Wisconsin’s 2023 second-to-last national ranking of public arts funding per capita sparked concerns for future funding efforts at a Greater Milwaukee Committee (GMC) meeting on Monday afternoon. Local leaders Anne Sayers, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Tourism; Steve Radke, president of the Northwestern Mutual Foundation; and Rob Henken, executive director of the Herzfeld Foundation, spoke on a panel about how to revamp Milwaukee’s low-ranking public arts funding, starting with an increase in public interest.
“The arts are considered a hobby to some people, but they are so much more than that,” said Heather Pechacek, communications, membership and HR director at GMC.
Just above the state of Georgia, Wisconsin currently ranks 49th in the nation allocating $0.14 per capita in annual state support for arts and culture, according to information shared at the meeting from Henken. Comparatively, some of Wisconsin’s surrounding states- Michigan, Ohio, and Minnesota- are spending up to $7 more per capita and ranking some of the highest in the nation for public funding.
Panelists and other local business leaders who are members of GMC agreed that the model by which the local community and state have supported the arts, including corporate gifts and limited government funding, is outdated and no longer sufficient.
Among the many concerns, an increase in tensions between capital campaign requests, heightened requests for operational support and in that, increased competition for philanthropic donations, were of the biggest concerns. Competition among city arts entities continues to grow and rely more heavily on philanthropy as public funding is quickly depleted.
“While competition is a good thing in many respects, trying to promote collaboration among the arts groups who are all competing for these scarce donation dollars makes this job even tougher to accomplish,” said Henken.
Here’s what the panelists said about a more cohesive effort to fund the public arts:
“While this is an important dialogue, we’re not making this decision in a vacuum,” said Radke. “The Milwaukee Art Museum has talked to us (the Northwestern Mutual Foundation) about trying to build an endowment, the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum is going to be looking for a new building, the War Memorial has visited us because they need some infrastructure changes, and the Mitchell Park Domes need a $100-plus million investment to keep the business going. All organizations, at one point, were inextricably linked with the county. The county can’t provide the amount of support it used to and so a lot of these institutions and buildings need a new way to get funding. The funding was all done a generation ago in the 1950s or late ’60s, and the model has changed.”
“(Herzfeld) is not Northwestern Mutual,” said Henken. “We are a relatively small, family-based foundation with a corpus of about $80 million which means we have about $4 million a year to give in grants. Fortunately, the corpus has grown in recent years so we’ve been able to up that amount. The bottom line is, right now because of the commitments we made to some of the big, vital projects here including the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and the Milwaukee Public Museum, we will give out about $1.6 million in capital campaign in 2025. On top of that, in 2021, our board made a decision to increase our operating grants to support around 25-40 organizations, including ones that we had initially supported and cared deeply about. We not only increased our giving but we committed three years of general operating support which expired in 2024. Now, we have all these entities that are accustomed to a higher level of giving. We just feel like something has to give here because this model is not sustainable.”
“Governor Tony Evers budget will come out on Feb. 18,” said Sayers. “The whole beauty of democracy is that the executive branch and the legislative branch need to agree on our budget, and spoiler alert, they are different parties here in Wisconsin. There’s some work that will be happening from Feb. 18 until, statutorily, the budget is signed on June 30. I feel like the governor will put something in the budget for the arts because he has proven historically that he understands Wisconsin. Then, it goes to the legislature and while the makeup of the legislature has changed, the very important Joint Finance Committee has not. We have our work cut out for us because there’s a misunderstanding about what the arts are in terms of economic development. I heard a member of the Joint Finance Committee say, ‘No one pays me to do my hobby, why should I pay others to do theirs?’ which is such an unfortunate statement that shows a disconnect of understanding what the role of arts in our communities is. We have so much work to do just to explain the role the arts play just to keep our communities strong, economically viable, and competitive, and also to attract workforce. My recommendation for this period between February and June is to rally behind what the governor puts out, to focus on the economic impact and potential, and to be united in how we approach the issue. Stay in front of the Joint Finance Committee and make it known at that level.”
