Mayor Brandon Scott and City Council leaders, unhappy with the performance of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, warned after a recent budget hearing that they may “assess alternative options” for funding the arts and producing major festivals in Baltimore.
But what options does the city have for supporting the arts, other than channeling money to an independent organization such as the BOPA?
A local group called Friends of Public Art, or FOPA, is an authority on the subject. Its members say relying on BOPA, an organization that’s not a direct division of city government, makes no sense and essentially leaves Baltimore without a true arts council.
Furthermore, they say, the combination of “promotion” and “the arts” in one agency is a dubious marriage that doesn’t serve the city well. They suggest that the city “untangle” promotion and the arts and establish a stand-alone arts council or department – one that is part of the city government and not an organization that’s under contract with the city.
“I think that there’s a question of whether it was a good idea to put promotion and the arts together in an agency, in a quasi-public agency, in the first place,” said Baltimore sculptor Mary Ann Mears, one of the members of FOPA, during a meeting with Baltimore’s Public Art Commission earlier this year. “Boston did that and they pulled them back apart in 2014. So that’s one thing that should be on the table for the arts community to take into consideration.”
Mears and other FOPA members say many American cities have strong partnerships between civic governments and local arts communities. They say the key seems to be making the entity that employs the staff and distributes funds for the arts a full-fledged division of city government, rather than farming it out to a quasi-public agency or some other organization outside of city government.
In a letter to Scott earlier this year, Mears urged him to explore an arrangement such as that. She argued that Baltimore can’t really have a “real” arts council unless the recipient of public funding for the arts is part of city government.
“In light of your call for change of the leadership of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, the City and the arts community should take the opportunity to reexamine the structure of BOPA and its relationship to city government as the city’s official arts agency, our equivalent of an arts council,” she wrote after Scott asked for Sawyer’s resignation in January.
“Looking at other cities nationally and our sister local jurisdictions in Maryland with arts communities not as diverse and awesome as Baltimore’s, one can see terrific models for how an arts council can serve the arts community and the public,” she wrote.
A real arts council, Mears said in her meeting with the Public Art Commission, “is a city arts agency funded by a city government and it’s what every other city has and it’s what our arts community really deserves.”
Baltimore’s arrangement with BOPA has never been ideal because of the way it’s structured, she argued.
“I think that BOPA being outside of city government has been a real hurdle, a real barrier,” she said. “The way I see it, BOPA has been pushing a boulder uphill because they’re not a city agency.”
‘Serious flaw‘
Mears, who is married to Abell Foundation president Robert C. Embry Jr., said in her letter to Scott that making the arts agency part of city government would be a better way to make sure that money for the arts is distributed equitably throughout the city.
“Despite its ostensible role as our City’s arts council, BOPA has not truly functioned as an arts council for decades,” she said. “For example, there has been no publicly available analysis of equity in distribution of resources or scope of arts sector need in determination of the city’s overall funding of the arts.”
While an arts council can be a recipient of grants and donations, the potential for conflict of interest with its constituents is real, as is distortion of policy decisions by funders’ agendas, she said. “That BOPA relies as much as it does on private contributions has been an increasingly serious flaw.”
At the heart of the issues around BOPA, Mears said, are the dual tasks of promoting the city, including staging festivals and signature events, and of being the city’s arts council, including distributing funds that support local artists and help create and restore public art. “While for many years, BOPA secured national attention for the city for the festivals on which the agency focused, many aspects of its core mission as an arts council were ignored.”
Recently, “BOPA has focused away from events in the Inner Harbor partly due to COVID and, laudably, to reach communities in neighborhoods across the city and to invite artists and arts entities previously overlooked to the table with the goal of bringing programs and resources to the full diversity of our artists community and our city,” she said.
In transitioning this way, she said, “BOPA has become effectively a city-wide community arts organization.” While that’s an important role, she said, it’s “only part of the job of an agency designated as the office of promotion and the arts.”
When an administration tries to do too much by relying on an organization that’s not even part of city government, she warned, any push for diversity, equity and inclusion may not achieve the desired results.
