For nearly two decades, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts functioned like the proverbial well-oiled clock. In recent years, that machine and its relationship with city leaders have fallen apart.
Year after year, the quasi-governmental event-planning organization founded in 2002 by former Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley mounted Artscape and other successful festivals that attracted more visitors every year. Year after year, BOPA operated in the black.
The arts council ran so efficiently, delivered results so dependably and aroused so little controversy that, just like a clock’s quiet tick, most residents were barely aware the agency existed even as it enhanced city life.
But when the mayor’s office announced last week that it would terminate its contract with BOPA on Jan. 20, it marked the culmination of more than two years of nonstop tumult. Tensions escalated last month after BOPA officials revealed that the organization was out of money just three months into the new fiscal year.
“The persistent financial difficulties that have come to light in recent months have led us to conclude that this is the best course of action to ensure the long-term sustainability of our city’s arts and cultural programming,” reads the letter, signed Thursday by Marvin James, Mayor Brandon Scott’s chief of staff.
The contract termination led to a seismic upheaval in Baltimore’s arts community, which depends on grants from BOPA to help plan performing seasons and pay bills, and raised concerns about the future of some Baltimore institutions from the festivals to the farmers markets.
James’ letter announced that a 90-day transition period would begin immediately but left as many questions unanswered as it cleared up. Here’s what to know and what’s still uncertain going forward.
Did BOPA’s board see this coming?
No. James’ letter arrived less than six hours after the board had met to vote on cost-saving measures, which included laying off staff members in the future to trim expenses by $35,000 a month.
“We on the board were shocked by the city’s decision,” said Angela Wells-Sims, BOPA’s interim treasurer. “We had been in regular communications with the city, and for them to come back to us and cancel our contract after all of our effort and energy to get BOPA back on track blindsided us.”
Tonya Miller Hall, the mayor’s senior adviser for arts and culture and a BOPA board member, attended the meeting, according to Wells-Sims, but didn’t hint that the city was contemplating pulling the plug on the arts agency within a matter of hours.
“It is shocking to us that no one at that meeting raised any qualms or questions or concerns about the financials and the plan we presented,” Wells-Sims said.
And yet, the city had signaled repeatedly over the past two years that it was seriously considering defunding BOPA. Most recently, a new clause was inserted into the arts agency’s one-year contract permitting the agreement to be terminated with 30 days of advance notice.
Will the city now plan and operate the festivals?
Probably, though no one is saying whether public celebrations would fall under the jurisdiction of the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture, which is headed by Miller Hall, or by some other branch of city government.
It’s also possible that some functions currently performed by BOPA could be handed off to an outside agency. For instance, a 2023 proposal suggested that the popular farmers markets could be folded into the Baltimore Public Market system.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the festivals have fallen under city jurisdiction; for the two decades before BOPA was founded, public celebrations were executed successfully by what then was known as the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Arts & Culture.
Does the city have the resources to pull off Artscape and other festivals?
Planning festivals is expensive, time-consuming and resource-intensive, though city officials seem confident they can make it work.
Miller Hall’s office doesn’t currently have the staff to put on a succession of public annual events, though the letter announcing the contract termination indicated that the city could offer jobs to some or all of BOPA’s 23 staff members. In addition, the City Council could easily reallocate its annual $2.7 million grant to BOPA to another city department.
But it’s not quite that simple.
O’Malley created a separate entity to plan festivals in 2002, partly to get around ethical and legal restrictions prohibiting governments from soliciting private donations. In its heyday, BOPA’s staff and board raised $1 million yearly for Artscape alone.
That said, the city already has a nonprofit organization, the Baltimore Civic Fund, that can raise money for specific projects, such as providing support for victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.
But raising money through the civic fund is a more cumbersome process than fundraising through BOPA. Among other things, approval from the city Board of Estimates is required.
Will BOPA continue to exist?
It’s difficult to say. The arts agency stands to lose 57% of its operating budget once the city pulls its annual $2.7 million contribution.
“That is my biggest concern,” Wells-Sims said.
Although there are no legal roadblocks that would prevent BOPA from accepting private donations, in reality, these contributions have dried up in the past five years.
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013, government grants accounted for 42.5% of BOPA’s annual budget, and five years later, taxpayers chipped in 53%. By 2023, 74.3% of BOPA’s budget was provided by city, state and federal governments.
That’s partially because the fundraising landscape changed drastically following the coronavirus pandemic. And partly, that’s because corporations and foundations have been reluctant to support an organization that has generated a blizzard of negative publicity.
“The narrative that has been put out is that BOPA is in dire straits and has absolutely no money,” Wells-Sims said. “That makes it difficult to fundraise.”
But once BOPA is out of the festival business, its expenses will plummet.
“It’s feasible that we will be able to redirect our operations to benefit the community,” she said.
“There is a road ahead. Before the mayor’s letter came, we had a plan. Now we have to go back to the drawing board and rethink everything that we’d already decided.”
How are artists going to get the grants they need to produce work?
Both BOPA and the city have said they are committed to ensuring that Baltimore’s creative community continues to thrive. But they haven’t revealed specifically how they plan to do that — and the lack of details is putting the city’s artists and performers on edge, according to Jeannie Howe, executive director of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
As the city’s designated arts council, BOPA distributed more than $488,000 in grants, prizes and awards last year, according to the organization’s audited financial statement.
But this year, some of those grants have been delayed.
“We are extremely concerned that the public discussion so far has focused on the future of public events such as Artscape,” Howe said. The cultural alliance represents 100 arts organizations and 300 individual artists in Baltimore and the surrounding counties.
“That discussion has overshadowed how important it is for the city to have an effective arts council, and the main problem is that there seems to be no strategy for building one,” Howe said. “The short-term effects of the mayor’s letter are concerning because BOPA has to have money to meet its obligations to the artists.
“That’s really critical.”
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