Big Donors, Talented Teens Crowd Gallery 37

By: Abhi Raghunathan and Michael A. RohnerHundreds of thousands of dollars in public and private funds—including money from a major tobacco conglomerate—have helped Chicago’s Gallery 37 arts education program thrive, even as city officials have cut their overall summer jobs effort from 12 weeks to six.

Since 1991, Gallery 37 has provided training in the arts for 11,000 teens. What began as a $321,000 program serving 260 young artists on a vacant, downtown lot is now a $4.6 million effort with 2,500 participants citywide. While the program runs year round, the jewel is the eight-week summer outdoor artists’ studio on Block 37, a three-acre site surrounded by hotels, skyscrapers and Loop stores, and bordered by Randolph, Washington, State and Dearborn streets.

Gallery 37 runs two other downtown sites, in Grant Park at Michigan Avenue and Balbo Street; and in the Chicago Cultural Center, at 78 E. Washington St. This year, 35 Chicago public schools serve another 1,650 participants, and 858 teens work at 19 neighborhood organizations and 25 Chicago parks.

Recently, the President’s Initiative on Race cited Gallery 37 as "a unique and innovative solution to numerous social and economic problems." The program has been replicated in 19 other cities, said Gallery 37 public relations coordinator Lizzie Keating.

Gallery 37 "is a real positive at keeping students in school," said Sandra Morrow, principal of the Ray Graham Training Center, 2347 S. Wabash Ave., a public school for children with cognitive disabilities. "A lot of our kids are excited about coming [to school] because of it."

But critics question one of the gallery’s major contributors, Philip Morris Companies Inc., a New York-based tobacco, food and beer conglomerate, which donated $168,000 between 1994 and 1997, according to records filed with the Illinois Attorney General’s office. Gallery 37 officials could not provide information on contributions for the last two years.

Funding the program "buys Philip Morris a good image," said Kathy Mulvey, executive director of INFACT, a Boston-based corporate watchdog organization that has called for a nationwide boycott of Philip Morris and its subsidiary, Northfield-based Kraft Foods Inc. "It’s an effective way to buy good will."

Janet Williams, deputy executive director of public affairs for the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago, would not comment on the Gallery 37 donations. Of the tobacco companies, she said that in general, "It is frightening that good organizations are walking into their web." Tobacco companies also have been criticized for marketing cigarettes to young people and minorities, she added.

Gallery 37 officials said the donations actually came from Kraft, but state records show Kraft made a separate contribution of $5,000 in 1996. And Philip Morris spokesman K. Richmond Temple told the Reporter in a written statement that the grants to Gallery 37 "exemplify our ongoing support for arts education … [and] reflects our long-standing commitment to giving back to the communities in which we do business."

The program’s largest private donor is JMB Realty Corp., with $400,000 in contributions between 1994 and 1997. The real estate company is affiliated with FJV Venture, which owns Block 37.

The city funded and operated Gallery 37 in its inaugural year. Since 1992, the program has been run jointly by the city and the Arts Matter Foundation, a non-profit whose board of directors is chaired by Maggie Daley, wife of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

This year, the city budgeted $820,000 for the program; another $429,000 came from federal funds through the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development. The Chicago Board of Education provided $1.07 million. Students applying for the downtown program must audition or provide samples of their work, and submit recommendations. Roughly half who apply are admitted, Keating said.

This summer, Gallery 37 accepted about 660 youths; 226 come from low-income families and received funding from the Mayor’s Office’s summer jobs program. In 1998, among the downtown students, 50 percent were African American, 18 percent Latino and 7 percent Asian American. Gallery 37 could not provide racial information on the school and neighborhood programs.

"It’s a healthy [economic] mix," said Karl Androes, executive director of the Whirlwind Performance Company, a non-profit theater group that teaches music, drama and dance in Chicago’s private and public schools. "It wouldn’t be as good if it was just an art ghetto."

One week after its June 29 opening, under a ceiling of 17 large white carnival tents, hundreds of teenagers walked through the Block 37 location on a brown carpet of wood shavings that smelled of cedar. In one tent, young artists prepared to paint 20 life-sized cows, part of the city’s "Cows on Parade" summer public art display. In another tent, students rehearsed a musical performance.

Each apprentice artist works about 20 hours per week at minimum wage under the direction of professional "lead artists," who are paid $22 to $28 per hour.

"It’s great. It opens up your mind to different things," said James Bailey, 18, who will enter Columbia College this fall. He has been a Gallery 37 participant since 1996.

At the opening ceremony, Gregory McGee, a 19-year-old African American apprentice artist in his fourth year at Gallery 37, told his fellow students to take advantage of the program. "This is your opening, a chance," he said, "a chance many will not get."

For more information, visit the following sites:

• Gallery 37

• Philip Morris

• INFACT

• American Lung Association