“A government big enough to give you everything you want is also strong enough to take everything you have”.

Mr. McDaniel, we need only to look at history or even China with its one child per family laws to know that this is not the way we should look at our Goverment.

In a diverse community, one must accept that what’s pork to you is nectar to me. I’m glad I live in a city that considers an art gallery as important as a baseball diamond.

Here’s what I mean: As I walked out my commitment to making art, I confronted financial consequences along the way. Eventually I was forced to ask myself the question, if I knew I would never sell another piece of art, would I go on making it? Once I realized the answer was yes, everything became clear. On the basis of that decision, I’ve figured out how to make my own way, without relying on some benefactor or outside support, whether in the form of sales or commissions, private or public. I cannot not make art, and while I’d love to support my wife and I on the income it provides, I no longer hold that ideal as a measure of my success. And I have decided I will do other work if necessary to survive so I can inevitably make my way back into the studio for whatever time is left in my day.

So I would ask questions like this: Do we want an Office of Cultural Affairs only because we want the economic growth that comes with attracting large employers, or do we value for ourselves, here and now, what art and culture contribute to a city’s quality of life, enough to pursue it for its own sake?

If it’s the latter, and if we start truly acting like it, I think other thoughtful solutions will surface. Talk about proving we’re serious. But if it continues to be the bailiwick of bureaucrats, it will rise and fall along with them.

You do point out the irony of the situation in which we find ourselves. The year in which Dallas reaches the apex of its cultural ambitions with the new Arts District facilities — at least in terms of making great places for art to happen — we contemplate eliminating the governmental function that has stood for many years as proof that our city seriously embraces its cultural industry as a valuable contributor to our civic life.

I served on the Cultural Affairs Commission (the volunteer appointed body that makes policy and specific funding recommendations to the City Council) and was chairman of the Arts, Education and Libraries Committee of the City Council from 1993 to 1997. The very existence of our OCA and the amount of general fund dollars Dallas committed to its arts organizations was the envy of cities nationwide. It proved we were serious. Combined with an incredibly generous body of private donors, Dallas went a long way towards making up for our lack of inviting natural features.

One of the roles I most relished was being part of our city’s efforts during corporate relocation competitions. More than one CEO told me that after transportation infrastructure and an educated workforce, the city’s cultural environment was a prime consideration. So whether or not you care about music, theater, history or visual arts, having it matters.

While the actual dollars — once divvied up among the many organizations supported — were small, having OCA financial support is often cited as the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” by groups when they asked for other support from foundations and the like.

Dallas’ arts scene used to have a professional advocate through the Dallas Coalition for the Arts, but that entity folded a few years ago. Short of resurrecting an effort such as they were able to mount, I have little hope that the OCA and the funding it provides will survive.

Maybe it is possible to raise something from the rubble that would, creatively, answer the city’s budget issue while preserving the benefits an official institution provides. It would be worth exploring whether the OCA could continue as an “enterprise fund” similar to the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has private support as well as tax funds. Another example is in the Arts District. Arts District Friends evolved over the years from being a purely support group to the Arts District Alliance with more functional responsibilities, to the new organization, simply called the Dallas Arts District, which has emerged with the opening of the new cultural venues, residences and businesses.

Championing a new version of the OCA will probably require an effort by the institutions that will most feel the pain if the OCA disappears. Those organizations and their supporters will have to signal to the city a willingness to concoct a new model for moving forward. Peter, you’ve started the conversation and I hope others will join in it.

But even if not, you have, for me, put your finger on a common thread running throughout some of the misinformed, if not misguided, efforts I see Dallas taking to become that “great arts destination” it so earnestly wants to be.

That is our tendency here to leave artists and hands-on cultural leaders out of the process and expect real estate developers, bureaucrats and other high profilers to manage something they don’t completely understand in the first place.