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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Michelangel-Dough!
Grab a beer and put your shoes up on some counterfeit sculpture because it’s rubbernecking time again for all you Kimbell junkies: Fort Worth Weekly’s annual report on how Cowtown’s rich and famous spend their ancestral money. The Kimbell Art Foundation just filed its 2001 tax return (fashionably late of course), and revealed the recipients of its mucho largesse. They’re the usual suspects, Static is sorry to report — unlike the year before when the elite crew spread the wealth around, throwing a few grand to such unartful groups as Victory Temple Ministries and the Oakland (Texas) ISD.
In 2001, however, the Kimbell kept the money in the family, so to speak, giving the Modern Art Museum $505,000. That would be Kimbell board member Anne W. Marion’s new digs across the street, of course. (Static can only hope that this generous gift didn’t buy the soaring spire of rust that greets visitors at the Modern’s entrance. “Folks are gonna need a tetanus shot to get in the museum,” Static’s astute ears picked up from one observer of Richard Serra’s towering, steel sculpture.)
With the K board’s generous gift of $1.5 mil of the year before, the Modern holds the lead in pocketing Kimbell dough. Coming in second and third were Fort Worth Symphony at $375,000 and Performing Arts of Fort Worth, $125,000. TCU, Van Cliburn Foundation, United Way, and the Amon Carter Museum were on this year’s list for chump change that added up to $108,500.
And for the Kimbell’s best-known working stiff, Director Tim Potts, there was a big raise: from $495,685 to $516,884. Must be because he was so clever last year at buying sculpture.
Sibling rivalry
Fort Worth’s Italian sister city Reggio Emilia is more hardheaded than Mafioso tv character Tony Soprano. Still, Static admires the town’s chutzpah, not to mention their linguini and clam sauce.
Anti-capital punishment groups met recently in Fort Worth to discuss death penalty reform, and the vice mayor of Reggio Emilia sent a letter to conference attendees saying “all our citizens will be with you in spirit to confirm once again our determined NO to the death penalty.” Recall that the Italian city threatened to cut ties with Fort Worth, bada bing, if city leaders didn’t decry capital punishment. A confused Fort Worth City Council said, “Uh, well, the death penalty is something for state and federal lawmakers to decide, not us little ol’ city council members who are too busy annexing new constituents to get involved in such heady matters.”
They should have joined the cause. After all, the Fort Worth residents most often condemned to slow, painful deaths are the ones who sit through City Council meetings each week.
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