https://arts.ny.gov/sites/default/files/Annual%20Report%201970%20-%2071.pdf

Seymour H. Knox, Chairman Eric Larrabee, Administrator Council Programs and Staff Financial Statement 1970-1971

Chairman's Statement The past year was one of firsts and fruition. TheCouncil was able to achieve many new things - through the support of individuals interested in the arts but chiefly because of Governor Rockefeller's vision and a legislative appropriation that was the largest in its history. The tally marks on the cover of this report reflect increased services that the appropriation made possible.

Of the $20.2 million that the New York State Legislature voted the Council, by far the greatest part—$18 million—went directly to nearly six hundred applicants under what the Council itself refers to as Aid to Cultural Organizations (ACO), with $2.3 of the $18 million designated for the research facilities of the New York Public Library and the balance broadly distributed. In the great majority of cases such aid allowed existing groups and institutions to expand public service, but a considerable number of organizations were saved from extinction and many others were rescued from the threat of sharply curtailed activity. Aid to Cultural Organizations provided innumerable art services for young people in schools, colleges, libraries, museums, and community art centers; helped support more than two thousand free or low-priced performances and 384 new productions in theatre, dance, music, and opera; underwrote 3,057 weeks of arts workshops in storefronts, studios, museums, and community centers; and contributed toward the organization of one hundred exhibitions. The remaining $2.2 million of the total appropriation went for administration of the Council and .for the continued support of its established activities.

If 1970-71 was a year in which the Council realized on a larger scale the aims it has pursued throughout its history, it was also one of exploration and development. Educational television, multimedia, literature, community projects in the visual arts, and aid to local arts councils - each of which Council activity had only touched before - are all fields where it has now made major endeavors. Above all, the past year was one in which the Council investigated multilevel cooperation between cultural organizations.

Already we can look with satisfaction at the mutual benefits that have derived from our State's symphony orchestras working in close partnership with the music departments of our colleges and universities. We can also point with considerable pride to the many instances in which major New YorkState museums have developed special projects for schools and community groups, and also to the sharing of problems and solutions that has come about through Council-sponsored meetings involving regional historical societies, small science museums, and natural science centers. Further instances of collaboration came from the

Council's support of regional equipment pools which opened new avenues of experiment in film, video, and other audio-visual techniques for teachers and small groups throughout the State.

I would like to call attention to one other facet of the Council's 1970-71 activities—its new attention to long-range help for the arts. Two of the most impressive figures that our research has developed are an estimate of almost $6 billion of capita] investment in our State's arts institutions, and another in excess of $300 million for those institutions' annual operating expenses. They are large figures and they call for long-range thinking rather than attention merely to the present moment. The past year has been one in which we have not only come aware of them but one in which we have sought to meet their challenge. --Seymour H. Knox

Administrator’s Report For all the events it contained, for me 1970-71 remains the year I traded roles with John Hightower. This piece of job-juggling, by which he resigned as executive director to become a member of the Council, while I resigned from the Councilto replace him, has had the unintended consequence that each of us now knows an unconscionable amount about the other's powers andprerogatives. But it is highly satisfying to follow him as the Council's administrative head, and to help in the transition toward the stable, long-term State support for the arts which is in process of emerging.

During the eleven years of its existence, the Council has grown enormously, even before the appropriation of 1970 which enlarged its budget by nearly ten times. Throughout the trials of expansion and change, however, it has held fast to certain basic principles and practices. The principles had to do with the proper behavior of government in an area where freedom to the edge of anarchy is a necessary condition; the practices had to do with style. Over these same years the Council had accumulated not only a reservoir of experience but a determination to avoid becoming a Ministry of Culture, a bureaucratic arbiter of official taste. It sought to do this by democratizing its decision-making processes and by acting, as far as humanly possible, in sympathetic response to the needs and priorities of the arts community of the State. Its standard was excellence, but if it pressed for other changes than in quality it did so in the light of long-term goals: the transition from amateur to professional, from an elite to a broad-based public orientation.

