PRESIDENTS of the Allied Arts Council Board of Directors:

LOOKING AHEAD 

            With the Council’s 1965 budget substantially underwritten, we should re-examine our plans for the months ahead.

            We have already outlined the tangible services performed by the Council during its first sixteen months.  We have perhaps faltered in one main function – to do long-range planning for the arts.

            Teddy Roosevelt once said, in describing cooperation, that coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.  Just starting our second fiscal year, we can hardly claim to be more than “keeping together.”

            The great potential service of the Council is to bring together persons vitally interested in the various arts for discussion and planning, in order that bridges of understanding may be built between the arts groups. Our committee structure must be activated, and interested persons, who are representative of the whole community, must be engaged in these deliberations.

            As a new organization we have been primarily concerned with the many administrative problems common to the arts:  tax exemption, membership campaigns, ticket drives, public relations, mailing lists, etc.  Here the advantages of cooperation are apparent to even the most individualistic artistic temperament.

            Now we should move into the more substantive fields, recognizing that the Council is no panacea.  With energy and imagination we can do much to strengthen all of the arts and to rally public support for these important causes.  The Council offers an effective forum for the discussion of common problems and for the removal of irritants before they become major crises.  This facet of the Council has not been put to full use.

            The accomplishments will not be as dazzling and immediately apparent as in the case of our more tangible services.  Some sage once said, “The arts are not cast in a mold, but are formed and protected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.”  If we adopt some of this patience, I believe we will not be disappointed with the work of our Council as a planning instrument.

                                                                                    David Morton

            The St. Joseph Art League was in existence for many years with meetings in various places and no real home of their own.  They then fell heir to some funds from an estate and acquired the Hax Art Center on Francis St. (Dr. Fields’ office area, I think) next to the Robidoux Hotel.  They set up an office there and also used the building for exhibition purposes.  They acquired a few paintings of their own, forming the nucleus of the present Albrecht permanent collection. 

            The Allied Arts Council was formed in 1963 (Mrs. Henry Bradley served on Governor Dalton’s Missouri Committee for the Arts back in 1963 and could see the value of the arts to the state.  If it was good for Missouri, why not St. Joseph, must have been her thought.)  So she brought together a group of residents who were also interested in the arts and together with their leadership and the willingness of the Junior League to serve as the catalyst, the Arts Council was incorporated in August of 1963.

            In 1965, the Arts Council moved to the new Albrecht Gallery at 2818 Frederick, the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Conger Beasley to the Art League, but in 1967 or 1968, moved back to the Hax Center with the Symphony until the Chamber of Commerce took them into their office in September.

            Martha Ann Thompson, Allied Arts Council Director for three years, suggests the old Hax Art Center was often like working in a sauna bath with pipes falling down.

            Jean Duncan Wright served as the first director of the Council and with the help of numerous Junior League volunteers set up all the office procedures, mailing lists, billing process and methods for handling the various problems of the member groups.  The Junior League gave literally thousands of hours during their two-year probationary period, and many of those volunteers continued to serve the Council in the years following.  Many of them still continue as board members of the various groups and as volunteers with the other members of the Council.

            The League gave the Council $5,000 to begin their first year, and in the next year added to that fund with another lesser sum.  Dues were set up for the member organizations on the basis of the amount of work requested in the Council office – which meant that every volunteer who did work in the office kept track of every minute they spent on every job for a full year.  Jean Wright directed all of this activity and also acted as hostess for the Albrecht Gallery while the Council was there.

            After the move back downtown, the director of the Council was on a part-time basis, receiving pay by the hour (and with no fringe benefits involved!) and doing what had to be done for each group using the Council office.  Benefits to the groups included being able to print several years supply of stationery at a time which gives you a nice saving in printing costs; a central telephone and information center for the arts groups; a place where people know they can buy tickets for certain programs; a desk from which publicity can be issued either for a single group or for a collaboration of sponsorship (The Acting Co. – Community Concerts, MWSC, AAC), (St. Louis Symphony – AAC, MWSC, St. Joseph Symphony & Community Concerts), etc.

            A calendar of events is one of our major services, both to the members and to the general public.  Any group in town is welcome and requested to call and see what is listed for a certain date before they set the date for another event.  The Chamber of Commerce also has another list, which includes many of the regularly scheduled “association” and service club meetings – those meetings that are on a regular basis…the last Tuesday of every month, etc., as well as other special events (political, organizational, etc.).

            We maintain Addressograph mailing service for those members who desire that service.  Have been able to make a savings in that area through use of a local firm which made plates for us for nothing for several years…but since that firm changed to a computer system, we have had to buy them again…and found a retired Addressograph salesman who has his own machines to make the plates and also repairs machines and keeps us in supplies for a lot less than the big company would.  As a group (with several lists to maintain) the larger quantity ordered at one time again makes for savings for all.

            The Director of the Council also serves as program coordinator for the Community Concert programs – guidance on what to expect from the theatre at this particular time is vital.  Construction contracts will be “let” soon, we hope, and then there may be problems in presenting shows.  Volunteers simply don’t have the time to handle all the details anymore.  And to find the right place to get 100 chairs for a symphony orchestra or some such job takes a little experience and knowledge of the city that the average person simply doesn’t have.

            We, as members of state and national organizations, are listed in several national publications, and as a result receive mailings on educational opportunities, competitions of various kinds in the arts, arts and crafts shows in the area, program possibilities from universities as well as booking agents…publications from federal and state offices on the arts and humanities, and these are all for the use of our member groups, the schools, the college, and the public in general.

            Our funding comes principally from the dues we receive, and the past two years the Missouri Arts Council has paid half my salary (doubling it), we have gone to the public with requests for individual and patron memberships which has truly kept us alive.  If we increase our dues to member organizations, either they have to drop out because of lack of funds, or turn that increase over to their membership in a dues increase, and this could hurt them.  At times, we have asked for and received large donations from several of the larger firms and banks in town, but we don’t like to resort to that kind of funding.  Every group in our membership as well as many others approach these same businesses for support, and there are just so many dollars available.  We are now thinking about proposing to members of the Council that fundraising events be cleared through a special committee of the Council to try to keep this kind of thing under control.  Should one group feel free to go after a very large sum every year when other groups are fighting for survival?  The AAC cannot tell a group that they MAY NOT hold these activities, but some control or reservations must be put into effect.  Something like a Federated Arts Fund Drive similar to the United Way might well be the answer.  It’s been very successful in several other communities and it could work here, too.

            An Albany, N.Y. newspaper editor described an arts council in this way:  “Your problem is that you have to face in two directions at once.  From one side you have to look like a bunch of CPA’s; from the other, like you’re really with it.  And every now and then you get caught facing the wrong way.”  It’s a conflict of irreconcilables - - amateur vs. professional; elite vs. the broad public; excellence vs. equity; discipline vs. imagination; tradition/revolution/the force of a concept vs. the limitations of the materials used; innovative vs. sustaining…

            Thank you for letting me tell you about the Arts Council.  We sincerely hope you will feel free to call on us for any group you are active in or just for your own information at any time.  Theodore Bikel story – Appropriations Committee – investigation of why they should set up a large fund for the National Endowment for the Arts, “Gentlemen, no one will remember you!  NO!  No one will remember you or what you do---unless someone writes a poem or composes a symphony or paints a portrait…”