ALL HANDS ON DECK!

I think I'll start this post as follows: it is commonly said that if you want to attend quality cultural events, you must go to NYC.  You can hear music (classical, jazz, or anything else), see plays, or attend dance shows.  You can go to art shows, museums, and galleries.  In my experience, this conclusion is insane.  There is so much culture going on in Miami that you can attend one thing or another most days, you sometimes have to choose which thing (same day, and same time) you want to attend, even occasionally at the same venue, and I have on uncommon occasion attended more than one event on the same day.  There are many small companies, some larger ones, and the County has even erected venues where none existed before.  I've made things easier on myself by not going to any event that requires me to buy a ticket from TicketMaster or Eventbrite, usually not going to Miami Beach (the Colony Theater and New World Symphony, and often the bandshell), not going to the Arsht, because the ticket prices are too high, and parking is too difficult, and I've stopped attending some shows I otherwise like, because I didn't approve of their evolving artistic direction.  And even so, I'm busy a lot!  So no one will be at a lack for artistic activities in South Florida, or even just Dade County.

This morning, I received an e-mail from Dimensions Dance Theater of Miami.  I have no doubt I've mentioned them repeatedly before.  Almost all of their shows I see are at South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center (also called Dennis C Moss Cultural Arts Center).  It's far from here, in Cutler Bay, but it's very well worth the trip.  This e-mail was almost identical to an e-mail I received last week from Dance NOW! Miami, which is an extremely similar company.  And there will be more.  (I just now got another one from GableStage.)

It turns out that Florida's best known adult-aged child, Ronnie DeSantis, has cut all or nearly all state grants from cultural organizations.  Specifically, he has eliminated $32M in grants.  I wouldn't begin to guess what this game feels like to Ronnie, but it has very significant consequences for Florida arts organizations.

And let me explain to you how arts funding works.  At the very best, arts organizations (all of them, including the Louvre, the New York City Ballet, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, and every other one there is) make at most 30% of their budget by selling tickets.  The rest of their budget comes from grants and donations.  In Florida, until now, grants came from the (federal) National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the state, the county, the municipality, and grant providers like the Knight Foundation.  And applying for a grant doesn't mean the organization gets one.  Generally speaking -- again until now -- everyone has valued the arts (the Dade County Commissions have been magnificent), and among ticket sales, grants, and personal donations, I don't know of one that has failed.  The e-mails I got last week and today are emergency alerts.  Arts organizations are now in more trouble than they used to be, thanks to Ronnie DeSantis and his tricycle.

No arts organization can raise ticket prices to fulfill its budget.  Ticket prices would be so high that no one would attend.  The organizations still get federal, county, municipality, and grant provider grants, except for the state now, so what has to change is donations.  Donations come from people like you and me.  Some people who have or had a lot of money leave ongoing donations, even after they die.  But not all of them do.  I knew a guy like that, who was always a generous donor to several arts organizations.  But he and his wife died, and he remembered some, but not all, of those organizations in his will.  And at least one of the ones he stopped remembering operates on a shoestring.  So they're in trouble now.

I will give you what would normally be confidential information.  My largest donation is to musimelange.  I donate $2500 per year, on top of the $300 per year I pay for four concerts, because musimelange is an extraordinarily unique organization, it has a very small audience (almost what you might call intimate), and the founder is a friend of mine.  If you're keeping up with the arithmetic, I pay $700 per evening, which includes all the top flight wine I want, all the gourmet food/"bites" I want, a spectacular concert, all the excellent champagne I want, all the French dessert I want, I support my friend, and I get to experience this with nice and interesting people, including some BP residents, and others of whom become friends.  Is that worth $700 per evening?  Probably not to some, but it it is to me.  I donate $1000 to each of two organizations (I'm on the Board of one), and lesser amounts to others.  I commonly gave $250 a year to Dance NOW! Miami, but after last week's e-mail, I doubled it.  And most of these organizations do not have pre-publicized "seasons" to which you can subscribe.  As I said, things are so busy down here that it's hit or miss as to whether or not you can go, and how often.  The donation is commonly your biggest contribution.

My system is this: if I like an organization enough to go to its shows, I subscribe to its season, if it has one.  If I subscribe, I donate.  (And if it doesn't have a season, I donate anyway.)  As I said, the donation is not uncommonly, or is most commonly, larger than the subscription price.  I know that sounds nuts, but it has to be that way.  Otherwise, they don't survive.  And if you go to them, you'll hope very much that they do survive.

How much do you donate?  It depends on a lot of things.  But I'll tell you this.  If you look at lists of donors mentioned in programs, you'll see in a number of programs that people who donate $50 per year are listed.  That's how much these organizations need the donations, and how grateful they are to get them.  Not that they wouldn't be more grateful to get $100, or $150, or $250, or $500, or more.  There are personal donors who donate $10K or more per year.  (I've seen some programs that list some of the performers as donors (they get paid to perform, then they donate back part of what they got paid).  Everybody gets it.  Everybody except Ronnie DeSantis, who must be a very ill-tempered, and probably unhappy and angry, person, and probably needs an appointment with me.

Anyway, don't waste your time and money going to NYC.  You can have all the enrichment you want, in three languages, right here.  And make a donation.  It's now desperately needed.