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Ed. note: This piece, by Kevin Costello, will appear in this week’s issue of Creative Loafing.

Quality of life means different things to different people. Bread and butter issues like health services and educational needs usually find common ground when the dust has settled around competing interests. How to find unilateral agreement on prioritizing funding the arts — with local tax dollars, state or federal grants or philanthropic giving — is a much more daunting prospect. It requires the judgment of King Solomon for any arts administrative body to come out of such deliberations untarnished by public criticism.

On Jan. 22 the Sarasota County Arts Council in a written statement announced the creation of a new approach to disbursement of its annual $1.2 million arts funding. From now on, Tourist Development Cultural/Arts grantees will receive “performance-based contracts,” meaning established, agreed-upon goals for the money received: The new funding mechanism is the outcome of a recent joint meeting of the Arts Council with Sarasota County officials.

“I’m excited about this joint effort and see its potential to create a process that is stronger and easier for all involved.  A performance-based system will give us the ability to show how tourist tax dollars spent on the arts increase Sarasota County’s economic and cultural viability,” writes Fern Tavalin, grants administrator for the Council, in the release.

And to administer this new approach, the council has a new executive director: Russell Crumley, pictured.

Crumley has business degrees from Stetson University and Florida State University, and an extensive 20-year background in education and creative program development. He has created strategic programs, partnerships and private sponsorships for nonprofit organizations, involving companies in technology, hospitality, research and finance.

Crumley is an affable conversationalist; quick with the bullet points and knowing asides and eager to share his vision on the future role of the council in the community. He is confident the arts in Sarasota will come out of the present economic downturn as strong as ever. “The question is will it change what we do. Absolutely!” he says. He focuses on advocacy for all the arts and education while challenging ourselves to be creative in our thinking.

“I want to open up this conversation about cultural development wide to everyone and create a brains trust for the arts,” Crumley says. “We at the Council want to challenge ourselves to be constantly creative, innovative and not rest on some it-has-always-been-thus approach. And so we have really taken an approach to examine everything closely and break it down and build it back. … Everything from how we reach out to the community, to how we work with County Commissioners.

“We are examining what we are doing … what makes sense right now. And so that leads into discussions with the County and our efforts to make people” — such as emerging artists, patrons and the business community — “feel welcome to come here and share their views.”

Crumley places a lot of emphasis on “connecting to the arts community”: in short, public dialogue. An initial effort in this direction is Emerge, an entrepreneur/artist discussion and planning group. It is one of a number of new initiatives “to encourage and nurture emerging talent.”

Crumley’s optimism is infectious; only time will tell if the powers that be will give him the latitude to do what he feels he must, but his inclusive approach is admirable. What remains to be seen is if the entrenched conservative arts culture of Sarasota can stir itself to support current ideas in the arts, particularly visual art. For more than two decades now, transgressive ideas in contemporary visual art have seen little or no funding here. Patronage at all levels prefers to settle for ideas from the past in its public sculpture, as evidenced by the recent installation of Rob Lorenson’s moribund “Sarasota Deco” at Five Points.

Frustration with the status quo is rampant amongst young artists.

Noelle St. Germain graduated from the Ringling College of Art and Design last year. At the time, the abstract painter seemed poised to make Sarasota her home; in the Internet age it is possible to build a career outside metropolitan areas. But after almost five years of looking at our arts community she says, “It’s a bit too focused on the tourist market, when it has the potential to include and expand itself beyond what it is. It might seem unfeasible, but I’d like to see Sarasota become more cosmopolitan in its thinking.” A native of Connecticut, raised in Florida, she plans to leave Sarasota in the near future.

Mixed-media sculptor and painter Lynda Bostrom was born in Sarasota and graduated at the same time as St. Germain. “Growing up here was amazing — having the Museum, the art school and the galleries, not to mention the performing arts,” she says. “However, after traveling and being exposed to art in Canada, Miami and New York, it’s apparent how tame the art in Sarasota is. We are stuck in movements past. Many artists are re-inventing the wheel here. It’s great if that’s how far you want to go with your work, but if you want to take your art farther, there isn’t a strong audience for it, outside of the College.”

She recently moved to Virginia, where she says the audience respect her work more. “It’s appreciated here too, but people here don’t buy work,” she says.

Sculptor Adam Doughty shares the frustration of St. Germain and Bostrom, but retains some optimism about the situation here in Sarasota. The Maryland native graduated in 2007 from the Ringling College of Art and Design and presently works as a technical assistant in the College’s studio workshops.

Doughty is a superb craftsman in steel, known for his eccentric Rube Goldberg-like high-speed bicycles. “People here would like to be part of something, but there just isn’t anyone in charge that has any education in the visual arts,” he says. “Therefore, not many people know how to organize successful events for the visual arts. I’m staying because I have a job here and there is the space to make work. … Eventually someone who can organize visual art events will stand up.”

But perhaps tourist tax dollars aren’t the answer. Political thinking is bottom-line thinking — read tourist attraction — which is anathema to experimentation and risk-taking. Local politicians should not be expected to be visually literate but they do interfere with the curatorial process of those asked to make informed decisions on their behalf; the best example is the frequent overruling that the City Commissioners make regarding expert opinion on public art by the City Public Art Committee. An overcautious desire not to offend the imagined sensibility of tourists has created a cultural climate in which provocative contemporary art is denied a place, with the resulting annual exodus of our homegrown talent.

Does that mean the challenge facing Crumley is insurmountable. Hardly. Like I said, Crumley’s confidence is infectious.

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