When leadership and finances are in dire straits, the result can be disastrous.
A deficit in both sadly brought the curtain down Monday on the Columbia County Council on the Arts.
The shock was felt in Columbia and Greene counties. Columbia County Council on the Arts Executive Director Cynthia Mulvaney resigned in May last year.
One of Mulvaney’s jobs was to write grants. When she left, she took several council board members — and her grant-writing skill — with her.
“I don’t think New York state is funding the arts councils unless they have someone full-time writing grants,” CCCA Board President Fran Heaney said Monday.
Founded in 1965, the Columbia County Council on the Arts sealed its reputation in its early years by attracting such stellar groups as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Beaux Arts Trio to perform in Columbia County, according to the council’s website.
By the late 1980s the artistic climate in Columbia County changed. The number of local arts organizations increased dramatically. As a result, CCCA evolved into a service organization.
The CCCA’s primary constituency is its membership. Of the membership, about 650 list themselves as artists, writers, sculptors and filmmakers.
When the CCCA folded Monday, it boasted a membership of more than 800. The CCCA served a thriving arts community in Columbia County until the end.
No doubt, the CCCA’s legacy will carry on through the work of the organizations it helped spawn over the years — the Hudson Opera House, Time & Space Ltd. and FilmColumbia, to name only a few. A heavy task now falls on them: keeping the arts alive and well through a time of upheaval.
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