01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 25, 2004

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Arts Writer

The arts reflect the society they're created in. That's one reason why the arts matter, why people make a point of experiencing contemporary arts, and why money, private and public, goes to support them.

And as Rhode Island continues to welcome and absorb people from various cultures, our arts organizations should, theoretically, follow suit.

On the stages and the gallery walls, many do. But in the offices, they don't.

There are arts organizations in Rhode Island primarily based on the works of a specific ethnic group -- the Providence Black Repertory Company, Hispanic-oriented Sol Gallery, for example -- whose leadership is of the same ethnicity. But the institutions that we consider -- well, institutions, such as the RISD Museum or Trinity Rep, are led by white people, and always have been.

"By 'mainstream,' " says Trinity artistic director Oskar Eustis, "we mean one that has got a big enough profile that it's supposed to be a big tent; it's supposed to include everybody. But historically, that's meant white people."

According to Joaquina Bela Teixeira, executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, area arts groups open their doors to non-white performers and exhibitors, but the power structure of the groups is still the same. "We give them programs, but they don't give us jobs."

Donald King, artistic director of the Black Rep, says, "I always look, not for how many black plays you do in a season, how many black artists you show, but who is at the helm? Who's your [technical director]? Who's your production manager? What have you done in order to really say, 'I am committed to creating an institution; I'm committed to diversity'?

"And I think if you really interrogate a lot of these institutions, you'll find that the higher you move up, the less you'll see people of color."

Why does this situation still exist? What can be done about it? And what is it costing Rhode Island's culture, particularly its audiences?

Seven Rhode Island arts leaders were asked these questions -- King; Eustis; Teixeira; Lora Urbanelli, interim director of the RISD Museum; Jose Pinera, a board member of the Sol Gallery; Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, artistic director of the Mixed Magic Theater Company; and Randy Rosenbaum, executive director of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.

On some points, all agreed. On others, their answers varied widely. And on some, the responses reflected the same divide that virtually always turns up when Americans talk about race.

Seeing white

The seven agreed: There are no non-white high-level administrators at the large, mainstream arts organizations in Rhode Island.

"No one," said King.

"Boy oh boy," said Urbanelli. "That's a good question."

"Nobody," said Teixeira.

"I worry about it all the time. It's a big problem," said Eustis.

Rosenbaum said that, of the nearly 30 organizations that get general operating support from the arts council, groups that have a specific ethnic mission are the only ones with non-white administrators.

The continuing all-white leadership at Rhode Island's largest arts organizations is symptomatic of a national problem, the seven said, though some pointed to cities such as New York and Atlanta that are further along the road to diversity.

On one point, they all agreed: The situation is bad for the organizations and bad for the art they produce.

Eustis and Pitts-Wiley each said the very survival of their art form is at stake.

"The theater, particularly, depends for its energy on constantly expanding the idea of who's included in it," said Eustis, of Trinity Rep. ". . . The theater's only exciting when it's mixing it up -- when it's taking in energy from the street. And if we don't succeed in doing that, the theater gets boring. It becomes marginalized as an art form."

"The theater audience is an old audience," Mixed Magic's Pitts-Wiley said. "Young people aren't going to the theater, not like they once did.

"And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the theater has become so dependent on the baby-boom generation that they're afraid to go after the Generation Xers or the hip-hop generation. Because they're ill-prepared to deal with this audience. They don't know their language; there aren't many plays yet that they know of that attract this audience. . . .

"But if you're not building a tradition into an 18-year-old right now, in 15 years your audience is not going to be here."

And diverse leadership brings about the diverse programming that makes the arts relevant.

"You're enriched, because there's a cross of cultures," said Pinera. "There's another way of thinking, and you begin to bring other views into your mix."

"When it really gets down to it," Eustis said, "the only way it really works is when you haven't got a question of the audience being 'them,' [when] the audience is us. And as long as you have all-white leadership of these institutions -- there's a lot you can do, but there's going to be a wall there.

"The only way that really changes is when the 'us' is not a bunch of white people thinking about the 'them,' which is people of color."

The problem starts early

So what is causing this problem? And what's perpetuating it?

On the business side of an arts organization, as in any business, education is the key to getting in and getting ahead. The arts leaders questioned argued that the arts are often the first school programs to get cut, and that young people aren't learning what they need to know in order to run an arts group, or even to want to.

