{"id":4729,"title":"New York State Council on the Arts Annual Report 1971-72: Executive Statements and Financial Report","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/new-york-state-council-arts-annual-report-1971-72-executive-statements-and-financial-report","version":"d454371afe8df3878def0ec95d653ac24624518a2434c0847cbd96bac5791baf","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:08.1965389+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Corporate Author","name":"New York State Council on the Arts"}],"authorKeys":["New York State Council on the Arts"],"subjects":["Groups"],"metadata":[{"label":"Contributors","value":"New York State Council on the Arts","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"1972","url":null},{"label":"Group dates","value":"1960 -","url":null},{"label":"Group location","value":"New York City","url":null},{"label":"Group","value":"New York State Council on the Arts","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022New York State Council on the Arts Annual Report 1971-72: Executive Statements and Financial Report.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/new-york-state-council-arts-annual-report-1971-72-executive-statements-and-financial-report.","publication":"New York State Council on the Arts. New York State Council on the Arts Annual Report 1971-72: Executive Statements and Financial Report. 1972.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4729.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Financial Statement for 1971-72 (pdf)","url":"https://cdn.experimentaltvcenter.org/vhp/sites/default/files/history/pdf/nysca7172financial.pdf","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"},{"label":"Omar Lerman","url":"#Statement","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null},{"label":"Eric Larrabee","url":"#The_Arts_and_Government_in_New_York","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null},{"label":"Financial Statement 1971-72","url":"#Financial_Statement_for_1971-72_pdf","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":44443},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":803}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Omar Lerman Eric Larrabee Financial Statement 1971-72 Statement In Stephen Sondheim\u0027s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pseudolus, contemplating a flagon of wine, asks, \u0022Was I a good year?\u0022 For the Council, Year 1, the first year of major State appropriation for the arts, was indeed a vintage year. Year 2--which is what 1971-72 represents--was its equal. True, there was a significant drop in the amount of money appropriated for Council distribution--$5 million, to be exact, or $2.7 million if one discounts the previous year\u0027s special appropriation of $2.3 million for the New York Public Library. Equally true, there was a significant growth in applications for financial assistance, which--again to be exact--jumped from 850 to 1,216. This awesome double threat to the funding process was faced with purpose and dedication by staff and Council alike. The consequences were that 805 organizations were supported by the Council in Year 2 compared to the 600 supported in Year 1. Several questions had to be answered, of course, before the Council\u0027s funding plan for Year 2 could be brought into focus. The principal one was how to insure appropriate and necessary support to the many organizations \u0022saved\u0022 by Council assistance in Year 1 and remain responsive to organizations applying for first-time assistance in Year 2. Balance and selectivity were recognized as the determining factors. Maintaining this balance between support of the established New York State arts resources and the newly applying ones required painstaking scrutiny and perception. Although a total of 805 organizations received support from the Council under the Local Assistance Act for 1971-72, some received funds for several activities within different disciplines. The table below, which shows the number of organizations assisted by each Council program, therefore reflects interdisciplinary activity to the extent that 938 instances of assistance benefited 805 applicants. In this connection, it is also worth noting that the Special Programs support to arts organizations serving predominantly black and Puerto Rican audiences encompassed a wide range of disciplines. (The 116 Special Programs assistance grants went toward programs in the following disciplines: 1 in film and TV/media, 2 in literature, 14 in dance, 19 in music, 34 in theatre, 17 in the visual arts, and 29 in a combination of art forms.) These figures do not take into account the 573 organizations served by the Council-sponsored Touring Program, Exhibitions, Technical Assistance, Film Speakers Bureau, Visiting Artists, The Composer in Performance, Poets and Writers, and Isolated Communities Program. Nor do they include the numerous organizations represented among the estimated 3,500 inquiries handled by the Council\u0027s Information Center. Year 2 was a vintage year. -- Omar K. Lerman Council program instances of assistance Arts Service Organizations 24 Film, TV/Media, Literature 110 Film 57; TV/Media 37; Literature 16 Performing Arts 482 Dance 121; Music 158; Theatre 130; Presenting Organizations 73 Special Programs 116 Visual Arts 206 Museum Aid 125; Community Projects 81 The Arts and Government in New York State - a statement by the Executive Director of the New York State Council on the Arts for the Council\u0027s 1971 -72 Annual Report Earlier this year there was an exchange of letters in an upstate newspaper between a member of the Legislature and one of his constituents, the president of the local art society. The latter was defending government support of the arts against the charge that the arts are a luxury, or only the concern of an elite. Calling the legislator\u0027s attention to the officers named on his society\u0027s letterhead, he listed their occupations: schoolteacher, plumber, operator of an employment agency, wife of an electrical contractor, school administrator, wife of a printer, blacksmith, wife of a doctor, and so on. \u0022Very enlightening,\u0022 he added, \u0022and the rest of our membership runs the same way--not one professional artist, but all very much involved, everyone finding a chance for much personal meaning and happiness; and to them it is not a frill, but a very important part of their lives.\u0022 \u0022In this time of financial crisis for our state,\u0022 the legislator replied, \u0022I believe it to be most unjust that millions of small taxpayers are forced to help subsidize activities in which they have no interest, and in many cases are much opposed to. I have no objection to people who want to indulge in such activities, but I don\u0027t think the general public ought to pay for it. We have far more pressing needs such as schools, hospitals, and highways, and money must be found to carry on the essential programs rather than diverting funds for programs which may be enjoyable, but are certainly not essential.