Such at least was the overall spirit of the enterprise when last year the Governor and the Legislature dramatically increased our budget and, in so doing, transformed the Council's mission. Previously we had thought and acted very much in the manner of a foundation, as though our funds were seed money, avoiding long-term commitment. But the new universe we had entered was one in which the principle of government support over an extended period seemed to be on the edge of acceptance (as, indeed, it has since been accepted), and the difference between temporary aid and sustained support was fundamental and philosophical.

What were the priorities now? How would the program be administered? Would it be possible to retain suppleness and sensitivity in such altered circumstances? The first question to be answered, as we later discovered, significantly affected the others. This was the decision to retain the organization of the Council staff essentially as it had been, since there was neither time nor budget to set up an entirely new staff structure. To give detailed attention to over eight hundred applications, however, and have money on its way to all the recipients before the fiscal year was over, called for doubling up the existing schedule — twice as many meetings, twice as much work. The Council members outdid themselves in regular attendance throughout the summer months, and of the staff I can say only that I have rarely seen so overworked a group as I found on my arrival in September 1970. But their strenuous effort should not obscure the essential point, which was — when put to the test — that the Council's methods and methodology worked, even with enlarged resources and an enlarged area of responsibility. The earlier insistence on professionalism, on the recognition of artistic quality, the nurturing of institutions, and the general practice of finding solutions to existing problems (rather than finding problems for existing solutions) — even in the new world of major funding, all were proved again to be justified.

A great many factors made this success possible, not least among them the decade of experience which the Council had already accumulated; we did not start from scratch. For extra staff, we were able to turn to friends in the arts community who were familiar with its ways. That community itself, moreover, bore with extraordinary patience the burden of added paperwork and the frustrating delays which inevitably attend a new program. We began, also, with the rich resources of the one state in the nation where cultural activities are most densely concentrated. We could do a lot with a little (relatively speaking), because a lot was already here. We were now able to demonstrate convincingly what could hitherto only be asserted, that the arts are not ancillary to American life but a major economic activity, with very sizable capitalization, large operating budgets, and impressive payrolls. What we provided was the margin to make the State's cultural resources available and accessible — the State's contribution being only a fraction of the total operating budgets of the non-profit arts organizations which applied for aid. We also showed that government support would not dry up the other traditional sources, for these in fact increased. A preliminary study of the figures suggests that every dollar the State spent on the arts generated more than twice as much from other sources, amply supporting the Buffalo Evening News in saying, "We don't know any place where the people of New York, for the modest price of $1-a-head, got a better buy in terms of enhancing the quality of life ...."

After this year's ordeal by enlargement, it should certainly be hoped that the Council's attitudes and approaches will change. In fact some changes are already apparent — a greater emphasis on community and collaborative efforts, on regional and service associations, on marrying institution to institution. Where in the past we had tended to conceive of growth in terms of a single organization's vitality, we are beginning to see it also as a function of fruitful interdependence. But as far as 1970-71 is concerned, as a newcomer to the staff I was again and again impressed by our indebtedness to the past, by the fact that we could always fall back on what we knew—of arts organizations, of the communities within the State, of the uses and abuses of public funding. What the reader finds in this report, in other words, must not be regarded as though it had appeared full-blown overnight, but as the reaping of a harvest long in the growing. To shift the metaphor, we dug into our intellectual capital. What remains for us is to renew it, to develop ideas and instruments as appropriate to our second decade as those my predecessor and his colleagues did in our first. -- Eric Larrabee

