TFM >
…
From the Austin Chronicle, “Naked City”, 11/15/02:
The Live Music Capital will in 2004 become an official American Capital of Culture. Austin was so designated this week by a group allied with the Organization of American States and the European Union (which has selected its own “cultural capitals” for years; there, it’s a really big deal). Austin is the first U.S. city to be picked in the five years of the American initiative — it will share the honor in 2004 with Santiago, Chile.
…Fast forward to January 16, 2004, to a blurb published under the byline “At Least We’re Still the State Capital” (from Robert Faires’ column “Articulations” in the Chronicle):
This time last year, Austin’s then Mayor Gus Garcia signed an agreement proudly accepting the designation of our fair city as an American Capital of Culture for 2004. The idea was that for the whole of this year Austin would be showcasing itself as a hotbed of the arts with a string of ceremonies, marketing initiatives, and special events, just as cities in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Panama have done since the program was launched four years ago as an offshoot of a similar program in Europe. Now, here we are two weeks from what was to be the official ceremony kicking off Our Culture Year, and, well, current Mayor Will Wynn has said, “Thanks but no thanks” to the international honor. Seems the city couldn’t find the funds to support the designation — roughly $5 million to $10 million that would pay for a year’s worth of promotional activities and affiliated programs. While it’s hardly surprising that the city had trouble finding that kind of scratch, given the scramble for cash for the current budget — even with help from a committee of community leaders seeking private support — it’s a particular shame since Austin would have been the first city in the U.S. chosen by the Organization of the American Capital of Culture to hold this distinction. Ah well, some other year.
(Note found in between articles, scribbled on the back of a Thom Yorke “Eraser” sticker.)
I read the first article while gearing up to move to Austin. I read the second after I had already moved to Austin. Then this came up: an article, again, penned by Faires, published in the Chronicle (2/20/04, “Austin’s Cultural Makeover; Which arts facilities were built, which weren’t built, and why”). The following excerpt deals with the Austin Museum of Art, and Austin’s failures to upgrade the institution significantly over a twenty-year series of bust-boom cycles. I regarded these as bad signs, production-wise.
The tech boom of the Nineties was supposed to give the Austin Museum of Art its second chance at building the great downtown museum it had tried and failed to build during the real estate boom of the Eighties. In 1985, voters approved $14.7 million in bond money for AMOA (then Laguna Gloria Art Museum) to build a permanent facility downtown. The museum had a site and a design by prominent architect Robert Venturi, but the late Eighties bust, combined with financial setbacks and staff changes within the institution, real estate troubles that led to AMOA losing the site, and cross-cultural art wars killed the museum’s chances of realizing its dream by decade’s end. But as Austin’s economy recovered, so did AMOA’s downtown dream. By the late Nineties, it had obtained a new site (one block south of the original), won back the favor of the city government, and opened galleries on Congress. It scrapped the Venturi plans and selected a new architect, Richard Gluckman of New York, to design a 125,000-square-foot facility on the original site (reacquired through a land swap with the city). When Gluckman’s design was unveiled in March 2000, AMOA anticipated a groundbreaking that fall and an opening day in 2003. The museum felt so confident about its fundraising that it gave the city back the remaining $13 million in 1985 bond money. But shortly after that the project began to unravel. Internal politics led to board resignations, staff layoffs, the departure of Executive Director Elizabeth Ferrer, and the decision by museum patrons Mort and Angela Topfer to withdraw their combined $6 million donation to the downtown building. Ferrer’s successor, Dana Friis-Hansen, worked to keep the project alive, but the downturn left him with few options. AMOA briefly considered reworking the Gluckman design to be built in phases, with the first phase costing around $43 million, but that created as many problems as it solved, and Friis-Hansen estimated the facility’s operating cost at $9 million a year – a far cry from the $2.8 million of AMOA’s annual budget today. Having spent all but $860,000 of the funds raised toward the building, AMOA chose the better part of valor: It abandoned the Gluckman plans and focused its energies on the much more affordable renovation of the Laguna Gloria site. Decisions about any new downtown facility are being left to the future.
