ARTS COUNCIL PURSUES PRIVATE FUNDS

SAN DIEGO —  In what the California Arts Council director said could be the start “of a new era of arts support in this state,” the publicly funded council has created its first mechanism to solicit private funds.

The council at a regular meeting at the Lyceum Theatre here Friday, voted into being the California Arts Foundation to seek donations from private corporations, foundations and individuals. It will function as “a vehicle to receive private funds” to augment the state arts agency’s budget, currently at about $13.5 million.

Bylaws, which have yet to be ratified, state that the foundation will be run by an 11-member board composed of four Arts Council members and seven members from the state’s arts community to be chosen by the council.

“We think it’s important for us to expand and become more innovative in how we get funding--rather than just going to the governor and saying we need more money,” Republican council member Joyce Pollock told the council.

“The birth of the California Arts Foundation . . . could be no less than the beginning of a new era of arts support in this state,” said Republican council director Robert H. Reidin a letter to the group. Reid, a 1986 appointee of Gov. George Deukmejian, has been urging a partnership of private and public funding for council programs.

The foundation will seek funds from such corporations as AT&T;, Philip Morris and Arco, Reid said in an interview. It will probably begin to formally solicit funds by June, he said, and its first “major” beneficiary will be the council’s new $200,000 fellowship program for individual artists, which will award its first round of grants early next year. The foundation also will help fund special council projects, he said.

The state’s arts community seemed to view the new foundation favorably.

While the foundation has caused “a great deal of debate” within the arts community, “a considerable amount of concern has been allayed by a review of the proposed foundation bylaws,” said Terri Jones, a spokeswoman for the California Confederation of the Arts, an advocacy group representing state artists and arts organizations.

The confederation had feared that the foundation “might represent an erosion” of the confederation’s “commitment to a minimum of $1 per capita in public funds for the arts by 1990,” Jones told the council. “So we are heartened that the council assures us the foundation will not impede this goal,” she said. (The state now spends about 50 cents per capita.)

The 11-member council, composed of nine Deukmejian appointees, is unanimous in seeking a $1-per-capita arts budget, Reid said. “We’re not going to quibble about how we arrive at that dollar per capita. I don’t care whether its public or private money or a combination, as long as we raise more money for the arts in California.”

Jones said in an interview that she also thinks the foundation will not aggravate the competition among arts groups already fighting for private-sector dollars.

Council member Laurel Dickranian, who as development director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic raises funds to add to its $22-million budget, concurred.

“The foundation is another opportunity for a funding organization to make a positive statement in the arts,” she said after the meeting. “Maybe it will turn up funders that haven’t yet found a way to participate that was right for them.”