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Recession means hard times for struggling artists

Amy Brenneman, from left, Paul Adelstein, Audra McDonald, Kadee Strickland, Chris Lowell, Taye Diggs, Kate Walsh and Tim Daly appear in the ABC television series "Private Practice." Daly made a case for the importance of the arts, including the filming of TV shows, to the economy.

Amy Brenneman, from left, Paul Adelstein, Audra McDonald, Kadee Strickland, Chris Lowell, Taye Diggs, Kate Walsh and Tim Daly appear in the ABC television series "Private Practice." Daly made a case for the importance of the arts, including the filming of TV shows, to the economy.

WASHINGTON – Artists, too, are singing the blues in these economic hard times, telling Congress that layoffs and art organization closures are hurting communities across the country.

Representatives of the arts industries told the House Education and Labor Committee hearing Thursday that the repercussions of the recession go well beyond musicians having to put down their guitars and get “real” jobs. The nonprofit art and cultural industry alone supports 5.7 million jobs and generates $166 billion in economic activity every year, they said.

Robert Lynch of Americans for the Arts said his group estimates that one-tenth of all those organizations, 10,000 groups, are at risk of closing down this year, with a loss of 260,000 jobs.

He said ticket sales, which make up 50 percent of income for nonprofit groups, and donations, which comprise another 40 percent, are down as the economy shrinks. “The arts in America are at risk.”

Actor Tim Daly, co-president of The Creative Coalition, said it was his mission “to make America understand that the arts are part of our cultural and economic main course, they are not dessert.”

Daly, a cast member of the TV show Private Practice, said it takes nine days to shoot one episode of the show, during which time the show employs hundreds of people, spends about $20,000 on food, $25,000 to $40,000 on clothes and costumes, $2,500 on dry cleaning and $15,000 on furniture for the sets. “People seldom make that connection,” he said.

Those testifying cited a recent National Endowment for the Arts report that 129,000 people in the arts industry were unemployed at the end of 2008, up 50,000 from a year earlier. The unemployment rate was 6 percent, double the rate for professionals in general, and would have been higher had not many left the workforce.

There were also numerous specific examples — committee chairman George Miller, D-Calif., noted that more than a dozen Broadway shows had shut down in January and the Philadelphia art museum was cutting 30 positions. Bruce Ridge, head of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, said Cincinnati Symphony members had accepted an 11 percent pay cut, the Baltimore Opera Company had filed for bankruptcy and the Honolulu Symphony was seven weeks behind in paychecks.

Many more, he said, face “the prospect of reduced seasons, layoffs, lower wages and higher health care premiums. This is a national problem.”

Michael Bahr, education director for the Utah Shakespearean Festival in rural Cedar City, Utah, said the bad economy had resulted in the company cutting seasonal positions from 390 to 335, reducing both the summer and fall seasons by one week and staging smaller shows. The company, he said, normally generates $30 million to $35 million for the local economy.

“Art in Cedar City is not a luxury, it is business,” he said. It “fills our dinner plates, pays our mortgages and enhances our standard of living.”

The $787 billion economic stimulus package signed into law last month contained $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts to give out in grant money.

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