By Neale Gulley<br><a href="mailto:gulleyn@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Neale</a>
North Tonawanda’s Carnegie Art Center , an historic building with a long history of free exhibits and public arts education program, is in a position to reinvent itself.
Though art lessons long held there are suspended for the time being pending repairs to two basement classrooms, the building is in need of other structural repairs but the public funding picture has also seen better days.
Much of the center’s future outlook is in the eye of the beholder.
Former Executive Director Ellen Ryan left her post last year, replaced by new Director Mary Simpson and Grants and Exhibitions Manager Lauren Albrecht, who have taken over the running of the city-owned gallery and long time arts education hub.
“We want everyone who lives here to take advantage of this space and the opportunity they have,” Albrecht said. “I get a lot of feedback from older people on what (this place) once was but we want to know what families here want it to be.”
With state funding through the New York State Council on the Arts becoming more difficult to attain, fundraising and community outreach is the name of the game.
“It’s as lean as it can possibly be and still be open,” Albrecht said.
An operating budget once around $200,000 per year is now down to around $120,000, she said.
While at one time there were three full-time bodies working in administrative roles there, “now it’s just us,” Albrecht said.
Simpson said she took a pay cut so that she and Albrecht would equal one full-time equivalent as a cost-savings measure.
At the same time, improvements to the historic building have been made by the city in recent months and the change in leadership is inspiring ideas that could one day help the local arts hub sustain itself.
Now Albrecht, who calls herself an eternal optimist, hopes the recent repairs to the upstairs interior and exterior of the building will continue and one day a renovated basement could mean adult and children’s’ mixed-medium art lessons will return.
“There’s always a way to get the money you need,” she said.
Albrecht has degrees in art history and communications locally, and went to school in New York City where she received her master’s degree in the art market.
It’s also tempting, she said, to consider things like upgraded bathroom facilities and maybe even a kitchen at the 100-year-old building that could mean catered events would one day fill the open ground-floor gallery, with its huge windows and stained-glass skylight. Such a plan would also provide a needed revenue stream.
The work the city has undertaken is a help, but grants she’s exploring will likely be the main factor in such long term improvements down the line.
“When I started they were doing mostly exterior work and this year, since we opened up the lines of communication to the City of North Tonawanda, we’ve been doing most of the inside work,” she said. “The city does it for us, we’re a city building.”
Apparently in previous years the communication between administrators and the city wasn’t so good.
When hosting an awards ceremony a year ago related to the state’s Council on the Arts Decentralization grant program, she called the city for help clearing snow. Since then, cooperation between the two entities has improved drastically.
“It’s hard to see how it got to this point, when the building is blatantly crumbling, like at the point when that toilet stopped working,” she said during a tour of the building’s basement, which was used for years for adult and youth art lessons until its condition prompted a suspension of such programs recently. In the past, books weren’t always very well kept, she said, but the cost/benefit picture wasn’t on Carnegie’s side.
“Maybe there was a confusing relationship with the city (about maintenance issues). It’s definitely 180’d because now the city’s helping us fix stuff.”
In the last four or five months city workers have addressed painting, lighting and work to the ceilings, where plaster is still falling down in some areas, especially in the basement, where significant water damage had also taken place.
To be clear, the center still offers a range of events to residents. A North Tonawanda High School art exhibition begun last year will again take place in the spring. Beginning in the fall to the present, events like “artists and authors,” members exhibitions and a holiday party were held, while the Niagara Arts council’s annual awards event was again held in January.
The Carnegie is named for its builder, legendary philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who provided money for its construction at the turn of the last century as part of his famous Gospel of Wealth, a concept he authored to assert private wealth should be used in the end for the public good.
The architecturally significant structure at 240 Goundry is on the national historic building register, along with several others including the nearby post office.
The center is now hosting several exhibits residents and others can stop in and view for free, including stunning photography by local photographers and others including Phil Cavuoto and Jonathan Grassi (including scenes from here and around the country). Also now on display is a one-of-a-kind solo exhibition by artist Esther Neisen, who meticulously converts old film ribbon into intricate insect specimens.
The center is open Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m.
For more information call 694-4400 or visit www.carnegieartcenter.org.
Contact reporter Neale Gulley at 693-1000, ext. 114.
