When disaster strikes, people often lend a helping hand, and Hurricane
Katrina brought forward an outpouring of assistance from around the
country for many artists.
by Daniel Grant
Artist Gabe Gomez was living in New Orleans, Louisiana, when
Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. His home was destroyed,
but he was able to escape the wreckage and continue to work because the
Santa Fe Art Institute offered him a two-month residency that included
a stipend, room and board, and studio space. When disaster strikes,
people often lend a helping hand, and Hurricane Katrina brought forward
an outpouring of assistance from around the country for many artists,
including Gomez. In addition to the Santa Fe Art Institute, art schools
and communities in Vermont, California, and Colorado offered
residencies to displaced artists. The Savannah College of Art and
Design, in Georgia, offered free tuition and housing assistance to
students attending colleges that were shut down because of the
hurricane.
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, in Texas, established a fund
to help artists living in the hurricane-damaged area, and the Louisiana
State University School of Art, in Baton Rouge, collected art supplies
for artist-evacuees. The Getty Foundation, in Los Angeles, created the
Getty Fund for New Orleans, which distributed more than $2 million to
the city’s arts institutions. The New York City-based Joan Mitchell
Foundation has paid at least $450,000 in grants to more than 80 artists
affected by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which hit the Gulf
Coast about a month after Katrina.
Every time a disaster happens, the process of creating or reviving
relief funds starts again. The New York Arts Recovery Fund, created by
the New York Foundation for the Arts, for example, distributed
$4,635,000 to organizations and individuals in New York City after the
terrorist attacks of 9/11. The Washington, DC-based Americans for the
Arts, whose Emergency Relief Fund gave $116,815 to Gulf Coast arts
organizations in the wake of Katrina, recently reactivated the fund to
help arts groups that have suffered as a result of the wildfires that
ravaged southern California in 2007.
Now, however, in an attempt to plan for the future, a consortium of
more than 20 local, state, and regional arts councils, artist-focused
organizations, and arts supporters from around the country, calling
itself the Coalition of Emergency and Disaster Preparedness for
Artists, is trying to coordinate the efforts of its members and speed
their response to whatever might come next.
“One of the problems with emergencies is that you don’t know what
anyone else is doing,” says Kerrie Buitrago, the executive vice
president of the New York City-based Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which
provided $425,000 to individual artists after 9/11 and $309,000 to Gulf
Coast artists affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “You don’t want
artists left out in the cold because everyone thinks some other
foundation is taking care of them, and it doesn’t make sense for an
artist to get 10 grants from 10 different agencies.”
The Craft
Emergency Relief Fund, in Montpelier, Vermont, which has spearheaded
the coalition, distributed between $200,000 and $300,000 to Gulf Coast
craftspeople after Katrina. Additionally, the organization brokered
free and discounted supplies and equipment, free booth space at craft
shows, and free workshops for artisans in the region. Cornelia Carey,
the executive director of the fund, notes that a lack of knowledge
about the arts infrastructure in Louisiana and Mississippi made it
difficult for outsiders to assist artists there. “We also found that
many of the organizations on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi
had either suffered direct hits or had staff members who were displaced
and thus unable to deliver assistance,” Carey says.
Serving as a regional model for the coalition, the Atlanta-based
Southern Arts Federation, which distributed approximately $200,000 to
the state arts agencies of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi after
Katrina, is developing a plan for readiness, response, and recovery
that includes a fund-raising system, a clearinghouse of information,
help in designing emergency preparedness plans, and work with
policymakers and elected officials to coordinate assistance to the arts
in the event of future disasters.
Carey notes that a fully functioning national emergency response and
recovery program for artists and arts organizations will not be in
place for a few more years, although elements of it will become
available sooner—such as online information on available resources and
a calendar-size “studio protector” that will describe how to prepare
for a disaster and what to do in the first 48 hours of an emergency. In
addition to hashing out organizational details, Carey says some
advocacy work needs to be done, such as convincing the Small Business
Administration to give loans to self-employed artists even when
collateral requirements cannot be met, and persuading the Federal
Emergency Management Agency to provide money for the tools of one’s
trade even when an individual is self-employed. State unemployment
insurance agencies provide disaster unemployment aid to the
self-employed but only when future income is predictable. “Things are
improving,” Carey says, “but the safety net for artists is still
inadequate, and there is a need for a system-wide response to
disasters, not just a singular set of resources.”