"When we hear the horror stories of 'Is education going to cut back on the arts?' -- that's not going to be a benefit to the kids who are out there, especially in the urban areas," said Pinera, of the Sol Gallery (which currently does not have a home and organizes exhibits in other galleries).

Access to the world of the arts helps young people feel comfortable there, Pinera said. And if that doesn't happen, the arts won't be considered a possibility when young people are out of school and looking for work.

Rosenbaum says that children are introduced to the arts in three places: at home, in school and in the community.

He praised the arts education he received as a child in Pennsylvania, adding that "the culture that I experienced at home was somewhat minimal." He decided to become a professional singer, but in college he realized that wouldn't happen.

"But I did want to make this my life, and in making it my life, I looked at ways that I could be involved administratively in this work. . . . That kind of exposure isn't happening now," particularly in the inner city, "where it matters the most . . . .

"There are extremely valiant teachers working extremely hard to make this happen. And they're fighting, in many respects, a losing battle with a budget system that is saying, frankly, 'This is expendable.' "

It's not necessarily the educational programs that are lacking. Sherilyn Brown, the Council on the Arts' education coordinator, says there's a distinction to be made between arts instruction in the curriculum and exposure to arts by bringing arts organizations into schools, or bringing kids out to see an arts group in action (such as Trinity Rep's Project Discovery).

The amount of class instruction students get varies from district to district, Brown says, and there are some "horrible situations" where one art teacher has 100 or more students and no permanent room. "But there are also lots of wonderful programs, and many of them are in inner-city schools."

She cites the Arts Lit project at Central Falls High School, run in partnership with Brown University.

In fact, Brown said, in Rhode Island schools' "very uneven" arts education, "rural areas tend to be the worst-served." But some classroom exposure to the arts for all elementary-school students is mandatory.

Brown also pointed to the new requirements in the state's Basic Education Program, which will take effect this fall for incoming high school freshmen. Until now, arts education was required for college-bound high schoolers only, and was half a class credit out of 18. Starting with the Class of 2008, all high school seniors will have to show "proficiency" in the artsbefore they can graduate.

"In terms of getting arts education, while it's not perfect, we do have kids at the elementary level getting art and music -- that's mandated.

"But in terms of their experience with living, breathing arts organizations and artists, that's very hit-or-miss. . . . And that has a very profound impact on kids."

You want to major in what?

At the university level, the arts leaders say, things are no better. Programs there need to do more, Pitts-Wiley said, because, as illustrated by Rosenbaum's case, that's where future arts administrators come from.

"Look at how many black artists and administrators graduated from URI, Providence College, Rhode Island College, Bryant, Brown -- how many in the last 10 years," Pitts-Wiley said. "You have to be able to back through 10, 15 years of history and say, 'How many came through successfully?' Where none came through, none were available. And they weren't available for anybody.

"I'm not looking to let anybody off the hook. I think every major educational institution in the state has failed enormously in that respect."

According to the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education, 161 students received degrees in the arts and arts education in the year ending June 30, 2003. Of those, 7 identified themselves as black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian; 22 did not identify their ethnicities.

No Rhode Island public college or university offers a master of arts administration degree.

"If we can demonstrate that there's a significant demand for such folks," says Jack Warner, the state commissioner for higher education, "and an employment market that can absorb them, we're always receptive to creating new programs . . . but we don't have such a program."

At RISD, a private college, the ethnicity of graduates isn't broken down by race. But the incoming class in fall 2003 (undergraduate and graduate students) was 53 percent white, 13 percent Asian, 5 percent Hispanic and 2 percent black, according to the school. (The rest of the class was international students or did not specify an ethnicity.) RISD does not offer a master of arts administration degree.

A vicious circle

The Black Rep's King agrees that education is critical, but says that in a city where Ruth Simmons, an African-American woman, is running an Ivy League university, arts organizations could be looking harder.

"I still would say, 'Shame on a lot of the more established cultural institutions,' " King said. "Because there are the Ruth Simmonses out there. If you look hard enough, and you're serious about diversity, there is a Ruth Simmons out there."

Pitts-Wiley argues that the lack of minority administrators sets up a vicious circle.

