Many donations for Blanton Museum come from outside Austin

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Come April 29, the tall glass doors of the University of Texas' new Blanton Museum of Art will open onto a supremely symbolic intersection — Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Congress Avenue — where the University of Texas meets the state's capital city.

Yet the majority of the $83.5 million needed to build what will arguably be Austin's flagship art museum didn't come from Austin.

Indeed, with just a million dollars or so left to complete the largest fine-arts fundraising campaign in UT history, an analysis shows that, with the exception of $10 million from the late novelist James A. Michener, who spent his last years in Austin, Central Texans can thank other Texans for anteing up for their new museum.

Among the donors giving more than $25,000, only 32 percent call the capital city home; Sixty-eight percent are from outside Austin.

The city did better at small gifts. Among donors giving $25,000 or less, 47 percent reside here, 53 percent elsewhere.

Indeed, the university itself anted up $26.5 million, while Austinites have chipped in a little more than $16 million.

To experienced arts fundraisers, none of this is a surprise.

"Frankly, I would find the donor breakdown for a major UT capital project surprising if it did not look this way," says Cliff Redd, executive director of the Long Center, who has spent a career raising money for the arts in various Texas cities. "A university is always going to have an intimate connectivity with its alumni who have a deep allegiance to their alma mater, regardless of their interest in the arts."

University arts fundraisers concur.

"When you look at the donor demographics of the Blanton, our supporters reside statewide and beyond, with heavy concentrations in Texas' largest cities," said Sondra Lomax, assistant dean for development with UT's College of Fine Arts, which oversees the Blanton. "Some are UT alumni and some are not. But they are generally arts patrons who understand that the museum's impact will reach far beyond the campus."

It's not that Austin hasn't ponied up. It just can't claim as many big givers.

In part that's because as a city long dominated by state government and a public university, Austin never propagated the legions of deep-pocket donors that business-oriented Dallas, Houston and San Antonio claim. Of course, as the high tech industry percolated in the 1990s, Austin saw its first million-dollar arts donors emerge.

Yet at the same time — just as the university began its Blanton push — the capital city was bucking for a major new home for the Austin Museum of Art and planning for a landmark civic performing arts center. The new local philanthropy — not necessarily aligned with UT — stepped up to those civic arts projects.

(Set to open in 2008, the Long Center is just $8 million shy of its $77 million goal. In 2003, AMOA canceled its plan to build a $43 million building after fundraising fell far short of projected goals.)

Principally, Austin donors to the Blanton's capital campaign were already part of a dedicated group who had long supported the university museum. The largest gifts came from long-standing Austin artists patrons — Ernest and Sarah Butler, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, and Tom and Lynn Meredith — who donated $1 million, as did an anonymous capital city resident.

After decades of false starts, the university unveiled a campaign for a new museum in 1997 with a headline-grabbing annoucement that included the Michener gift along with $12 million from the Houston Endowment. That was given in honor of alumnus and former UT System Board of Regents Chairman Jack S. Blanton, who also chaired the endowment at the time. Simultaneously, the Houston oilman and his late wife, Laura Lee Blanton, gave $5 million, as did another ex-Regent, Waco insurance executive and former UT Regent Bernard Rapoport. The university announced that it would name the museum, formerly the Archer M. Huntington Gallery, after Blanton.

Later, the Houston Endowment — which typically spends its money only within the Bayou City — kicked in another $3 million to become the largest single donor to the museum. Recently loyal Houston alum Edgar A. Smith chipped in $4.5 million.

"We have to be mindful that the Blanton project is part of the mighty UT fundraising machine," said Redd. "And UT has a very specific donor vocabularly with its alumni that's different than the donor vocabularly the Long Center has with its civic supporters. Austin donors did their share when it came to the Blanton."