In Thursday’s (8/1) New York Times, Robin Pogrebin reports, “When the details of Michael R. Bloomberg’s last capital budget as mayor were made final in June, one project stood out in particular: a $50 million appropriation for a nascent arts organization, the Culture Shed. It is New York City’s biggest cultural capital grant this year—and an unusually generous contribution to an arts group that has yet to hire staff members, stage a performance or set a construction budget. But the arts institution has emerged as a favored project of the Bloomberg administration and is championed by Kate D. Levin, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, who serves on the Culture Shed’s board.… Plans call for a 170,000-square-foot visual and performing arts institution” at an expansive development on the far West Side of Manhattan, to be completed in 2017. “Officials at some cultural groups are questioning the size of the gift to an untested arts organization. And several worry that the Shed will drain philanthropic dollars from established institutions that already face fund-raising challenges. Most of this year’s arts grants were in increments of thousands of dollars.… But $50 million is an unusual amount for the city to award in a single year.”
Posted August 1, 2013
