Houston arts hit by state commission’s reduced budget
The Texas Commission on the Arts, expecting a 28 percent cut in its $17.7 million budget from the state legislature for the next biennium, is eliminating a grant program that helped to support 35 cultural districts across the state, including five in Houston.
That program received $5 million for fiscal 2016 and 2017, funneling $1.7 million to Houston’s Museum District, the Theater District, the Midtown Arts & Cultural District, the Washington Avenue Arts District and the East End Foundation.
Grant proposals were due soon for 2018 and 2019. But on Wednesday, Gary Gibbs, the commission’s executive director, notified organizations not to bother submitting them.
As a result, the Washington Avenue Arts District will not have the $60,000 in operating funds it sought.
“It’s a pretty big hit,” said Susannah Mitchell, who directs that 2-year old district west of downtown. She had planned to combine the state funds with a matching grant that would have given the district a budget of $120,000.
“We’re still fully volunteer-run. Those funds represented a chance to get the district off the ground and hire staff,” she said.
Museum District executive director Julie Farr called the news “a major bummer.” Her district’s members include the Menil Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which were each hoping for $250,000 in cultural district funds.
MFAH director Gary Tinterow said his institution was “terribly disappointed” that the legislature voted not to fund the cultural districts.
“In the last two years, our two most popular exhibitions, ‘Sculpted in Steel’ and ‘Degas: A New Vision,’ were made possible through generous grants from the TCA. It is difficult to imagine how we could have produced those exhibitions without that support, and those exhibitions brought visitors from around the world, generating millions of dollars in local spending,” Tinterow said. “With less support, we will have no alternative but to curtail our programs, with the attendant consequences for our audience and for the local economy.”
Organizations will continue to receive funds from other TCA programs, Gibbs said. He did not think that the arts were targeted; other state programs will be cut, too, in the wake of lower oil and gas revenues. The commission has endured bigger slashes in the past, including a 56 percent cut in 2011.
A House amendment to eliminate the TCA during the current session failed by a vote of 119-29, “so there is broad support for the arts,” Gibbs said. “But it’s just a tight budget year.”
He said he hopes to revive the cultural district program when the legislature meets again in 2019.
“‘Suspending the program’ is better terminology than ‘canceling the program,’ ” Mitchell said. “But it’s really frustrating.”