May 26, 2021
Kevin Faulconer, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
San
Diego arts organizations are reeling on learning that mayor Kevin Falcouner
plans to extend the city’s reduced arts and culture budget for another year, The Art Newspaperreports. Falcouner had slashed the budget for the sector by
50 percent between the fiscal year ending 2020 and that ending 2021 in an
attempt to offset lost tax revenue as Covid-19 loomed last spring. Though the
crisis has eased somewhat, the mayor has projected a similar budget for
2021–22, prompting an uproar among local arts institutions who have until May
26 to urge their congresspeople to push forward a revised budget.
While the budget cuts were by no means the only reason for the ICA merger, they were a factor, and other small institutions might not be lucky enough to find a willing partner. “At its most basic, we are disappointed and disheartened that the Mayor’s proposed budget maintains the devastating cuts from last year,” says Peter Comiskey, executive director of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, where a number of San Diego’s cultural institutions are located.
“This
continued funding cut will further reduce our ability to provide essential
cultural and educational support services that help with mental health,
environmental awareness, increased jobs, tourism dollars, and more,” wrote
Karen Gilbert, board chair of the nonprofit San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) in
an open letter seeking signatories to a petition demanding the city government
increase funding to the arts sector. The institute saw its funding slashed from
$46,000 for the 2019–20 fiscal year to $17,000 for 2020–21; to stay afloat, it
merged with the Lux Art Institute. The resulting nonprofit entity, known as the
Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, is to open this September and will
offer free admission. Though the merger had been under consideration before the
pandemic struck, the budget cuts sustained by SDAI played a significant role in
its coming to fruition.
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Comiskey
noted that prior to the advent of Covid-19, San Diego’s culture sector was a
$1.1 billion-dollar industry employing more than 36,000 full-time workers, and
called the current proposed budget “inadequate” in regard to the return to
health of the culture sector and in terms of the attendant restoration of lost
jobs. “We would have expected pre-pandemic funding at minimum to return this
budget year,” he said. “The mayor did not deliver that in either the first
budget, or the May revise. We trust that councilmembers will deliver that in
their deliberations of the budget moving forward in the coming weeks.”
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