Houston art community tries to adjust to post-Enron world
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published March 7, 2004
When Houston's Alley Theatre put on a play last fall set in a restaurant stockroom, it struck an unusual sponsorship with a local restaurateur. In exchange for putting signs from two of the businessman's restaurants in the stage set, the community theater group pocketed a $25,000 donation.
Two years after losing Enron Corp. as one of its major contributors, the Alley and other arts organizations in this Texas city say they're still feeling the impact.
"There was Enron, then (Arthur) Andersen, then a delayed, rippling effect through other energy companies here," said Kristen Loden, the Alley's director of development, who said her organization has to raise $4-million of its annual $10-million budget from donations. "It's forced us to broaden our base of support and get really creative."
At the Houston Grand Opera, that means a recent pitch to Mercedes proposing a sponsorship that would put the German carmaker's vehicles in the opera's lobby and its name all over the opera's marketing materials. If approved, the deal would be worth "well into six figures" toward the organization's annual $20-million budget, director David Gockley said. It's all part of the art world's adjustment to the post-Enron world, he said.
"Enron, Tyco and other corporate failures brought into strong relief the idea that the shareholder comes first," said Gockley, who has seen corporate donations to the opera drop 5 percent in the past two years. "There's always controversy about whether contributions to the arts are in the shareholders' interest and indirectly you can see the benefit. But I don't know if companies are that eager to make the connection now. If they don't see a direct benefit, they don't do it."
Gockley, who has been with the Houston Opera for more than 30 years, said he thinks individual donors are beginning to re-emerge after a two-year hiatus brought on by both Enron's demise as well as a slumping national economy. But to get corporations back into the game will mean marketing the arts as way to reach potential customers, he said.
"Five years ago, I would not have been so eager to do this," Gockley said. "Or so motivated."
