FINE ARTS

VICTORIA BELYEU DIAZ

Special to The Jewish News

After five years at the helm of
the Michigan Council for the
Arts, Bunny Goldman continues
> to be concerned over funding
and education.

ver wonder what the
Michigan Council for
the Arts does?
Just ask Barbara "Bunny"
Goldman. On March 3, the
47-year-old Birmingham resi-
dent marked her fifth an-
niversary as executive direc-
tor of the MCA, and she's very
eager to make the Council
and its offices more user-
friendly and accessible to
Michigan artists-in-need.
"Basically, we're a grants-
giving agency," says
Goldman. "We support arts
institutions, community arts
agencies, and individual ar-
tists in Michigan. Our mis-
sion is to bring the best possi-
ble art to people throughout
the state."
The MCA is trying to carry
out that mission in a number
of ways, she says, including a
concerted push for more art
education in Michigan
schools.
"We are living in a crisis in
terms of art in education and,
if we can't do something
about getting art into our
schools, we're going to be los-
ing the arts community of the
future," says Goldman, who
came to the MCA from the
Michigan Department of
Commerce, where she served
as special assistant to the
director. -
"Many schools now don't of-
fer adequate classes, and
haven't since the mid-1970s
or earlier," she says, adding
that she's been especially
motivated to work for arts in
education because of personal
experience.
"My daughter, when she
was in elementary school,
was identified as gifted, pull-
ed out of a regular school pro-
gram, and exposed to arts op-
portunities, while my son —
who is musically quite
talented, though not
academically gifted — did not
have those opportunities in
school. Quite frankly, I've
always thought that was a
tremendous injustice.
"I'm a product of Detroit
Public Schools and when I
went to school, we had music
three times a week, art four
times a week. And we also
had a class called auditorium,
which gave us an opportuni-
ty to get up on the stage and
do readings, plays, things like
that. Now, usually, children
receive that in school only if
they are in the programs for
the gifted. And some schools
don't offer any art education
at all."
What is the Michigan
Council for the Arts doing to
solve the problem?
"When we started to look

into the situation," says
Goldman, "we saw that we
could take all of our annual
grants budget, put it into an
arts-in-education program,
and it still would not be
enough to make any real im-
pact. So, the decision was
made that the Council would
become, instead, the chief ad-
vocate for arts in education
throughout the state. Since
the state cannot mandate
what schools will teach on a
local level, we have to work to
interest that local school
board in choosing to put art
into their curriculum.
"Our work is cut out for us,"
she says. "We try to stress the
need for a child to have a well-
rounded education, but the
arts programs in the schools
seem always the first to get
bumped."
There are a number of other
ways in which the Council
plans to encourage and sup-
port arts in education, in-
cluding an appointment in
the near future of a media
personality to serve as a
spokesperson. Council
members will also work
toward establishing arts pro-
grams in their local schools,
and Council-funded organiza-
tions will be encouraged to
advocate arts education.

Another matter high on the
Council agenda is the need to
encourage the ethnic art of
minorities statewide.
"There's a great deal of arts
programming going on in
ethnic communities that has
not been funded by the Coun-
cil before," emphasizes
Goldman. "Very often, oppor-
tunities exist for people in
some of the smaller ethnic
communities who do not have
the money to put their art
project together.
"I think we have been suc-
cessful in letting people know
that we are very much in-
terested in their projects and
that they'll have access and
opportunity equal to that of
larger organizations. We are
very excited at the prospect of
presenting more art of the
cultures of the minorities in
the state.
"Today, I think we all
understand that the arts
speak to people of all cultures,
and that each culture has
something to say that is as
important as the next per-
son's culture."
The Michigan Council for
the Arts is made up of 15
governor-appointed members.
Funds are provided annually
by the legislature and by the
National Endowment for the
Arts (from which the Council
receives about $600,000). In
1989, the Council had a
budget of $13 million. About
$9 million is available to be