\u0022 One could scarcely ask for a clearer contrast between the opposing views that the arts are or are not properly a public concern, or a clearer indication of the fact that the very idea of state funding for the arts is so new that challenges to it are still fundamental--whether it should in fact exist, whether among the competing priorities of a sorely stretched society the arts rank high enough to merit support from the taxpayers. It is important that these questions be asked, for an agency of government, if it is not to go stale, must be subject to constant scrutiny and criticism; and the New York State Council on the Arts which this year administered an appropriation of over $14 million to support arts organizations and to make their resources more available to the public--is no exception. The purpose of the New York State Council on the Arts is to provide the people of the State with services they desire but could not, for reasons that are primarily economic, otherwise obtain. It does this in large degree by funding in part, but only in part, the operations of many hundreds of organizations which, taken together, compose the sector labeled \u0022non-profit arts\u0022 in the economy of the State. That is to say, they constitute an industry, and one which further stimulates other forms of business and industrial activity. But it is also somewhat peculiar, since it is essentially a handicraft industry which is undercapitalized and has hitherto sustained itself by relying on private patronage and by systematically underpaying its personnel. It can no longer do so. The services provided by the arts organizations of the State take a wide variety of forms, ranging from music to museum exhibits, poetry to film, fiance to drama, opera to sculpture, literature to multimedia--in short the full spectrum of means by which men and women, in every time and place, have tried to add meaning and value to their lives. The arts are among the oldest human enterprises of which we have record. We know of no society which has not striven--in color and sound and shape and word and gesture--to pin down in permanent form its feelings and highest aspirations. If the arts in New York State were not regarded as valid and necessary by a substantial and widely distributed number of its citizens, the Council could not and should not exist. New York State has the largest concentration of cultural resources in the nation. It has three major symphony orchestras--in Buffalo, Rochester, and New York--and in the years since World War II New York City has become the international capital of music. It is the theatre capital, generating plays which are now performed everywhere in the world. It is also the dance capital for both classical and modern dance and something close to the painting capital as well. New York State\u0027s museums are world-renowned and, together with historical societies, they number over five hundred. The arts are what New York is noted for --as Texas is for oil, or iowa for corn. Without its cultural institutions, as Governor Rockefeller has said, this would not be the Empire State. When the term \u0022arts\u0022 is used, moreover, it should always be remembered that this is no bloodless abstraction, but an endless range of living, immediate experience. The arts deal with the human ability to perceive and feel--deal with it, indeed, in the most organized and powerful way we know. They deal with human emotion, with every possible combination of pity and fear and anger and laughter. They deal above all else with pleasure, because they appeal directly to the senses of seeing and hearing and tactile feeling. Such direct, vital contact between the arts and their public is what keeps them alive, and readers of this annual report will therefore find throughout it an emphasis on the purpose to which public monies have been put, the service provided. The mandate of the Council from the Governor and the Legislature is, among other things, to preserve the artistic heritage of the State, but not by putting it in dead storage, as though in a bank vault. Rather, the Council has been enjoined to make the State\u0027s cultural resources more accessible and available, and to larger and broader audiences. For if the arts can be \u0022saved\u0022 in our time, they can only be saved by making them an integral part of everyone\u0027s daily life, a natural and legitimate activity which does not constantly need to be justified and apologized for. Paradoxically, those like the members of the upstate art society, for whom the arts are already \u0022a very important part of their lives,\u0022 sometimes end up agreeing with skeptics like their legislator who think the arts are the concern only of those \u0022who want to indulge in such activities.\u0022 For those who care about them the arts are their own justification--which is one reason why we defend them so badly, and why some people still regard them as unnecessary. A commitment to the arts is usually made early and irreversibly. There will have been that moment when the glowing colors on the canvas, the unfolding intentions of the playwright, or the intricate interplay of chord and melody demonstrated their power to engage not merely the mind but the entire being. The poet A. E. Housman once said that he could not let a line of poetry come into his head while shaving, since the gooseflesh it caused made him unable to continue. The satisfaction of the senses, that is, is supposed to be self-sufficient. We are assumed to be happy with what we have got, just as the artist is assumed to derive such ineffable rewards from his work that he need not be paid a living wage. The legislator\u0027s view is essentially the same as that of the minority which used to think of the arts (as a few, unhappily, still do) as their private domain, bought and paid for. With this attitude went a tone of hushed reverence before the masterpiece, to make it clear the cognoscenti knew something you didn\u0027t, which effectively drove away whatever members of the general public had not already been antagonized by pure snobbery. We are still suffering from this inward-looking complacency, but its days are numbered. What has happened is nothing less than a revolution, a radical transformation in the relationship between art and society in the United States. What was once peripheral and functionally dispensable is now central and essential. What we have witnessed, as Alvin Toffler put it in The Culture Consumers in 1964, is a conversion \u0022from cult to culture\u0022--from a minority preoccupation to a major phenomenon permeating the whole society. The nonprofit arts (to use that ugly phrase again) have achieved a social and economic importance so far in excess of their traditional role that our cultural institutions, our systems for supporting them, and--perhaps most of all--our ideas about them are still struggling to catch up. The many factors which brought this about are familiar: the sustained prosperity of the American middle class, the increase in leisure time, the wider availability of higher education, the growing concern with the quality of life. In combination they have filled the museums with crowds; stimulated the building of new the","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":44443,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}