Many arts organizations across the Commonwealth and the nation have been in a bad way since about 2008. Roanoke, however, seems to be living a fairly healthy life and is using some of its cumulative creativity to make its position even more solid.
Note: The story below is an excerpt from our Jan./Feb. 2015 issue. For the full story download our FREE iOS app or view our digital edition for FREE today!
Dan Smith
It has become all but a custom and a requirement for arts organizations to bemoan their fiscal health, while using a lot of their creative energy to figure out how to stay in business. That creativity has been especially beneficial during the past few years, as government funding has all but disappeared for most of them – especially those in the western half of the state, the “rural” half.
Still, a conversation with those in charge of the local organizations leaves a distinct impression; one of vibrancy, health, growth and innovation.
Margaret Vanderhye, executive director of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, is digesting yet another General Assembly budget cut (this one five percent), and strongly suggests that “it is essential to be creative and innovative in this economy.”
The Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the arts funnel public money to arts organizations of a wide variety in Virginia.
“Proportionately, we’ve had to reduce the amount of the grants from the days when funding was at $1 per citizen [per year]. We’d like to achieve that level again,” says Vanderhye.
Most executive directors in the Roanoke Valley speak infrequently of government funding, since there has been so little of it in recent years, preferring instead to emphasize efficiencies and partnerships. There are a lot of those, some not looking all that logical on the surface, but working to a mutual benefit.
Here is a brief look at the individual fiscal health of arts organizations and what they have planned in 2015:
Roanoke Symphony Orchestra
When Botetourt County native David Crane was appointed executive director of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra in May of 2014, he took over a healthy, progressive organization that has been one of the true innovators in the Roanoke Valley. Under the leadership of Beth Pline (who retired for health reasons), the orchestra created a reputation for fiscal innovation and with David Wiley continuing at the head of the orchestra, it was a group of admired musical professionals.
Crane hopes to continue what has been a successful combination of big orchestral and small, intimate events, concentrating in its three specialty areas: pops, destination and masterworks. In addition, the Green Room Series of small, free concerts and lectures will continue. The three big and distinct offerings “are our signature,” says Crane, head of one of three professional Virginia symphonies (others are in Richmond and Hampton Roads).
Innovations at RSO began recently with its season ticket options, which allowed patrons to spread payments over a season and with ticket prices at a relatively low $32-$52 (and a lot of discounts available). The orchestra’s talent level has remained high, says Crane.
“We not only have some of the best musicians from all over Virginia, but we’re also pulling in people from Ohio and West Virginia. The talent is at a fantastic level.”
The RSO’s budget has remained at around $1.5 million and is “comparable to orchestras our size across the country,” says Crane. He says the symphony, “like everyone else, has adapted [to the realities of the economy]. We have had the opportunity to be creative [professionally and fiscally].” rso.com
Jefferson Center
“Support [for arts organizations] changes and you have to keep the wheel turning and be open to any resource for support,” says Jefferson Center Executive Director Cyrus Pace. “Funding the arts is a challenge. That has not changed.”
The Jefferson Center has found a winning formula for its three-pronged sources of money, each representing roughly a third of the nearly $2 million annual budget: development, ticket income and tenant rentals in the former high school in downtown Roanoke. Direct government money is not forthcoming, but grants from organizations like the Doris Duke Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts have been helpful.
The Jeff Center’s bread and butter has been its Star City Series, Jazz Series and Family Series, all of which are programmed on a fiscal year, rather than a calendar year. “Public and private support have stabilized,” says Pace. “We’ll have the second half of 2015 booked early in the year.” jeffcenter.org/events/all
Berglund Center (formerly Roanoke Civic Center)
After a record-setting 2013 (number of events, attendance, revenue), two major events were postponed in 2014 and the civic center didn’t make its budget. Those events move into 2015, however, and the year is looking up for several reasons, in addition to revenue.
Berglund Center Manager Robyn Schon is overseeing a major re-branding from its old identity. That sponsorship is bringing in $1.75 million over the next 10 years, more than $300,000 of that up front.
“Not many major players have ‘civic’ in their names any more,” she says. “This will give artists and agents a whole new perception of who we are and it will raise our profile.”
Scheduling the concert season is always tricky “because it is cyclical,” says Schon. “We’re coming out of a slow period, but we are on the radar of the heavy hitters.”
Physical changes are coming with the re-branding of the 40-year-old center. New seats, doors and a major paint job are scheduled. The center’s budget of $590,000 is “less than half what it was before Global Spectrum took over the operations,” says Schon, “and with the new LED lights we’re putting in, that bill should drop another 35 to 50 percent.” Schon says that the national average for occupancy among civic auditoriums is 65 percent, which is right where the Berglund Center sits.
roanokeciviccenter.com
Salem Civic Center
New Salem Civic Center Manager John Saunders (who’s been with the center for 31 years) believes the head-turning growth of live performance venues in the Roanoke Valley is a good thing, showing promoters all over the country that this is a place where people do things.