"If you're trying to make some career-type decisions, certain of your decisions are based on 'Where's my opportunity to work?' So if you're an arts administrator, or someone with those interests, and looked around the state and said . . . 'Where is there someone like me working? Where can I talk to them? How do I get into the field and what can I expect?' -- in many cases, you can probably count those people on one hand."

And leading the fight for diversity is often a lonely battle, Pitts-Wiley says. "It's the kind of battle that you say, 'If I'm going to fight this battle, it's about all I'm going to be fighting all the time. Because I've essentially got to go in and point out weaknesses and failures on a lot of people's parts.' And by God, who wants to be the guy who's pointing out everybody's weaknesses? I don't."

According to Eustis, economics can also be an issue. "Anybody who works in the theater, particularly the nonprofit theater, you are simply not caring about the financial state of your life. You cannot do it while making rational judgments about how much money you're going to make.

"I come from a very academic, middle-class background. . . . If you don't come from any money at all, and worry, quite rationally, about how you're going to support your family and how you're going to make it in this world, this isn't a very rational career choice."

On-the-job training

Is enough being done to overcome the ethnic disparities at the top? Some point to their own efforts; some say the results (or lack thereof) speak for themselves.

In the theater world, artistic directors come from the field of play directors, and so, according to Eustis, the path for minorities to start running theater groups lies in getting the chance to establish professional directing careers.

"I'm very proud of the fact that there are two African-American directors who got their first professional directing jobs here at Trinity Rep. And they have gone on to really successful careers."

Idris Cooper-Anifowoshe, who directed The Piano Lesson in 2001, "has got a real career going," Eustis says. And Kent Gash, who directed From the Mississippi Delta and A Christmas Carol at Trinity in 1995, has gone on to become the associate artistic director at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and holds the same job at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. "And he's absolutely positioning himself to be a major contender for one of these jobs," Eustis said.

"The most important solution that I know how to do something about," Eustis said, "is to continue to try and invest in and train and support the development of leaders of color who actually have a chance of taking over and running these places."

Urbanelli points to the RISD Museum's minority internship in the Prints, Drawings and Photographs department. It's an entry-level "curatorial assistant" position, she says, and "a person can leave here after two years and have a nice well-rounded exposure to the arts, certainly in terms of museums, but which I think is applicable in a lot of different situations. . . . It gives them a leg up into the arts."

She also mentioned the Free-for-All Saturdays program, in which, on the last Saturday of each month, the RISD Museum offers free admission and a lineup of diverse programs for children.

"To get [kids] excited about art is the first step. And that takes exposure and a little bit of understanding to get interested. And once you can get interested and have access, you're on your way."

Recruit, recruit, recruit

But those who run minority-oriented organizations take a bolder view.

"The problem is so acute that you have to be fairly radical," Pitts-Wiley says, recommending "an eight-year program that says, 'We believe we need more minority administrators in the arts in this state,' " even among students who may not be thinking about arts administration careers.

Institutions have to make this a priority, even though they won't see results for a few years, she says. At first, minority students trained as arts administrators are "going to leave, because the trail of staying 15 years before you can really get a great position is not very attractive either, especially when they're going to be in great demand in other places.

"But you have to [continue training people]. . . . You can't do [just] one class. You have to keep doing it, with the understanding that if you keep doing this, over time we're going to be able to maintain enough of these skilled people, who are going to open up the arts to a much wider community."

Teixeira, of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society (which also does not have a permanent home), has written a grant proposal for a Heritage Society program that includes mentoring young people for arts and historical programs.

"What we need to do," Teixeira says, "is to have an opportunity to give people access to curating an exhibit, working alongside a scholar in that specialty. So even if you're an artist creating a piece for an exhibit, that it's not just about being part of a group show, but being in control of what's being grouped and shown."

But mostly, she says, it's a matter of will.

"[Organizations] need to assess internally," Teixeira says. "They know who they are, and they know they don't have any people of color. . . .

"It's a matter of recruiting; it's a matter of training and doing ongoing programs, whether or not government is giving you money for it. It's saying, 'We're going to operate differently.'

"It may mean for institutions that teach art, like RISD, to give more scholarships to minorities who live in Rhode Island. . . .

"It's also saying, 'Hey, let's take a chance.' Because we can all be trained. We can all be educated."