» Influential critic:
Foundation has an unvarnished view of cultural assets.
When it comes to assessing Milwaukee’s cultural institutions, the most influential critic in town just might be the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Internal documents from 2016 and earlier reveal the foundation’s deep knowledge and unvarnished opinions about the financial and artistic state of the Skylight Music Theatre, Florentine Opera, Milwaukee Ballet and Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
A background paper on the Skylight Music Theatre noted the turbulence within the institution that went back to 2009 with the move, later reversed, to eliminate the position of artistic director William Theisen.
Theisen stayed for several more seasons, but the arrival of his successor, Viswa Subbaraman, was seen as a “net negative on several fronts.”
Over three seasons, the Bradley Foundation noted Skylight lost “46 percent of its subscriber households,” as performance revenue declined from $1.5 million in 2012-’13 to $1.07 million in 2014-’15.
“Confidentially, the board is investigating the possibility of selling its building and leasing back the theater,” the paper noted.
The foundation held out hope that things would get better under a new executive director, “the amusingly named Jack Lemmon,” who was described as “something of a specialist in arts company turnarounds ...”
Lemmon told the Journal Sentinel that the Skylight Theatre “has been working to develop a sustainable business model over the past decade.”
He said ticket sales for the 2016-’17 season “are up,” and subscription sales for next season “are double what they were last year at this time.”
“The Bradley Foundation has been a key donor to Skylight, providing $2.25 million since 1990,” Lemmon said. “We are proud of their continued and growing support to help us produce the best in music theater for this community.”
The problems plaguing local arts companies in the wake of the Great Recession could be seen vividly at the Florentine Opera. According to the Bradley Foundation assessment, the opera held down costs, pared its budget by $1 million over eight years and earned three Grammy Awards for recordings of new operas.
“Even as community engagement for the company continues to grow, revenue continues to drop,” the paper said.
“To make matters more complicated, as the budget drops — even when it’s done out of good stewardship — the United Performing Arts Fund allocation goes down,” the paper said. “Meanwhile, the social community that has supported opera for generations is on its way out. The five or six donors who give $50-$75K annually are aging, and the next generations aren’t replacing them.”
Things were brighter for the Milwaukee Ballet, which the Bradley Foundation found was “in good financial and artistic health and making thoughtful plans for its future.”
“Without in any way detracting from the company’s intelligent management, it is worth noting that these circumstances are possible in large part by the generosity of a patron who was willing to pay off all accumulated debt several years ago,” the paper said.
The Bradley Foundation said the Milwaukee Repertory Theater raised its earned income from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2016 and noted that the Rep was in the quiet phase of a $10 million capital campaign.
There had been a few bumps along the way. Two years earlier, the Bradley Foundation said that a 2012 production of “Assassins” “was a revenue disaster.” The production opened just a month after a deadly shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek and the foundation concluded “the community had no interest in attending a performance that was far too realistic.” That same year, the theater was hit by management turnover.
But by 2016, the Rep had returned to health, with the Bradley Foundation concluding: “Although occasionally the directing is uneven, the Rep is a steady and wellmanaged company, and an essential part of Milwaukee’s cultural life.”