“We fit very well together,” says Saunders.
The Salem facility, built in 1967, has grown to include both the auditorium and two sports stadiums, as well as other athletic facilities. It accommodates not only trade shows and expos, a wide variety of music and a professional baseball team, but also a huge horse show and one of the biggest fairs in Virginia. It is home of the Blue Ridge Music Festival, which drew 12,000 people in 2014.
Not much will change in 2015, says Saunders, because the civic center’s schedule is “stable from year to year, which is what we want.” The center’s budget has required about a $700,000 Salem City subsidy, “but that doesn’t include facility fees and admission tax we pay the city,” says Saunders.
“Ticket sales are starting to look better,” says Saunders, “and ancillary sales – things like concert T-shirts – are picking up, too. It’s been slow, but it’s coming back.” salemciviccenter.com
Roanoke Amphitheatre
Steve Buschor of Roanoke’s Parks and Recreation Department says we’ll have to wait a while to get a feel for what’s ahead for Roanoke’s new $7.4 million amphitheater in Elmwood Park downtown. The facility opened in 2014 and has been the site of a couple of big-time events (think Sheryl Crow) and the return of some oldies that had left (think Chili Festival). At deadline, 2015’s schedule had not been determined and, frankly says Buschor, there’s not even an estimate yet about how many people will use the park during the warm months. “Most of our events aren’t ticketed,” says Buschor, “so we don’t even have an estimate” of the number of people attending.
That should change during the year, however. Buschor says a number of major promoters have been in touch about staging events there and a number of organizations “want permanent dates” which would “help us take a larger view of the calendar.”
downtownroanoke.org/our-events
Taubman Museum of Art
Della Watkins of the Taubman Museum of Art is adamant about the next goal facing the most prominent of all the arts organizations in Roanoke: This is, she says, “the first of an annual commitment to bring banner exhibitions to Roanoke.” That effort began last fall and runs through early January of the new year and includes “Beg, Borrow and Steal,” 90 works by “major artists who shaped our art world,” including Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Kehinde Wiley, and Cindy Sherman.”
It is a big exhibition in a big museum, one with an imposing budget of $2.9 million, up from $2.8 million in 2014, but down a good bit from 2013’s $3.4 million. Upcoming in 2015 is the installation of a pair of Bill Barrett sculptures, gifts to the museum, which will help create a new sculpture garden; opening the museum’s third floor and balcony to the public; holding the second wine festival and returning to a two-day Sidewalk Art Show. Roanoke artist Bill Rutherfoord’s “Allegory of No Reason” was “wildly popular,” says Watkins.
The museum has been alive with events and is open late Thursdays and First Fridays (until 9 p.m.) with music. Traffic has been brisk since the admission fee was removed, thanks to a sponsorship from Advance Auto.
taubmanmuseum.org/main/
Virginia Museum of Transportation
The VMT is eagerly anticipating the most significant event since it re-opened after the flood of 1985 devastated its quarters in Wasena Park: the return of the J611, the jewel in its crown.
The 611, which was built in the Roanoke Norfolk & Western Shops and is one of the few huge steam engines left in the U.S., has been in Spencer, North Carolina, undergoing renovation so that it can run excursions on a regular basis from Roanoke.
Says Peg McGuire, the museum’s director of communications, “We’ve had 3,000 donations from eight countries” working to get the J611 back on the operational track. “People have come from 18 countries” to visit the 611 and “we had visitors from the UK, Australia and Japan when we rolled her out to Spencer.”
The rest of 2015 will be “our entire regular schedule,” says McGuire, noting that the schedule is packed with events for the family. “We’re a blue collar museum,” she says, “and so we celebrate those people by keeping our prices low.”
Attendance has been steadily increasing, says McGuire, and 2015 will reflect both that and the fact that staff needs to be added to take care of the J611 excursions. The 2014 budget was $1.1 million. vmt.org
Southwest Virginia Ballet
Celebration of the Southwest Virginia Ballet’s 25th season has Artistic Director Pedro Szalay’s full attention in 2015. As always, the company’s “Nutcracker” performance in December at the Roanoke Civic Center will be a highlight, but May will see the performance of the popular “Cinderella” and March 18, the Step Sister Goal will be held in the Crystal Ballroom at the Hotel Roanoke.
There will be master classes and a performance at Festival in the Park, as well as other fundraisers that will help meet the funding goal of between $175,000 and $180,000 (“Nutcracker” alone costs between $50,000 and $60,000 to produce, says Szalay, but also brings in enough money from corporate support and ticket sales to just about break even).