“Without an arts council guided by an informed comprehensive vision and enabled by sufficient reliable funding,” she said, “the city has a leadership void in leveraging arts opportunities across the arts ecosystem. Over many years in varied forums, the arts community in all its diversity has expressed a strong desire for such leadership and the opportunity to participate in shaping that kind of an inclusive vision into action.”
The bottom line is that “we need an arts council that structures ongoing open and inclusive engagement of the arts community to shape a comprehensive set of policies and funding priorities,” she said. “Those policies should guide a rational and equitable grants process. We need an arts council with clearly defined responsibilities so that programming is driven by the needs of our arts community and citizens and by the opportunities for the arts to flourish in Baltimore. We need an arts council purposefully and steadily working to be an outstanding city arts agency. We already have the components necessary to be considered a national arts leader among cities.”
A separate department
Aaron Bryant, chair of the Public Art Commission, said during the meeting with FOPA that he thinks Baltimore should have a separate department within city government for the arts and cultural affairs.
“There should be a Commissioner of Arts and Culture like there might be a Commissioner for Education,” he said. “Education and art should be seen on the same level to a certain degree.”
Bryant said he has always wondered why promotion and the arts are together in one agency.
“It almost seems like it was about tourists and the convention thing — the Department of Tourism and Visitors or something — and it grew out of that,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s the case, but that shouldn’t be the case. The implication should not be about promoting anything other than art and quality of life for the residents of Baltimore, as opposed to suggesting that it’s about marketing and tourism.”
Part of the challenge if city leaders want to make a change, he said, will be undoing what’s currently in place.
“I would say that to untangle what’s been tangled is really, really difficult,” he said. “But it has to start somewhere.”
Text of Mary Ann Mears’ letter to Mayor Brandon Scott regarding the state of the arts in Baltimore
Following is the complete text of the letter that Mary Ann Mears sent to Scott. It was dated Jan. 8, 2023, just after the mayor called for a change of leadership at BOPA.
In making a copy available to Baltimore Fishbowl, Mears noted that it reflects her views and not necessarily those of other arts advocates
“I did this on my own so it does not reflect a position officially taken by Friends of Public Art,” she stated. “That said, we have discussed that if the city had a true arts council it would be more likely that there would be a fully professional public art program, which would take care of the city’s amazing public art collection. That is our goal, however achieved.”
Dear Mayor Scott,
In light of your call for change of the leadership of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), the City and the arts community should take the opportunity to reexamine the structure of BOPA and its relationship to city government as the city’s official arts agency, our equivalent of an arts council.
Despite its ostensible role as our City’s arts council, BOPA has not truly functioned as an arts council for decades. For example, there has been no publicly available analysis of equity in distribution of resources or scope of arts sector need in determination of the city’s overall funding of the arts.
After covering salaries and some programming, BOPA does regrant a portion of its $2.5 million allotment from the city (FY23) as well as some of its grant from MSAC but it is a fraction of the needs of Baltimore’s creative and diverse arts community. It leaves considerable disparities affecting, for example, mid-sized arts entities, which are mostly omitted from other parts of the city budget. Historically across jurisdictions, mid-sized organizations are the most vulnerable financially. Also, while there are grants to small emerging arts groups, they are not a reliable source of ongoing operating funding which provides stability for the communities that rely on them. While the arts community has worked around these deficits; it is absurd, given that the arts are one of Baltimore’s signature assets, that our city government does not have a fully funded and professionally staffed arts council.
Just as state arts councils were formed when the National Endowment for the Arts intentionally created funding incentives, the establishment of Maryland’s county and Baltimore City’s arts agencies were incentivized by grant-making by the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC). I served on the MSAC when our local arts agencies were in their adolescence; we purposefully worked to help make them stronger and more professional with increased state funding and technical assistance. With the great work of their own organization, County Arts Agencies of Maryland (CAAM), advocacy by Maryland Citizens for the Arts (MCA), and the support of the state legislature and county executives and councils, Maryland has some of the best local arts agencies in the country.
