The City Where Arts Never Sleep

No, it’s not just that we don’t have that mirrored ball for New Year’s Eve. On the list of the Top 10 cities in municipal arts funding for 1998 (statistics provided by Americans for the Arts in Washington) Los Angeles ranks second--but New York beats everybody else by more than $95 million. And the city allots another $100 million annually for cultural capital projects.

Each city has a different way of paying for arts and culture. And most have more than one major source of government funding (for example, Los Angeles County sets aside $30 million for the arts, most of which supports our county-owned Music Center, Museum of Natural History and the L.A. County Museum of Art, and in recent years the state has offered $2.5 million in grants to L.A. County).

And some Top 10 cities argue that their own chart figures are misleadingly low. Arts-friendly San Francisco, for example, nets another $29 million through a city hotel tax. Still, there remains a Godzilla-sized gap between New York and everybody else. There’s an easy explanation, says Schuyler G. Chapin, commissioner of the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs (even his title is longer than the others).

Unlike other cities, New York owns 34 major centers funded through the Cultural Affairs Department--including the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, most of Lincoln Center, the Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Gardens and the Brooklyn Museum, totaling 85% ($92 million goes to support members of this Cultural Institutions Group, or CIG). The remaining 15% ($16 million) is managed much like the total budget of most cultural affairs departments, funding a wide range of smaller neighborhood organizations, like Staten Island’s Tibetan Museum.

New York’s Metropolitan and Natural History museums were founded in the 1870s; its Department of Cultural Affairs was not established until the mid-’60s. Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department has only existed since 1980, although some arts activities were previously funded through the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Even taking into account the CIG money, and the fact that New York’s department is older than some others, New York still spends more per capita on the arts than other U.S. cities, and is thought to have a better understanding of their value.

“For New York City, the arts generate more income than any other city activity except Wall Street--$11.1 billion per year,” Chapin said. “People don’t come here to listen to the traffic; the prime mover is the arts and cultural life of this city.”

But if it’s any comfort to other towns, Chapin says the average New Yorker doesn’t know who he is, either. “People in the arts world know about us, but generally speaking, there is a lack off understanding about this department, and how important it is,” he said.*

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Funding the Arts

NY: $108 million

LA: $11.5 million (the Cultural Affairs Dept. reports $12 million)

Dallas: $10.5 million

Chicago: $10.4 million

Charlotte $9.8 million

San Jose: $7.3 million

San Diego: $6.5 million

Pittsburgh: $6.4 million

Houston: $6.3 million

San Francisco: $5.5 million

* The Cultural Affairs Dept. reports $12 million

Source: Americans for the Arts