“This is my ninth year,” says Szalay, “and we have taken the company to a different level with paid staff and a lot of volunteers. It is rare to sustain this type of organization for 25 years. We are bringing professional productions to the community.” svballet.org
Roanoke Ballet Theatre
RBT Executive Director Sandra Maythaler is looking excitedly at its three major performances in 2015 and, “We will also perform at events like the Latin Festival and Local Colors, and at the invitation of other organizations, for instance, the Ballet and Butterflies events at the Science Museum.”
Maythaler says marketing has changed with the times. “Using social media has become a much larger part of advertising and maintaining audiences,” she says. “People are much more media-savvy than in the past, and demand to know about events at the touch of their fingertips.”
That adaptation to the modern world continues through just about everything. Says Maythaler: “Right now the Center in the Square organizations, of which we are one, are working on developing new ways for the organizations to work collaboratively for the benefit of all. CITS has released a new ticketing opportunity where the public can visit many museums or performances at a reduced ticket price. These kinds of strategies should be helpful to draw people to our organizations.”
The annual budget, Maythaler says, “has remained fairly constant in the last several years, maybe because we were hit economically earlier than some other organizations. We work on a tight budget, but continue to look for every opportunity to ‘reduce/reuse/recycle’ materials to reduce our operating budget.
“We utilize volunteers extensively, repaint sets instead of starting from scratch, reuse or recycle costumes, rent out our studio space, and apply for as many grants as possible.”
roanokeballet.org
Harvester Performance Center
This music venue in Rocky Mount has become a regional star in less than a year. Begun in April with the goal of drawing 20,000 people in the first year, it had 15,000 in four months and met the goal easily shortly thereafter with acts like Asleep at the Wheel, the Bacon Brothers, Dan Hicks, Patty Larkin, Marshall Tucker, Livingston Taylor, Atlanta Rhythm Section and a lot more, appearing with extraordinary frequency.
The former warehouse seats 480 (570 standing) and can be configured for each show as needed. Downstairs is the Landing Pad, a venue for small shows.
“We feature all genres: beach twice a month, country, rock, comedians, bluegrass,” says assistant GM Sheila Silverstein, who gave up her job in Baltimore to join what she calls an “exciting” new venue. The Harvester lured veteran performance venue developer and concert promoter Gary Jackson as its general manager and he has kept both the road and the stage hot since starting.
“We’re drawing from Roanoke, Lynchburg, Seattle, Ohio, Wales, Australia, everywhere,” says Silverstein. “The draw is fan-based.” The Town of Rocky Mount’s council is behind the creation of the Harvester. “It was their dream for 10 years. It’s about economic development and we’re bringing in foot traffic to fill it in. We’ve had quite a few sellouts and the downtown traffic, from what I’m told, is up 25 percent.” harvester-music.com
Mill Mountain Theatre
MMT has re-taken its position atop Roanoke’s excellent theater offerings, but these days it is far more a member of a cooperative community than an aloof distant cousin. That has been good for theater in general in the Roanoke Valley.
In 2015, Mill Mountain takes a step closer to its goal of five full productions a year, in addition to a number of other involvements that keep the stages (there are two of them) and rehearsal halls occupied and busy. The year’s productions include “Hairspray” in the spring, “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” in the summer (ending summer camp for children), “On Golden Pond” in the fall and “42nd Street” in December. The season opens with the Hollins Festival of New Works in January and February and includes two music concerts – a first – “Piano Man” and “Country Divas.” Says Producing/Artistic Director Ginger Poole, “We’re reaching out to another market that doesn’t come to theater.”
MMT is also collaborating with a number of other arts organizations who are using its spaces. “All our areas are being used all the time,” says Poole.
“We’ve taken a slow, conservative approach” to coming back from closing its doors in 2009 for a couple of years, says Poole. “We’re re-thinking how we do things and what we had on paper in 2010 has come to full fruition.” And it’s working. “There’s a synergy that wasn’t here before,” says Poole. Sellouts are common now and the number of plays is down from an unrealistic 12 a year to four.
The budget has climbed slowly each year since opening and paying off debts. In 2014, it was $1.1 million. In 2015, it will be $1.7 million “working toward a quarter [of a million eventually],” says Poole. millmountain.org
Roanoke Children’s Theatre
RCT is ramping up its reputation as something of a school for theater in 2015 by joining with the Junior League and the Roanoke City Library to offer “Readers Theater” for third graders. Theater founder and director Pat Wilhelms says the importance of children learning to read by the third grade caught her attention and her staff developed a 1940s radio-style show that will teach kids enunciation, projection and reading.
