Historical February 1996 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The arts can enrich everyone’s life and help to bring people together.
This philosophy is integral to the thinking of our neighbor Jill McGuire (61xx Westminster) who is the executive director of the Regional Arts Commission.
As funding for the arts is being cut by 40 percent at the federal level, St. Louis is very fortunate to have the Regional Arts Commission, which supports locally-based groups by means of a dedicated hotel-motel tax. McGuire came to this position with considerable training and experience in art, art history, and graphic design. Prior to becoming the Commission’s first director, McGuire was a special assistant to Mayor Schoemehl and had managed his 1981 campaign. Politics also was a long-term interest for her she knocked on doors for candidates when she was a teenager.
Her family was very interested in politics and her father once ran for mayor of his community.
In fact, her summer jobs while she was in college involved working in the Recorder of Deeds’ office and for the Circuit Clerk in St. Louis County.
While attending the University of Missouri in Columbia she started a new party with two friends called Entente and they won a campus office. .
In the mayor’s office, McGuire worked in the area of conventions and tourism and on the question of the public hospitals.
While there, the city and county tried together to pass a sales tax for cultural institutions, economic development, and conventions and tourism. Although this measure passed in the city, it failed in the county. Based on a model from San Francisco, the city and county decided to propose a dedicated tax to fund arts-related activities.
This passed in November 1984 and the Regional Arts Commission was thus created on January 1, 1985. Since that time, the Commission has given out over $20 million to fund more than 2,000 grants. St. Louis is unique in having this publicly funded arts commission and the .privately funded Arts and Education Council.
The mission of the Commission is to encourage and foster the arts.
It can support any nonprofit organization except the ZooMuseum district that produces or presents art.
The Commission supports the major institutions in town but also the very small neighborhood-based groups such as the West End Arts Council or the Skinker DeBaliviere Community Council.
The grants range from $750 to over $500,000.
This year, the Commission has received 212 grant applications which ask for more than $5.4 million.
These applications are read by the staff, a citizen review panel, and commissioners.
Each reviewer gets to pick a dollar amount that he or she would attach to each grant. McGuire mentioned that every summer the Commission funds an arts program at the Darst-Webbe Homes. Teenagers do self-portraits and their product is now on display at COCA through February. McGuire feels very strongly that we need to support the arts at the federal, state, and local levels.
She is one of the three original incorporators of Arts for America, a political action committee to raise money for candidates in federal elections who support the arts.
She feels that the fact that there was only a 40 percent cut to the National Endowment for the Arts is a major victory – considering that many sought its abolition.
However, the amount of support to major organizations as well as the grassroots has been clearly limited.
The federal cutbacks make local arts agencies even more significant in arts survival, according to McGuire.
There is also more pressure and it becomes harder to decide: Do you fund major organizations at higher levels and forsake entities that are just beginning? McGuire asked whether a local funding agency can afford to fund the new and innovative in face of all the other needs.
These questions in arts policy are not dissimilar in nature to those facing the human services.
The buzz word has become “stabilization.” McGuire spent a few days in January at national meetings of arts administrators.
She spent 6 years as a board member of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies and now serves as an adviser to them.
She told me that she loves her work as much as when it began almost 11 years ago.
There are many challenges and now the challenges are even harder.
Original photograph caption
Jill McGuire. Photographer not credited.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February 1996.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1996_02.pdf, printed page(s) 1; PDF page(s) 1.
