NYC Is Establishing an Office to Support Arts Groups
Posted: April 5th, 2006, 9:33 am
New York City Is Establishing an Office to Support Arts Groups
By SEWELL CHAN
NY TIMES
Published: April 5, 2006
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that the city would create a new office to "aggressively pitch New York City around the world as the nation's art and cultural capital" by helping nonprofit organizations, especially those in the arts, cope with the high costs that threaten their survival.
"We won't and can't be complacent," Mr. Bloomberg said, adding that he was determined not to cede New York's status as a world cultural center. "In the creative sector, as in so many other areas, at one time New York City didn't have to compete with other cities," he said at a conference at the Museum of Modern Art that brought together 220 officials, artists, business people and academics. "Now we do. Other cities are quickly learning the benefits of being a creative hub."
The daunting challenges facing artists hoping to thrive in New York were underscored by one participant at the conference, Creative New York. The choreographer Bill T. Jones said that it was meaningless to talk about "creative capital" without first addressing the decline in support for arts groups and the precarious existence of individual artists.
"You don't make a damn cent in dance," he said. "So when I'm asked to be on this panel and asked to be part of the new economic engine of New York City — are we serious?"
His dancers "are real depressed; I would dare say they are despairing," he said. "And that made me feel very sad, and, I dare say, angry."
The new office, which will include at least two employees and be part of the city's Economic Development Corporation, represents a recognition that skyrocketing rents have made it much harder for smaller arts groups to flourish. It will help such groups navigate the real-estate market, obtain technical advice and attract financing.
The conference was intended as a response to a report in December that described the "creative sector" — defined broadly to include advertising, publishing and broadcasting as well as the arts — as a critical element of the city's economy. The Partnership for New York City, an alliance of business leaders, organized the conference, along with the city, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based research organization that prepared the report with help from the consulting firm Mt. Auburn Associates.
"This is our competitive advantage, and we are losing it," said Robin J. Keegan, a research fellow at the Center for an Urban Future and co-author of the report.
While many conference participants offered suggestions for maintaining the city's cultural edge, an equal number provided a grim diagnosis of the city's prospects for remaining at the vanguard of global cultural production.
There was little agreement about the exact nature of the problem. Some said that globalization added challenges to the city's future as a cultural hub.
"We're moving into a world where everybody in the world will have access to the best of everything, at the touch of a button," said Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director at Carnegie Hall. "From the point of view of culture, it makes it all the more important that everything we do here in New York City be the very best and most extraordinary."
Barry Diller, a leading media investor and the chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said India, China and South Korea were now the true hotbeds of creativity because of their governmental support for technological investments. "New York's ability on into the future to remain the communications capital is really questionable," he said.
Other speakers focused on the local problems facing creative workers.
Terry J. Lundgren, the chief executive of Federated Department Stores, which owns Macy's, said that because once-bohemian neighborhoods were no longer affordable, "what is vital is to make sure that our transportation system is effective," so creative workers who have been priced out of Manhattan can still reach their jobs and even form new communities of artistic ferment.
James Schamus, a co-president of Focus Features and a producer of the film "Brokeback Mountain," said that since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the tighter restrictions on entering the United States have made New York seem less hospitable to international artists. Widely reported abuses of American-held prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba and elsewhere have also taken their toll, he said. "Water-boarding your potential clients is really not good for the culture," he said, referring to a form of torture, and he received scattered if nervous applause.
Mr. Diller seemed swayed by some of those arguments. "We're certainly not an inviting place that greets people with a big happy smile to come into the melting pot," he said.
Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development, told the gathering that New York City had lost 894,000 residents from 2000 to 2004 and that those who left were in general better educated than those who remained. "We're constantly having to replenish our supply of people who power this city, particularly creative people," he said.
Cities in Europe and Asia are "stealing our cultural institutions," he said, adding, "We've got to stay ahead of the pack."
The new office will be similar to those that already exist for the financial, media, real estate, biotechnology and retail industries. According to Andrew M. Alper, president of the Economic Development Corporation, the entire nonprofit sector accounts for 720,000 jobs in the city, or roughly a fifth of the work force, and the number of nonprofit employers, now 40,000, grew by 57 percent from 1990 to 2002. The office will try to help nonprofit groups secure low-interest or tax-exempt loans through the city's Industrial Development Agency, he said.