RCT’s innovation has been consistent and sometimes controversial. It has presented children’s plays about suicide, depression, bullying and eating disorders, in addition to “The Cat in the Hat,” “Stuart Little” and other classics.
“We had to find our niche,” says Wilhelms, who operates with a smallish $350,000 budget with two fulltime staffers. “We’ve never been in debt,” she emphasizes. “There are no loans. Fiscally we are strong, strong, strong.”
Income is generated by productions and RCT’s academy and from donations and sponsorships. Each accounts for about 50 percent.
roanokechildrenstheatre.org
Harrison Museum of African American Culture
This is the one member of the arts community with no professional staff. Board member Charles Price leads the organization as a fill-in director, putting together exhibits – often in collaboration with other Roanoke Valley organizations like the Science Museum, Mill Mountain Theatre, the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the Jefferson Center.
The 2015 schedule of exhibits was not available at press time because negotiations were still underway. The museum’s budget runs at about $350,000 and a huge chunk of that comes from corporate sponsors. A typical short run exhibit, says Price, can run $10,000 and a longer running exhibit will go for as much as $50,000 or $60,000.
“Most of the money that comes in goes to exhibits,” says Price. “We try to do what is necessary to maintain and to stay open.” There is no full-time curator, but the museum works with both the Roanoke Valley History Museum and the Link Museum in that area. “We don’t know what’s right or wrong in the way people have operated,” says Price, “so we just ask. Everybody’s been very receptive. If you don’t know what hasn’t been done before, you wonder why it can’t be done.”
harrisonmuseum.com/site
Opera Roanoke
“Our big event for the spring is a new production of Rossini’s ‘Cinderella,’” says Scott Williamson, general and artistic director for Opera Roanoke. “We haven’t done Rossini in 10 years, and his comic operas have been favorites for 200 years. … Our audiences appreciate the fully-staged experience of a big production and we’ve had great success presenting grand opera like ‘Madame Butterfly’ and ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ perennial favorites like ‘Carmen’ and ‘The Magic Flute,’ and popular hits like ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’”
Opera Roanoke’s budget is just over $500,000 a year, “which is remarkably small for an opera company presenting fully-staged productions,” says Williamson. “We’ve made cuts – 20 percent over the last two seasons – across the board in response to the effects of the lingering recession.”
Williamson points out that 2015-16 “is our 40th anniversary season, and I’m excited about what we’ll be doing. The plans are still taking shape, but we will be presenting our first big apprentice artist production later in 2015, in addition to the main-stage productions which are the heart of what we do.”
Science Museum of Western Virginia
Jim Rollings, executive director of the Science Museum of Western Virginia, points out that his $1 million annual budget includes $38,000 in local government funding. That’s the entire load from the government, so programming, which brings in 45 percent of the $1 million, must be both educational and entertaining.
That would explain the emphasis in 2015 on dinosaurs, one of the most popular exhibits at any museum in the U.S. at any time. From February through the summer, the museum will be the center of a dinosaur-poluzza, beginning with Paleomania, wherein dino skeletons, articulations and parts will be the focus.
Author Tom Angleberger (Origami Yoda series) will be part of a program centered on pi March 14 (that’s 3.14.15, or a date equaling a short form of pi) and there will be science fiction-related surrounding attractions. The Butterfly Ball is a June fund-raiser and the debut planetarium show, focusing on dinosaurs, will highlight the warm months.
Rollings says his budget “is real. We bring in what we hope will be popular, maybe a blockbuster [with the dinosaurs], though I don’t like using that word. For the dinosaurs, the kids grab Mom’s hand and drag her in.” The statewide Science Festival, which the museum put together with Virginia Tech, was one of those blockbusters and it should return.
The museum director says he tries to budget for a surplus, but that’s tough. “Nobody from government is handing out checks” the way they used to, he says. Tickets, education and development account for the bulk of the budget and all have to be successful. “Education is almost never profitable,” says Rollings. “We struggle to break even there. What’s fun and entertaining is profitable. That’s just the reality.” smwv.org
History Museum of Southwest Virginia/O. Winston Link Museum
The Historical Society of Western Virginia, which encompasses both the History Museum of Western Virginia and the O. Winston Link Museum, is a double-barreled operation that works both together and separately. Each of the museums is housed separately and each raises its own money, but they also share in some events and revenues.
The Link generally has five traveling exhibits per year and the HMWV sponsors about four. Highlights in 2015 for the history museum will include a Night for Notable Women, focusing on local women’s contributions; Family Fun Day; Roanoke in the 1940s and 1950s; and Geek Mob. Both museums will be hosts for lectures, exhibits and gallery talks.
Society Director Beth Clymer says the museums have reached a level of relative comfort with their budgets. linkmuseum.org; vahistorymuseum.org
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