While local jurisdictions have chosen varied structures, including quasi-public like BOPA, there are certain necessary functions for all of them.
Number one, an arts council should advocate for, and be the steward of local public funding for the arts. Second, an arts council should lead the development of a thoughtful, fair, comprehensive grants program, which implements policy developed in an open and transparent way. An arts council should engage the entire arts community along with the broader community — being sure to include education, health, community, and economic development players — in an ongoing strategic analysis of diverse needs and opportunities and focusing on how to bring public dollars to help arts entities meet those needs and fulfill the opportunities. An arts council’s role is to support not compete for resources with or supplant the initiatives of artists and arts groups.
While an arts council can be a recipient of grants and donations, the potential of conflict of interest with its constituents is real, as is, distortion of policy decisions by funders’ agendas. That BOPA relies as much as it does on private contributions has been an increasingly serious flaw.
At the crux of the issues around BOPA are the dual but related roles of promoting the city, including festivals and signature events and of being the city’s arts council. While for many years, BOPA secured national attention for the city for the festivals on which the agency focused, many aspects of its core mission as an arts council were ignored.
Recently, BOPA has focused away from events in the Inner Harbor partly due to COVID and, laudably, to reach communities in neighborhoods across the city and to invite artists and arts entities previously overlooked to the table with the goal of bringing programs and resources to the full diversity of our artists community and our city. In transitioning this way, BOPA has become effectively a city-wide community arts organization. An important role but only part of the job of an agency designated as the office of promotion and the arts.
The issue of whether it was a good decision to merge promotion and the arts is a question that should be looked at. Boston has separated those roles after combining them previously. It may be that having sufficient support in the city budget and some restructuring could mitigate the situation.
Without an arts council guided by an informed comprehensive vision and enabled by sufficient reliable funding, the city has a leadership void in leveraging arts opportunities across the arts ecosystem. Over many years in varied forums, the arts community in all its diversity has expressed a strong desire for such leadership and the opportunity to participate in shaping that kind of an inclusive vision into action. Specifically, seven years ago an initiative called Citizen Artist led by Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA) and MCA was created to inform the policy platforms of candidates for Mayor. This effort documented that call for, and dedication to developing and implementing a comprehensive, inclusive vision from the arts community.
Beyond not being able to fulfill the much-needed array of administrative, funding and leadership roles of an arts council for decades, BOPA has abdicated specific responsibility given it by city ordinance for Baltimore’s legacy public art program.
Baltimore was the second jurisdiction in the United States to have a One Percent for Art ordinance and program. That ordinance provides not only for the commissioning of new works but also for the conservation and maintenance of existing works, which has not happened. This dereliction of duty predates the current leadership. In 2016, the Office of the Inspector General for Baltimore City released a report documenting the destruction, on BOPA’s watch, of outdoor art in the city’s collection sited at City Schools, which today would be worth north of $1.7 million. The report did not include interior work at the schools or work commissioned for any other city properties. The total loss to the citizens is presumably much higher. Because Baltimore was an early player in contemporary public art, the city’s collection includes early work by people who are now recognized as major artists. Some were local artists enabled by the city’s program to launch national careers; they and the other non-local artists are in numerous museum collections. The missing pieces include works by those distinguished artists.
Looking at other cities nationally and our sister local jurisdictions in Maryland with arts communities not as diverse and awesome as Baltimore’s, one can see terrific models for how an arts council can serve the arts community and the public.
Mayor Scott, Baltimore needs a real arts council. We need an arts council that fulfills its obligations set forth in ordinance. We need an arts council that structures ongoing open and inclusive engagement of the arts community to shape a comprehensive set of policies and funding priorities. Those policies should guide a rational and equitable grants process. We need an arts council with clearly defined responsibilities so that programming is driven by the needs of our arts community and citizens and by the opportunities for the arts to flourish in Baltimore. We need an arts council purposefully and steadily working to be an outstanding city arts agency. We already have the components necessary to be considered a national arts leader among cities.
Sincerely yours,
Mary Ann E. Mears
