When the Cash Heads Out of Town
The Columbian (Vancouver, WA.)
December 8, 2002, Sunday
WHEN THE CASH HEADS OUT OF TOWN
WITH NO REAL LOCAL FOCUS FOR THEIR GENEROSITY, CLARK COUNTY ARTS PATRONS SEND GIFTS TO OREGON
BYLINE: BRETT OPPEGAARD, Columbian staff writer
SECTION: Life; Pg. d1
LENGTH: 1338 words
Of all the places she could have been in Portland, eccentric performance artist Laurie Anderson of New York brought her complex exhibition of spoken word and music and sounds to Skyview High School this summer, filling the 1,150-seat auditorium in Salmon Creek.
Strung together with recent local appearances by the late comedian Steve Allen, classical guitar virtuoso Christopher Parkening and actor/conductor David Ogden Stiers, a pattern does seem to be emerging north of the Columbia River.
Clark County and its residents appear empowered by relatively new theaters at Skyview, Fort Vancouver High School and the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, leading to increasingly bigger cravings for cultural and entertainment events of their own.
The annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza and the Clark County Fair have appealed to the metro area's masses for decades, yet when completed in the spring, the 18,000-seat amphitheater at the fairgrounds will give this area a venue unparalleled in Portland. It all adds to the evidence that with the right support and nourishment at least some of the region's prime, and even sophisticated, events successfully can happen here.
Despite such gradual progress, though, virtually all major arts and entertainment activity still revolves around downtown Portland. That's where the best venues are, which, in turn, draw the best acts. Clark County residents have no reservations about crossing the Columbia to attend such offerings, perpetuating the Portland organizations' dominance through ticket purchases and by making charitable donations.
$860,000 headed south
A sampling of 10 of the largest arts organizations in Oregon, primarily in Portland, reveals that Clark County donors gave roughly $860,000 to those groups in the past fiscal year. In contrast, only one arts organization in Southwest Washington -- the Vancouver Symphony -- receives significant support from local donors.
Yet all of the money the Vancouver Symphony raised in this manner during the past fiscal year ($ 144,000) is still less than half of what its Portland counterpart, the Oregon Symphony, brought in from Southwest Washington donors ($ 306,000). In fact, the Vancouver group's entire annual operating budget for 2002-03 ($ 280,000) doesn't even match the local gifts to Oregon Symphony.
Clark County residents furthermore gave nearly that same budget amount this year ($ 240,000) to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., which is about 300 miles south.
Caliber improves
"That's a shame, just a real shame to have that much money leaving our community," said Jan Asai, volunteer development director for Vancouver's prime dance company, Columbia Dance Ensemble. "On the other hand, I think that we're coming along. I don't know how long it will take, but the caliber of performances here have been going up over the years. . . . We have to find ways to encourage people to get more involved in what we have in our community, so they can see what the quality is, and then maybe we could get them excited about helping it to develop."
Mark Owsley, chairman of the Vancouver Cultural Commission, said, "I think it's great that people here are giving to the arts, and that tells you that behind the annual donations is a lot more money. . . . I don't blame them for going across the river because that's where the quality usually is, not always, but usually. And I don't think we've presented anybody with a (large) project that's really worth their time and money yet. . . . Not having a (public) performing arts center is a big part of (the dynamics)."
The cultural commission within the next month or so, he said, intends to ask the Vancouver City Council to start looking for proposals to build just such a venue, fueled by the $ 700,000 seed money gained from the sale of the Columbia Arts Center two years ago.
"But there has to be a vision, and there has to be somebody here that's willing to be a leader," Owsley said.
A logical candidate could be arts patron Leslie Durst of Vancouver, who was instrumental in helping to transform Shumway Middle School into the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics in the early 1990s. She gave $ 1 million for that project, and then when it ran out of money during renovation of the auditorium, Durst donated another $ 370,00 to finish the job.
In addition, Durst has given through the years to the Vancouver Symphony, Columbia Dance Ensemble and the Sculpture Garden on Broadway, plus various Portland groups, including the Oregon Symphony, Oregon Ballet Theatre and White Bird. One of her prime interests is the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, which she helped to found in 1995 and has continued to support significantly. It was Durst's influence with PICA that made the Anderson performance at Skyview this summer possible.
Durst, who was reared in New York and lived in Florida before moving to Vancouver a decade ago, says locality doesn't dictate her decision making when it comes to donations to the arts.
"My philanthropy is about what generates a response in me," she said. "Ultimately, I can't give to every single arts organization that calls on me. I respond to people, and I respond to projects. It doesn't matter if it's in Clark County or Portland or wherever.
No big motivator
"Arts are part of the fabric of every community, and I'd like to see more success in that area here," Durst said. "But I haven't heard of anything that makes me want to rush out and join up."
Kathryn Reith, a Clark County resident who also is vice chairwoman of the board of directors at Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland's second largest theater company, said she would like to support local efforts more, too, but has trouble finding causes in Vancouver that inspire her.
"Nothing's really reached out and grabbed me," Reith said. "In terms of size of organizations and quality of productions, that really is in Portland at this point. . . . Clark County just doesn't have anything similar."
Artists Repertory Theatre is only one of the Oregon arts groups that has used such competitive advantage to attract talented Clark County people, as well as major donors from the area. Those include William and Julie Reiersgaard, who gave a large undisclosed amount to the company in the mid-1990s to help create a $ 1.2 million black box theater in downtown Portland, later dubbed the Reiersgaard Theatre.
"I think people have to see us in a larger picture," said Graham McReynolds, vice president of marketing and development for Oregon Symphony, which gathered the most of Clark County's individual donations to the arts last year. "We've always thought of ourselves as a regional organization with deep roots. We are the first American orchestra established west of the Mississippi -- before Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles. People have been coming to us for years. People who support us financially have done so for a long time. It's a part of their life experience. They come to the hall, so they support us financially."
Not a target
McReynolds says the Oregon Symphony doesn't specifically target Clark County or any other geographic area in fund-raising, and it doesn't consider Vancouver Symphony a competitor. Instead, the group just tries to keep its patrons involved and engaged in the art form.
"Our belief is that the more symphonic music being played, the more people will come to it here," he said. "When we tour and perform, we don't feel bound by our state border. We always look regionally for support."
Owsley of the Vancouver Cultural Commission said, "A fact of life in this town is that we have to compete with the size of the projects and groups in Portland. I don't condemn people for taking their money over there, but if they want to see something better in the town they live, if they want to support the arts that their children and neighbors are participating in, then they are going to need to be open to listening to proposals."