer’s market, the Co-op, my California state taxes….

Get the picture?

-John Hiemstra

Read the full article here on SignOnSanDiego.