The Arkansas Arts Center will scale down spending and programs over the next year as it manages fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and prepares for 2022, when it is to reopen its remade downtown Little Rock headquarters, the executive director said Monday.
Board members approved what Chief Financial Officer Laine Harber called a “bare-bones” budget for the year that starts July 1.
The forecast anticipates $5.1 million in spending, down about 3.2% from total spending in the current year — one in which officials furloughed employees and then laid off some workers to stave off a deficit after the public health crisis sapped income.
Coming reductions will include fewer live children’s theater productions, some of which will shift to online, Executive Director Victoria Ramirez said. A gallery-on-wheels that has traveled the state for a half-century will stay parked for, at least, the calendar year. Marketing and promotions also will shrink.
A n d w h i l e m u s e u m school classes will continue, class sizes will be limited to nine students and one teacher to limit person-to-person exposure in the coronavirus pandemic, Harber said. Some classes will be online-only, but those offerings attract lower enrollment, Ramirez said.
“To say that our expenses were cut is an understatement,” Ramirez told the board’s executive committee Monday morning. “We slashed and eliminated programs in marketing, printing [and] statewide outreach simply because we had to. … We simply will not have the presence that we had before because we have cut so much of our programming.”
The Arts Center has sought to stay active and visible during the 2 ½ years in which most of its old headquarters is being torn down and replaced with a larger and revamped building, a $128 million project. Construction is expected to wrap up in 2021, with staff members moving over first to ready it for an anticipated spring 2022 reopening.
Officials have said a continued public presence is important to maintain membership levels and corporate gifts. The budget presented Monday accounts for hits to those revenue streams as a result of a decreased presence, Harber said.
Officials leased space in Riverdale for the temporary headquarters, moving last year.
The interim location accommodated smaller children’s theater productions, a gift shop, art school space and an exhibition about the Arts Center’s past and future. Libraries in Central Arkansas hosted artwork from the craft collection, as well as regular programs.
In early April, as the global coronavirus pandemic shocked the economy, officials furloughed roughly 15 full-time employees.
Canceled art classes cost an estimated $150,000 in tuition while the Arts Center continued paying its instructors. The city, forced to cut its budget, reduced the $700,000 it pays the Arts Center annually for maintenance by $233,000.
Some of the furloughed employees were laid off and their jobs were eliminated, Ramirez told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette . She did not provide specifics, saying only that the number was fewer than 10.
Ramirez has described the job cuts as necessary to keep the center from overspending its means — salaries make up about 70% of spending, officials said.
Two major Arts Center exhibitions, the annual “Delta Exhibition” and “Young Arkansas Artists,” will not be affected by the cutbacks, Ramirez said Monday evening.
It’s not yet clear what will become of Tabriz, the biennial fundraising gala that happens in odd-numbered years. The 2019 gala was canceled so staff members could help with the move out of the headquarters ahead of construction.
“We are currently exploring options,” Ramirez said of the 2021 event.
The original fiscal 2020 spending forecast — the first to account for interruptions from the construction project — was $5.6 million, itself a 14% decline from 2019. The latest figure for the projected overall 2020 spending is $5.3 million, which is about 5% shy of that target.
Among the program losses next year is the parking of the museum’s “Artmobile.”
The cab that hauled the Artmobile trailer around the state has been inoperable since at least last year. Harber has said it was an old model and that the museum had been unable to find anyone to repair it. So officials rented a truck to take the rolling gallery to statewide events.
As such, costs to maintain the Artmobile were “exorbitant,” Ramirez said.
“I’m not saying it’s going away, but we certainly didn’t have money to fix the truck,” Ramirez told board members. She later told this newspaper that officials would “explore options for fixing the mechanics” of the vehicle and update programming.
Budget troubles have not affected the headquarters makeover, though fundraising is on pause, Ramirez said. As of Oct. 1, officials had announced pledges of $122.7 million toward the $128 million goal.
“When you look at this budget … everything that we are investing in is leading us toward the new building,” Ramirez said. “Short-term programs are great, but we have a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done in order for us to open the new building in the way that we want to.”