Wednesday, November 20, 1985
TT
Daily Nebraskan
Lied Center mo bargain
o
Moots air
e mytii
Page 5
I take exception to Timothy Geisert's guest
opinion (Daily Nebraskan, Nov. 13). The Lied
Center for the Performing Arts is not a bar
gain now, and time will prove it to be an onerous
problem for this city, this state, and the Univer
sity of Nebraska.
Guest opinion
Lincoln has a population of 180,000, 99 per
cent of whom do not support the arts now. We
have no ballet company, no opera company, and
it is purely wishful thinking to suppose that
either of the local orchestrasas good as they
are would have any desire to perform in a
2,500-seat auditorium; they virtually never have a
sold-out house in the substantially smaller halls
in which they currently play.
Also, the theater department of UNL has no
Intention of using the Lied Center for perfor
mances. A theater performance in such a large
auditorium is simply not feasible for them. To
say nothing of the empty seats that would exist
in the house, to produce just one set for a play in
the Lied Center would eat up the department's
entire budget for sets for a year.
As for the UNL School of Music, the Lied
Center no doubt will see little use from this
group. The 800-seat Kimball Recital Hall is per
fectly adequate for the School of Music's larger
group needs, and even that hall is too large for a
performer to face an audience of 50 people in an
800-seat hall; the 50 people notwithstanding, the
size of the auditorium makes it look like an
empty house. It is of course possible that stu
dents could stage their operas more conve
niently in the Lied Center, but these performan
ces never sell out Kimball Hall now; it seems
highly unlikely they would be able to sell out a
2,500-seat house for even one performance.
Again, the cost of building a set for the large
stage would be prohibitive.
Geisert says the Lied Center will let us stage
"for the first time in this area major musical
events and national touring companies." It
seems to me Ron Bowlin, the Kimball Performing
Artists Series has been doing just exactly that for
years not just major musical events and
national touring companies, but some of the best
music and arts programs nationally and indeed
internationally. Nevertheless, it is a rare night
when the 800-seat Kimball Hall is sold out for
one of these performances. This fact alone is a
testament to how well the people of Lincoln and
surrounding areas support the arts. It is only due
to Bowlin's astute budgeting, good judgment in
booking and inexpensive stage crew costs that
this series survives to the extent that it does.
Omaha to Lincoln?
In addition to the Kimball series, there are
other excellent programs available now in Lin
coln Friends of Chamber Music, Abendmusik,
among others that consistently bring in some
of the best music available nationally and inter
nationally, none of which could begin to support
the Lied Center.
It would be heartening to believe that those
organizations in Omaha would come to Lincoln
to perform in the Lied Center, but that will not
be the case either, unless the climate here
changes drastically. The Omaha Symphony has
been told in no uncertain terms in the past that
the parochial patrons and mavens of culture in
Lincoln do not want them to perform here. Nor
does the Omaha Ballet, OperaOmaha or Theatre
Caravan of Omaha seem to be welcome. Thus, the
talk of getting a crossover audience or cros
sover performers from Omaha is simply a pipe
dream, and may well be a smoke screen.
Maintenance costs for the Lied Center prom
ise to be high as they are for all such facilities
around the country. The Lied Center is going to
be a drain on the pocketbooks of a relatively poor
state.
Compounding that problem is the fact that
future donors to the University of Nebraska and
NU Foundation are going to be asked to chip in
to this new and attractive money-eater, simply to
keep up with maintenance costs at the
expense of other ongoing and more needy pro
grams at the university.
Consider the relative merits of a money
eating, half-empty $25-million-plus performing
arts center compared with a UNL department
head who has to use his own money to bring in
applicants for a tenured professorship opening
because his department doesn't have enough
money to pay the applicants' travel costs. Think
about the few outstate Nebraskans who will use
and gain benefit from the Lied Center, and then
think about the large numbers of outstate stu
dents attending UNL who could benefit from
excellent instructors if we could afford to pay
good professors enough to keep them here.
Top priorities
The truth is that until we have a well
educated populace, we're never going to have
enough arts supporters to keep the Lied Center
going, anyway. The university, NU Foundation
and the Legislature should make education
not some pie-in-the-sky, pompous idea of creat
ing in the Lied Center the cultural navel of
Nebraska their top priority.
I am an ardent supporter of the arts in all
forms. I attend events regularly at Kimball; I go
to the theater productions at Howell and the
Studio Theatre; I visit Sheldon, donate to it and
go to its movies; I support Abendmusik, the Lin
coln Symphony, and the Nebraska Chamber
Orchestra, among other things. I would be the
first to support the Lied Center if there were any
substance to the boosterism surrounding its
planning and construction. The proliferation of
the arts is very important to me; the more, the
better, I believe. And I support excellence at
UNL. Yet, the Lied Center is antithetical to
excellence at UNL. There were and are better
places for our tax dollars as well as the founda
tion's best efforts.
Varner's Mausoleum
The crux of the situation corns down to D.B.
Varner, chairman of the NU Foundation. Varner
is the best fund-raiser this university has ever
seen. His ability to find sources of money and
channel them into the university is profound.
But was Varner thinking of the university this
strapped institution gradually declining in
excellence when he provisionally accepted
the $10 million the Lied estate's executrix
offered? A gift is not a gift- nor is it a bargain
when there are strings attached like the ones
attached to this money. One can only speculate
whether Varner would have been able to sway
that woman to offer the money with no strings;
he surely knew and knows the university could
use that money in other ways and he certainly is
a most persuasive man. Would Varner even have
had the inclination to do so? We shall probably
never know.
But we should question his judgment and
motives and those of the regents with the
exception of Robert Simmons, who has to his
credit his refusal to give in to the good-old-boy
cronyism of the others and those of the Legis
lature in giving approval to this enormously bur
densome plan. Indeed, the Legislature is playing
hands-off and refusing to cross Varner. They will
allocate $5 million in tax dollars(while cutting
the university's bddget by $3.4 million). No
doubt that $5 million could have been used
much more effectively elsewhere whether by
the university or by another agency; there's a
crying need in plenty of areas.
Meanwhile, there will be a continuing need
for money to keep the Lied Center operative. And
Varner will get a real monument to his fund
raising abilities. It's unfortunate, but little
wonder the Lied Center is being called Varner's
Mausoleum around town.
Diane K. Wanek
University of Nebraska Press
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