SOS for culture
The Houston arts — ballet, theater, opera and symphony — need a lifeline post-Harvey.
As Houston bids for the new Amazon headquarters today, another institution tomorrow, it’s worth remembering that five decades ago our lack of major arts organizations — or “that cultural thing,” in the words of a consultant from that era — almost blocked the relocation of the U.S. headquarters of Royal Dutch Shell.
Houston had no ballet back then. Its opera was weak and running in the red. “Our symphony was fair (Dallas’ was better),” remembered Ben Love, a pre-eminent civic leader at the time. To remove that potential impediment to growth, the former chairman and CEO of Texas Commerce Bancshares, an opera board member himself, asked members of the local chamber of commerce to help nurture major arts organizations.
They did. “We gave potential supporters the facts, challenged them to help and they met the need,” Love wrote in his memoir.
Love has been deceased for more than a decade, but there’s a new set of facts that the business community, the Greater Houston Partnership, major community and family foundations and other potential supporters need to address: The major Houston arts organizations need help. And they need it now. We can’t let the next generation look back and say, “We used to have world-class arts organizations.”
Harvey hit the ballet, the symphony, the opera and Alley Theatre hard. Each expects losses of millions of dollars as a result of the storm, a combination of property damage and loss of revenue resulting from cancellations of performances. Insurance will offset some but not all of the costs to the buildings and little if any of the lost revenues needed to sustain each organization.
To their credit, the downtown arts groups are going on with the show. The opera has set up Resilience Theater in the George R. Brown and is valiantly trying to overcome complex architectural challenges. The Houston Ballet has rebounded from damage to its $45 million studio building but has lost its stage venue — the Wortham Theater Center — for what will likely be the entire season, forcing a season-long hometown tour. Despite tremendous infrastructural damage, the Alley Theatre’s large stage is open, but the small stage remains closed.
Pluck and determination alone are not enough to see these arts groups through. How many tickets will be sold for the upcoming seasons is unknown, but there’s no way that ticket sales can cure deficits of this size.
The Greater Houston Partnership and the business community must spearhead the fundraising effort to get our downtown arts groups through this emergency. We return to the wise man Love, for a history lesson about building these institutions: “Houston’s immediate positive response would not have occurred in many other cities.”
The leadership of Houston rose to push the city to the front rank of national arts in the 1970s. Similarly, in the late 1980s banking and oil recession, the Wortham center was built on public lands entirely with private funds. And in so many outsized gestures since then including the Hobby Center in 2002, the Alley Theatre renovation just following the 2009 and 2010 financial crisis, the community — to borrow Love’s words — responded to the need.
This latest challenge to our arts organizations can be surmounted, but the business community needs to lead the way. And the time to act is now.
Arts ecosystems take decades to build. But arts organizations can become mediocre quickly if they are unable to retain and attract talented performers who have opportunities elsewhere.
The loss of Houston’s world-class arts status would be a blow to our economy and future growth. Good arts is good business. And, as Love once said, “Industries locate their people in a city because it has a soul.”
By outlining a plan quickly for relief of the downtown major arts organizations, business leaders and philanthropists can throw a lifeline to the arts and protect a vital element of our city’s soul.