<>COUNCIL AND STAFF<>COUNCIL MEMBERS Seymour H. Knox, Chairman Henry Alien Moe, Vice Chairman Max L. Arons Hy Faine John B. Hightower Thomas P. F. Hoving William R. Hudgins Louis dark Jones Mrs. David Levene Arthur Levitt, Jr. Alwin Nikolais Frederick W. Richmond Mrs. Richard Rodgers Andrew D. Wolfe <>PAST COUNCIL MEMBERS Reginald Alien Mrs. Harmar Brereton Cass Canfield Angus Duncan Theodore Hancock Mrs. W. Averell Harriman Wallace K. Harrison Helen Hayes August Heckscher David M. Keiser Eric Larrabee Alfred J. Manuti Richard B. K. McLanathan Richard Rodgers Aline Saarinen Frank Stanton Lewis A. Swyer Hale Woodruff <>COUNCIL STAFF Eric Larrabee, Administrator for the ExecutiveCommittee Helen Venturas, Secretarial Assistant <> Information Services Ellen Thurston, Assistant Director for Information Services <> ASSOCIATES Meyer Braiterman, Public Relations Ruth Carsch, InformationCenter Constance Eiseman, New YorkState Award Rhoda Ribner, Publications Jerrold Weitzman, Public Relations <> AIDES Tamara Moskowitz, Brenda Singleton <>Programs Arthur J. Kerr, Assistant Director for Programs Theresa Redd, Secretarial Assistant <>FILM, TV/MEDIA, LITERATURE Peter Bradley, Program Director <> PROGRAM ASSOCIATES Russell Connor, TV/Media Constance Eiseman, Literature Barbara Haspiel, Film <>PROGRAM ASSISTANTS Maralin Bennici, Film Dorothy Morss, TV/Media <> PROGRAM AIDE Virginia Malagon <>PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAM Richard d'Anjou, Program Director Phillip Hyde, Deputy Program Director <> PROGRAM ASSOCIATES Stuart Hodes, Dance Robert Porter, Music Marc Primus, Children's Theatre Gina Shield, Theatre <> PROGRAM ASSISTANTS Margaret Grynastyl, Theatre Lee Harper, Touring Program Alice McGrath <> PROGRAM AIDES Toney Blue, Pamela Hunt, Sandra Hutchins, Martha Klein, Margaret Morgan, Caria Schaefer <>SPECIAL PROGRAMS Donald Harper, Program Director Barbara Lawrence, Deputy Program Director <> PROGRAM ASSOCIATES Nanine Bilski Barbara Glantz Harold Youngblood <> PROGRAM ASSISTANT Rosalind Jarrett <> PROGRAM AIDES Marianela Andrini, Isabelle Fernandez <>TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE Rudolph Nashan, Program Associate Betsy Drew Robertson, Program Assistant <>VISUAL ARTS PROGRAM Allon Schooner, Program Director <> PROGRAM ASSOCIATES Trudie Grace, Community Projects Lucy Kostelanetz, Museum Aid <> PROGRAM ASSISTANTS Robert Braiterman, Exhibitions Tema Harnik, Museum Aid Robin Lynn, Community Projects <> PROGRAM AIDES Susan Chase, Ann Johnson, Renee Rosenberg, Jessica Williams <>Fiscal Management Arthur William Rashap, Assistant Director for Fiscal Management Mary Hays, Deputy Assistant Director for Fiscal Management <> FISCAL OFFICERS Enzo Mincin Claire Monaghan Susan Patricof <> JUNIOR FISCAL OFFICERS Marion Bratcher, Gwendolyn Jones, Patricia Morris, Suzanne Okie, Beatrice Weissman, Marianne Zampardi <> AIDES Dolores Chaskin, Sheila Nachman, Dale Talley <>Administrative Operations Gray MacArthur, Assistant Director forAdministrative Operations Ira Kornbluth, Administrative Deputy Yvonne Rountree, Secretary to trie Council Anne Atlas, Principal Account Clerk Rose Flamm, Senior Account Clerk James Fluellen, Mail and Supply Clerk Lucille Fulton, Senior Clerk Jaime Heidt, Secretarial Assistant Ana SanAntonio, Clerk <>Temporary Staff Vicki Atlas, Haydee Baron, Robert Benwit,Suzanne Cogan, Candy Cohen, John Condon,Steven Delit, Harry Deutsch, Madeleine Ferris,Barbara Good, Terri Hill, Janice Kaufman,Alice Kossoff, Noah Lamy, Pamela Landgraff,Ellen Marcus, Joseph McNulty, Frances Norring,Margaret Padnos, Benjamin Patterson, Larry Ross,Mae Reid, Edgenie Rice, Naomi Thaler,Barbara Willis, Marie Zazzi <>Special Consultants Al Berr; Elena Gil; M. J. Gladstone; Michael Hammond; Bradley Morison; Paul Ryan;Squadron, Gartenberg, Ellenoff & Plesent;George Alan Smith; Joseph Wesley Zeigler

Financial Statement for 1970-1971 (pdf)
Council Programs and Staff
Financial Statement 1970-1971