For the price of a police helicopter, New York could save the arts

Earlier this spring, I attended Mark Morris’s The Look of Love, a joyful performance of modern dancers taking on the music of Burt Bacharach. It was one of those evenings when you realize what life in New York might be like if you didn’t spend the hours between dinner and midnight resetting passwords to file overdue insurance claims while half-watching something on BritBox. Even in the city that gave us Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, too many of us spend most of our time seeking distraction rather than meaningful pleasure.

That evening, actress Kathleen Chalfant happened to be sitting next to me. I’d noticed her a few times before at my local supermarket, but only a redneck would approach someone who had made her Broadway debut in the original production of “Angels in America” ​​while she clutched a gallon of laundry detergent. This wasn’t Key Food, though; it was the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the lights were just going down, and we were two people obviously of a similar mindset, bound by a shared nostalgia and an appreciation for beauty. Talking to her now seemed like protocol; soon we were both quietly singing some of the American Songbook’s best-known compositions, written by a brilliant son of Forest Hills, Queens.

The multiplier effect of culture in New York is enormous, both economically and humanly. The city attracts and produces some of the most talented and interesting people in the world, whose influence comes in the form of outsized fame or intimate inspirational moments. Genius is always close at hand here. But arts funding is not always enough to match that talent. This becomes clear every June, when the city’s budget for the coming fiscal year is drafted and cultural institutions – even large ones, the recipients of so many donations – feel like the passed-over party in a tense negotiation over child support.

From one perspective, the city’s cultural funding may look robust. As City Hall officials point out, funding for the Department of Cultural Affairs has increased significantly over the past decade. But that figure also includes the cost of staffing and maintaining the department itself. And in any case, the overall budget fell by $7 million to $241 million between 2023 and 2024 as the refugee crisis necessitated cuts across all city departments.

This year, the City Council is requesting an additional $53 million, above a base amount that has changed little for many years due to inflation, specifically to support more than 1,130 cultural organizations, many of which have been struggling due to rising labor costs and the end of federal Covid relief. That amount represents just a fraction of the $100 billion city budget, $35 million of which would come from City Council funds anyway. In effect, the administration is being asked to raise $18 million, which it has so far agreed not to do. To put that number in perspective, a line item in the police department’s $6 billion 2024 budget included $39.8 million to buy two light twin-engine helicopters.

Mayor Eric Adams seems to want it both ways: He wants to expand the city’s cultural appeal to the world while holding back what’s needed to sustain it. Just days ago, he announced a series of free programs and cultural events that will run throughout Labor Day. “Every summer, music fills our streets, plays sprout in our parks, and New Yorkers come together to celebrate the joy and energy that makes our city so great,” Adams said. The events will be put on by 66 different organizations, more than half of which faced reduced funding in 2024, according to the Cultural Interest Group, a coalition of 34 organizations including BAM, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Studio Museum in Harlem that is seeking to increase funding the city provides for the arts.

In April, Justin Brannan, a former punk rock musician who now chairs the City Council’s Finance Committee, spoke to the Cultural Institutions Group at a breakfast at the Harmonie Club about the importance of the arts in his own life. “We talk about New York City and New York exceptionalism,” he said, “but you can’t talk about the things that make New York City great on Monday and then defund them on Tuesday.”

How the money is distributed is as important as the amount. The Adams administration is notoriously slow to disburse payments to nonprofits. “When you talk about smaller nonprofits in the outer boroughs, they can’t even raise a million — that’s crazy,” Brannan said. “What if you’re the little art school in Coney Island that could do that? Then what do you do? You shut down.”

Although New York has recovered from Covid by almost any measure, the performing arts are still grappling with “a supply chain problem,” as one philanthropist put it to me recently. The pandemic has slowed artistic work. Both BAM and the Public Theater have had to lay off staff as revenues have fallen. And there are obvious effects on neighborhood commerce. As I left Mark Morris’s show in March, I noticed that an Italian restaurant across the street that relied on pre- and post-show crowds had closed.

“At BAM, we’ve seen audiences return,” Coco Killingsworth, a vice president at BAM, told me. “But because of inflation, we can’t do as much.” Philanthropy has changed since Covid. Many donors have chosen to redirect their funds to smaller, minority-led organizations. “But you have to support the whole ecosystem,” Ms. Killingsworth said. Donors have not returned with the same vigor. “We face challenges coming from multiple directions,” she said.

Every year, museums and dance companies are essentially forced to defend themselves against the political rhetoric that, in reality, they are highly valued. “Our administration values ​​the important role our cultural institutions play in our community,” a City Hall spokesperson said in an email this week. “With responsible, effective financial management, we will continue to support this important sector.”

Kyoung’s Pacific Beat, a small Brooklyn-based theater company, may see things differently. After losing state funding in late 2023 and then city funds for the spring 2024 season, it was forced to cancel its program. It was “the only way to make up a deficit that exceeded $30,000,” founder Kyoung H. Park said in a recent letter to the theater community. He announced that the company would close at the end of the month.