By SEWELL CHAN
NY TIMES
Published: April 5, 2006
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that the city would create a new office to "aggressively pitch New York City around the world as the nation's art and cultural capital" by helping nonprofit organizations, especially those in the arts, cope with the high costs that threaten their survival.
"We won't and can't be complacent," Mr. Bloomberg said, adding that he was determined not to cede New York's status as a world cultural center. "In the creative sector, as in so many other areas, at one time New York City didn't have to compete with other cities," he said at a conference at the Museum of Modern Art that brought together 220 officials, artists, business people and academics. "Now we do. Other cities are quickly learning the benefits of being a creative hub."
The daunting challenges facing artists hoping to thrive in New York were underscored by one participant at the conference, Creative New York. The choreographer Bill T. Jones said that it was meaningless to talk about "creative capital" without first addressing the decline in support for arts groups and the precarious existence of individual artists.
"You don't make a damn cent in dance," he said. "So when I'm asked to be on this panel and asked to be part of the new economic engine of New York City — are we serious?"
His dancers "are real depressed; I would dare say they are despairing," he said. "And that made me feel very sad, and, I dare say, angry."
The new office, which will include at least two employees and be part of the city's Economic Development Corporation, represents a recognition that skyrocketing rents have made it much harder for smaller arts groups to flourish. It will help such groups navigate the real-estate market, obtain technical advice and attract financing.
The conference was intended as a response to a report in December that described the "creative sector" — defined broadly to include advertising, publishing and broadcasting as well as the arts — as a critical element of the city's economy. The Partnership for New York City, an alliance of business leaders, organized the conference, along with the city, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based research organization that prepared the report with help from the consulting firm Mt. Auburn Associates.
"This is our competitive advantage, and we are losing it," said Robin J. Keegan, a research fellow at the Center for an Urban Future and co-author of the report.
While many conference participants offered suggestions for maintaining the city's cultural edge, an equal number provided a grim diagnosis of the city's prospects for remaining at the vanguard of global cultural production.
There was little agreement about the exact nature of the problem. Some said that globalization added challenges to the city's future as a cultural hub.
"We're moving into a world where everybody in the world will have access to the best of everything, at the touch of a button," said Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director at Carnegie Hall. "From the point of view of culture, it makes it all the more important that everything we do here in New York City be the very best and most extraordinary."
Barry Diller, a leading media investor and the chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said India, China and South Korea were now the true hotbeds of creativity because of their governmental support for technological investments. "New York's ability on into the future to remain the communications capital is really questionable," he said.
Other speakers focused on the local problems facing creative workers.
Terry J. Lundgren, the chief executive of Federated Department Stores, which owns Macy's, said that because once-bohemian neighborhoods were no longer affordable, "what is vital is to make sure that our transportation system is effective," so creative workers who have been priced out of Manhattan can still reach their jobs and even form new communities of artistic ferment.
James Schamus, a co-president of Focus Features and a producer of the film "Brokeback Mountain," said that since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the tighter restrictions on entering the United States have made New York seem less hospitable to international artists. Widely reported abuses of American-held prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba and elsewhere have also taken their toll, he said. "Water-boarding your potential clients is really not good for the culture," he said, referring to a form of torture, and he received scattered if nervous applause.
Mr. Diller seemed swayed by some of those arguments. "We're certainly not an inviting place that greets people with a big happy smile to come into the melting pot," he said.
Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development, told the gathering that New York City had lost 894,000 residents from 2000 to 2004 and that those who left were in general better educated than those who remained. "We're constantly having to replenish our supply of people who power this city, particularly creative people," he said.
Cities in Europe and Asia are "stealing our cultural institutions," he said, adding, "We've got to stay ahead of the pack."
The new office will be similar to those that already exist for the financial, media, real estate, biotechnology and retail industries. According to Andrew M. Alper, president of the Economic Development Corporation, the entire nonprofit sector accounts for 720,000 jobs in the city, or roughly a fifth of the work force, and the number of nonprofit employers, now 40,000, grew by 57 percent from 1990 to 2002. The office will try to help nonprofit groups secure low-interest or tax-exempt loans through the city's Industrial Development Agency, he said.