Copious Notes

LexArts President and CEO Jim Clark, Horsemania 2010 co-chairs Steve Grossman and Becky Reinhold, and America's Fiberglass Animals owner Patrick Keough inspect horses like the ones that will be part of the forthcoming exhibit. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

A dark SUV with a trailer rolled up next to ArtsPlace Friday morning carrying some familiar figures: Horsemania horses.

The four fiberglass colts on Patrick Keough’s trailer were the first tangible sign that the popular 2000 public art exhibit will be returning to Lexington in 2010 for the World Equestrian Games.

“That’s the most frequent question I get, ‘When are the horses coming back?’” LexArts president and CEO Jim Clark said.

The 2000 exhibit of fiberglass horses decorated by local artists was displayed all over the streets of downtown Lexington and beyond. It was wildly popular, sending people on walking tours throughout the summer. Some of those horses can still be seen around the area at local businesses that bought them at a Keeneland auction late that fall.

Clark said 10 years was a good interval to wait for the next exhibit.

“If you do it too often, it may start to lose its charm,” Clark said.

Horsemania 2010 will work much like it did a decade ago, with around 80 horses being decorated by local artists. A notable exception will be the involvement of Lexington’s sister cities – Deauville, France; County Kildare, Ireland; Shinhidaka, Japan; and Newmarket, England. Each town will select an artist to decorate a horse, which will be part of the display.

The calendar will also unfold much like the original Horsemania. LexArts is currently soliciting sponsorships of horses at $5,000 each for the 79 local horses and $7,500 each for the four sister city horses. The call for artists will be in the winter of 2010, selection will be in the spring with the horses hitting the streets in July and the auction in December 2010.

Horsemania was at the beginning of a public art craze that started with decorated cows in Chicago and went on to include guitars in Cleveland and pigs in Cincinnati.

Keough, owner of Shelton, Neb.-based America’s Fiberglass Animals, which made the original Horsemania figures, said horses have been one of the popular figures he has done, with cities like Louisville and Ocala, Fla., staging horse projects.

“But we were the first,” Clark interjected.

Keough responded, “That’s right. It was you all that made the phone ring.”

Note: This is an extended version of the story that appears in the Feb. 18 Lexington Herald-Leader. It includes comments from last night’s kickoff, and those comments are in blue.

LexArts kicked off its 2009 Campaign for the Arts yesterday with a modified goal due to the ailing economy.

Last year, the Campaign took in $1,153,522, exceeding the goal of $1,125,000. Usually, that kind of success prompts the arts umbrella organization to ramp up its expectations the next year.

Campaign chair Larry Bell speaks at the Feb. 17 kickoff. Photo by Rich Copley.

“We set the goal in the midst of a lot of the bad economic news breaking,” said LexArts president and CEO Jim Clark, a few hours before last night’s kick-off party at Spindletop Hall. “We were not going to be limited by national conditions, but we did think it was realistic to set our goal a little lower.”

Despite the challenges of raising money in uncertain financial times, campaign organizers said supporting the arts is still important, particularly with the FEI World Equestrian Games coming in 2010.

“Although I am from Lexington, Ky., I lived in New Orleans for six years,” campaign chair Larry Bell, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, said at last night’s kickoff. “And New Orleans would not be the tourist attraction it is, it would not be the convention city it is, without something to do in the evenings . . . It is a thriving community for artists, for musicians and for the culinary arts. Now is that only reflected in the quality of life in New Orleans? No, it is also reflected in the tourism, and tourism is the only industry in New Orleans. So, my experience with the arts is that it is a driver of economic activity.

“That lesson is transferable, particularly to us, because we’ll be hosting the world next year, and part of the experience they will have is our arts and our entertainment options.”

Honorary campaign chair and retiring Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra music director George Zack invoked New Orleans, and the New Orleans Symphony in particular, in his remarks. He noted the losses the orchestra suffered during Hurricane Katrina, including the losses of instruments and its concert hall, and how the orchestra regrouped and went on tour.

“Nothing galvanizes a community better than the arts,” Zack said. “When you look to the past, you look at the past through its art treasures.”

Funds raised by the campaign go to support local arts groups both through allocations to major area arts organizations and grants to groups and individual artists.

Clark said that with the games coming up, “funds are particularly important for groups that are putting together special exhibits and performances for the games. It’s hard to plan when you’re struggling to get by.”

Since the economy went south, Clark says he and his staff have had to work a little harder to make sure people are fulfilling their pledges to the 2008 campaign, but those contributions are still coming in.

The campaign is starting with $300,000 already raised, a little bit less than the fund raiser normally has when it launches. LexArts also will have to wait until April to see what kind of contribution it will get from the Lexington Fayette Urban-County Government, which has kicked in $350,000, plus $150,000 in challenge grants the last couple of years.

Mayor Jim Newberry appeared at the Spindletop kickoff and encouraged people in the audience to, “visit with your council members to encourage their support for the arts, because this is going to be a difficult time, financially, for Urban-County government, and the more they understand the depth and breadth of the support for the arts in the community, the more likely we are to find ourselves in a good position as we go through the budget process.”

Newberry also cited the Destination 2040 campaign, “an effort to develop a longer term vision for our community.”

The mayor said in a citywide survey, there was widespread support for, “funding for the arts so, ‘our arts community can become nationally competitive.’ I like that recommendation a lot. I’ve got a little bit of an issue with it though, and that is the part that says, ’so we can become nationally competitive.’” Then, citing the recent Our Lincoln performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., he said, “If you were there, and you had any doubt about the national competitiveness of the arts in Lexington, Ky., it should have been totally removed that night.”