YEAR IN REVIEW : ’86 WAS GOOD FOR ARTS DESPITE SYMPHONY’S SILENCE : A selected list of high and low points in the San Diego County arts scene for 1986

SAN DIEGO —  In a positive counterpoint to the canceled-season blues emanating from Symphony Hall, the presence of several nationally prominent artists demonstrated the strength of the San Diego arts scene in 1986.

Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim at the Old Globe Theatre, director Peter Sellars at the La Jolla Playhouse and performance artist Karen Finley at Sushi gallery provided a better yardstick for the state of the arts here than the symphony’s financial troubles.

That such artists wanted to perform here speaks of their respect and trust for the art being created by San Diego institutions on a day-to-day basis.

Sellars, the country’s hottest young theater iconoclast, returned to La Jolla (he staged the playhouse’s first play in 1983) on an AT&T-sponsored; swap that sent the Playhouse’s original musical, “Shout Up a Morning” to the Kennedy Center in Washington. In return, Sellars imported a bold updating of Sophocles’ “Ajax” to the Playhouse in August.

Finley, a New Yorker who had appeared at Sushi a few years ago, presented her “Yams . . . ,” a controversial, wildly theatrical and visually vivid one-woman rant against sexual violence, to capacity crowds at Sushi in October.

Despite the Globe’s own sizable debt, the theater rounded up $600,000 for the world premiere of “Into the Woods,” a musical by Sondheim and James Lapine, the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of “Sunday in the Park With George.”

With the exception of Sushi and Finley’s performance, visual arts institutions had little else exciting to offer. The San Diego Museum of Art’s imported exhibit of works by Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer and the museum’s own California landscape exhibit, “The Golden Land” (running through Jan. 18), proved interesting, but the most popular exhibitions were of the venerable works of Ted Geisel’s Dr. Seuss and Ansel Adams.

Nearer to the role played by art in the community was the closure, last summer, of the San Diego Art Center. Burdened with a $650,000 debt, the emerging Art Center folded its gallery and bookstore operations in Horton Plaza and--apparently--its plans to convert the Balboa Theater to a modern art museum.

Like the visual arts, dance had little to shout about in 1986, but Three’s Company and Dancers and the California Ballet deserve credit for surviving. The San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts did its share with imports of such high-profile groups as the Joffrey and American Ballet Theatre.

A selected list of high and low points in the arts for 1986:

The donkey cart affair, with overtones of Big Brother nosing about the arts. Last January, U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson ordered the removal of “San Diego Donkey Cart” from the federal courthouse’s plaza. The work is by National City artist David Avalos. Thompson cited security as the reason, but Avalos cried censorship. The work, which had been granted a permit, depicted an illegal Mexican immigrant being apprehended by Immigration and Naturalization Service officers. The service has offices in the Federal Building, next to the plaza.

Collaborative efforts. For the first time, the San Diego Symphony and representatives of the Old Globe, Three’s Company and San Diego Repertory Theatre collaborated, staging Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du soldat.” Similarly, the San Diego Opera employed the Old Globe’s artistic director, Jack O’Brien, to stage “The Lighthouse.” Over the Christmas holidays, Three’s Company combined forces with the Pacific Chamber Opera in Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols.”

The San Diego Opera’s brilliant production of “The Lighthouse,” Peter Maxwell Davies’ gripping, largely atonal, chamber opera. O’Brien gave the work a clear-headed staging, and the opera’s Karen Keltner did an equally fine job conducting the demanding music.

The opening of the Lyceum Theatre complex in Horton Plaza, though a year late, added two needed performing spaces. It also underscored the phenomenal 10-year growth of the San Diego Repertory Theatre, which manages the complex. Also, the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre broke ground on its second stage, the Deane Theatre, which will open in January.

Runaway hits: The tiny North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach for the AIDS play, “The Normal Heart” and the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s “Holy Ghosts,” a play about snake-handling fundamentalists. Lamb’s Players in National City also continued a tradition of staging original plays with “Oklahoma Rigs.”

The Old Globe deserves some credit for producing an original play, “Emily,” but really, guys, what fluff.

The La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s eclectic summer festival under Heiichiro Ohyama.

Thundering bore: the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Fine Tuning” exhibit, presumably on the evolution of racing yachts.

Philip-Dimitri Galas began to receive long-overdue appreciation in his hometown, posthumously. The 32-year-old playwright-director-actor died Aug. 12.

The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art’s memorial tribute performances to Galas, and for circulating performance tapes of Galas’ works.

The UC San Diego Music Department’s Pacific Ring Festival was an international ear- and eye-opening event, featuring artists such as composers John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, Roger Reynolds and Joaquin Orellana; the theater group Suzuki Company of Toga (in Japan), and video artists Nam June Paik and Ed Emshwiller. The San Diego Symphony’s never-ending financial woes reflect symphony mismanagement more than a lack of support for the arts in San Diego. Even the symphony triggered a groundswell of community support, an outpouring of $2.4 million in 10 days, when it threatened bankruptcy in February.

Then, true to its past history of overly optimistic projections, the symphony shot itself in the foot by announcing it would end the year with no “carry forward” debt. The reality was that, after the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, the symphony showed an unaudited debt of $877,000.

To complicate matters, 1986 was the symphony’s year to renegotiate with musicians. But the players adopted a tactic from the anti-drug campaign and just said no to symphony wage proposals, calling wages “already intolerably low.”

At the same time, the new symphony leadership adopted the mantle of fiscal responsibility and vowed to end years of spending more than the symphony took in. The new leaders wanted across-the-board budget reductions, including salary cuts for the players.

Both sides proved intransigent. The contract talks stalled, and in September the symphony locked out the players. Last month, the symphony canceled the entire winter concert season.

Despite the disturbing financial dissonance coming from the symphony, the city showed an unprecedented desire to support the arts in 1986, with the caveat that they be well-managed. The Old Globe and the San Diego Opera took a couple of exemplary artistic risks and came up winners. It’s premature to say whether such efforts will encourage future risk-taking. But unless arts institutions constantly venture into the unknown, they risk becoming ciphers.