Arts crisis continues in Atlanta
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
A painting from Andrew Cayce's exhibit "Recent Paintings" currently on view at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.
Last week’s cover story, “Atlanta’s arts organizations brace for crisis,” offered a fairly bleak and depressing look at the struggle for survival in which local arts organizations – both non-profit groups and private galleries – now find themselves as a result of a shrinking economy. The article looked at the dwindling audiences, reduced grants and a fall-off in individual donations that many arts groups are experiencing.
For the most part, it’s a bummer of a read, perhaps summed up best by this quote from Susan Weiner, executive director of the Georgia Council for the Arts: “We’re looking at a growing crisis.”
But the story did attempt to offset all that bad news with an example of a group that’s coping with this crisis fairly well. I used Dad’s Garage, which has managed to hang on to its audience, as that example, but I could have chosen others. Since the story ran, I’ve heard from other groups that are hanging in there, such as the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, which began the year by winning a $120,000 Warhol grant, and The Shakespeare Tavern, which sold out the recent opening weekend for “The Canterbury Tales.”
