Stimulus funds aid arts groups

Omaha's Kent Bellows Foundation was in danger of losing its art teacher.

The North Platte Community Playhouse came close to terminating its general manager.

And the Omaha Symphony considered cutting a month from its 2009-10 season.

Those were some of the hard-luck stories averted with federal stimulus funds. The Nebraska Arts Council will officially announce today the names of state arts groups receiving money.

Fifteen grants were awarded. Nearly 50 state arts organizations applied for about $272,000 in funding, said Suzanne Wise, the council's executive director.

“We had a limited amount of funding, so the grants were obviously very competitive,” Wise said. “Groups had to prove that their jobs were mission critical to receive funding.”

The money, part of the economic stimulus package signed by President Obama early this year, can only be used to fund jobs that had been eliminated or were in danger of being lost because of the recession.

Two Nebraska groups — the Omaha Symphony and Opera Omaha — received direct grants from the National Endowment for the Arts of $50,000.

Rob Hallam, the Omaha Symphony president, said Tuesday that the NEA grant should help the group weather the current economic storm.

“Our budget remains tight,” Hallam said. “But we probably won't have to cut our season, and our musicians will play their usual 38 weeks.”

The symphony employs 71 full-time and contract musicians and is the largest performing arts group in the state. Many of these musicians are also local music teachers. So their presence is felt both in the Holland Performing Arts Center and in dozens of private music studios around the city.

Opera Omaha's grant will guarantee the job of just one person, the company's new theatrical director, Garnett Bruce.

But Bruce is a nationally respected opera expert, and his loss “would be unhealthy for the company,” Opera Omaha president John Wehrle wrote in his application.

Nebraska Shakespeare Festival's $29,500 grant was the largest distributed by the Nebraska Arts Council.

The company's Shakespeare on the Green typically runs for three weeks each summer and presents two plays. This summer, it produced one play over two weeks.

Attendance dropped to just over 10,000, down from the usual 20,000, said Mary Ann Bamber, the festival's managing directing.

“This grant puts us on track for a full season next summer,” said Bamber, who indicated the money would be spent on three equity actors and a director.

Some of the state's largest and most prestigious arts groups did not receive grants.

The Omaha Community Playhouse, Omaha Performing Arts Society, Joslyn Art Museum and Friends of the Lied Performing Arts Center in Lincoln all applied for $30,000 grants but were not successful.

Tim Schmad, executive director of the playhouse, said he was deeply disappointed.

“But I understand the council had to make some tough decisions,” he said.

Two relatively new groups — the Kent Bellows Foundation and Film Streams — did receive grants, $22,800 each.

The Bellows Foundation, named for the late, great Omaha realist painter, provides art education to local high school-age artists. The group was in danger of losing its one full-time art teacher, Rebecca Herskowitz.

“As a new group, we were vulnerable to going under in a recession,” said Anne Meysenburg, the foundation's executive director. The foundation opened last year.

Founded in 2007, Film Streams is also a relatively new group. Rachel Jacobson, the executive director, said drops in donations threatened the job of her film booker, Connie White.

“Connie has national contacts and booked films like ‘Slumdog Millionaire,'” said Jacobson. “We couldn't get films like that without her. We'd be lost.”

The North Platte Community Playhouse would certainly have a hard time without its general manager, Brittany Drullinger.

North Platte is located 200 miles from the nearest large city. Moreover, the playhouse is its only theater, and Drullinger is the playhouse's only full-time employee.

“I am thrilled beyond words,” Drullinger said about her theater's $16,779 grant.

Contact the writer:

444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com

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