ARTS DIRECTOR GUIDES STATE'S INNOVATIVE CULTURAL TRUST PROGRAM

SIKESTON -- Missouri is on the cultural cutting edge.

The Missouri Cultural Trust, an inventive grant program created to help arts organizations sustain themselves, is viewed as a model by other states trying to offset deep cuts in the National Endowment for the Arts funding mandated by Congress.

Gov. Mel Carnahan won a national award from Americans for the Arts for his role in creating the Missouri Cultural Trust.

The trust receives 60 percent of an already existing tax paid by out-of-state sports teams and entertainers. Interest on that money is used to provide organizational and developmental grants to local arts groups. It has $24.4 million in the bank and expects that number to grow to $100 million by 2010.

The Missouri Cultural Trust focuses on long-term stabilization of the arts and leveraging private investment, says Flora Maria Garcia.

She became the executive director of the Missouri Arts Council just as the Missouri Cultural Trust was getting started. She was in Sikeston last week to tour the renovation of the Sikeston Depot, a project the state group is considering for a Missouri Cultural Trust grant.

"This is a perfect example of what we're talking about," she said, surveying the renovated former train depot that will become the new home of the Sikeston Arts Council.

Under the grant, the Sikeston nonprofit corporation renovating the depot will raise $150,000 to make improvements and establish an endowment, and the state arts council will set aside $75,000 from the Missouri Cultural Trust. The Sikeston group will receive the interest earned from the $75,000 in perpetuity.

When Garcia was hired in 1997, the legislation creating the trust was in place, "but nobody had a clue how it would work."

The idea of an untested system of using public money to leverage private donations presented barriers.

"We had to come up with a way to take away the barriers," she said.

The program was tested for the first time last spring and resulted in $13.6 million in private investment in the arts throughout the state's five regions.

One private donor contributed $2.5 million to build a museum in Sedalia. Springfield raised $500,000 to endow its own arts grant.

Fifteen more organizations are coming into the program this year.

Most of the 700 arts organizations the MAC helps fund are not located in the state's cities.

"You don't have to have a lot of money to create something," she says.

But the small arts organizations are the ones that are most fragile, Garcia says, explaining: "Usually, one person does everything," and "we want to build a support system."

The state's southeastern and northwestern corners are its most under-served areas from an arts standpoint, Garcia says.

Poplar Bluff, however, is restoring an old theater, and Dexter is rejuvenating its arts council. The Arts Council of Southeast Missouri has a reputation for being very active, she said.

Missouri does not have an arts fellowship program as some states -- including Illinois -- do. Missouri's alternative is a residency program, in which artists-in-residence teach and perform at schools or universities. Given the money, Garcia would like to establish a fellowship program "to reward excellence."

Under her leadership, the Missouri Arts Council has avoided controversies similar to that at the Brooklyn Museum, which was criticized recently for a show that included an image of the Virgin Mary covered with cow dung.

"We do not censor," Garcia said, "but we're very careful about what we will put money behind."

All grants are reviewed by a citizen panel.

A native of Havana, Cuba, Garcia has an undergraduate degree in modern languages from Saint Mary's College at Notre Dame and a master's degree in business administration with a dual degree in arts administration from Southern Methodist University. Before joining the MAC as its executive director, she oversaw the city and county cultural plan and managed a $4.2 million grants program in Houston, Texas.

Garcia is married to a painter, William J. Hassell. In school, she contemplated being either a painter or a teacher herself until landing an administrative internship for a festival and finding her calling.

"Being an administrator is the perfect marriage for me," she said. "I can make it possible for artists to do what they do."

FUNDING THE ARTS

The Missouri Arts Council, MAC, has awarded the following grants to local organizations for fiscal year 2000. This list does not include mini grants, technical-assistance grants of special-opportunity grants which are awarded throughout the year.

CAPE GIRARDEAU

Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, $22,000

City of Roses Music Heritage Association, $6,500

Southeast Missouri State University, $1,000

PERRYVILLE

Perryville Art Alliance, $3,500

SIKESTON

Sikeston Missouri Arts Inc. (3 grants), total of $17,420

Reading Room, $15,000

EAST PRAIRIE

Susanna Wesley Family Learning Center, $13,200