When the Baltimore City Council sliced its annual allocation to the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts by 75% on Wednesday, it deepened the confusion around the fate of the quasi-governmental organization and the planned relaunch of Artscape, the city’s beloved annual outdoor arts festival.

Everyone involved, from the agency known as BOPA to the City Council and Mayor Brandon Scott’s office, seems determined that the $1.7 million slashed from the arts group’s proposed $2.6 million 2023-24 budget won’t prevent Artscape from going on as planned in late September, following three years in which the festival shut down during the coronvirus pandemic.

The cuts to BOPA, officials say, could be temporary. Importantly, the reductions don’t affect the $300,000 in Creative Baltimore grants for local artists that the city funds and BOPA administers.

“We remain totally committed to the success of Artscape,” wrote Tonya Miller Hall, who heads the mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture, in a statement to The Baltimore Sun. “At this point we’re continuing to collaborate with BOPA, and Artscape will move forward without interruption no matter what.”

Todd Yuhanick, BOPA’s interim executive director, wrote in an email to The Sun that the upcoming festival is fully funded.

“Artscape planning in on-track, and we’re excited to be back after a three-year hiatus,” he added.

‘Safeguarding funding for the arts’

But the depth of Wednesday’s cuts, coupled with the negative publicity that BOPA has endured for the past six months, is escalating the anxiety of institutional leaders who are attempting to make fall plans around the festival.

For example, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has scheduled its annual gala to coincide with Artscape — a gala introducing the symphony’s new music director, Jonathon Heyward, who will preside over a free public concert Sept. 24 at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

For now, the institutions remain upbeat.

“We have strategically planned Jonathon Heyward’s public debut to align with the Artscape festival and remain committed to moving forward with this plan as intended,” wrote Mark C. Hanson, the BSO’s president and CEO, in a statement to The Sun.

Chris Hart, communications director for the University of Baltimore, said the school is taking “a wait-and-see attitude.”

Both the University of Baltimore and the Maryland Institute College of Art will have begun their fall semesters by the time Artscape opens. Their campuses will be packed with thousands of students and faculty members even before Artscape brings up to 350,000 visitors to the area over a three-day weekend.

This is the first time Artscape will conflict with the school year and busy fall arts season. Previous festivals were held in July.

“We would love to have conversations with BOPA about Artscape,” Hart said. “We want to help out as much as we can. We are your neighbors.”

The cuts have followed a tumultuous period for BOPA, which in addition to mounting the city’s festivals and farmers markets, also administers grants to local artists and organizations, runs the city’s film office and manages the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower and other sites.

The new year had barely begun before BOPA was buffeted by the departure of CEO Donna Drew Sawyer. She resigned Jan. 10 after the agency announced that it was canceling the 2023 annual Martin Luther King Day parade, and a furious Scott called for Sawyer’s ouster. (The mayor’s office later organized its own parade.)

BOPA courted controversy again last month when it was revealed that Sawyer had attempted to trademark the “Artscape” name, an effort foiled by the city’s legal team, which described the trademark application as a “misappropriation.”

“There are very severe concerns related to the governance of that organization, which, simply put, is broken,” City Councilman Eric Costello said of BOPA before the city Board of Estimates on Wednesday afternoon. “Significant changes need to be made and those changes need to be made immediately.”

Under the budget plan adopted Wednesday, BOPA will receive an allocation of $881,752 that will fund its first fiscal quarter. The mayor’s office will appoint a commission to recommend ways to reform the troubled agency.

Costello saidthe City Council will evaluate BOPA’s funding each quarter, and if there are signs that the agency is turning around, “the council will consider making additional appropriations.”

“This is about safeguarding funding for the arts,” Hall wrote in her statement, “not about cutting it or taking it away.”

Plans for Artscape lack details

Adding to the confusion, plans for this year’s Artscape have been slow to emerge. And even those details that have been released have been subject to change.

For instance, BOPA announced in October with considerable fanfare that the 2023 festival would expand from three days to five days and would run Sept. 20-24. At some point since then, the festival was scaled back to three days. Now it will run from 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22, through 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 24, according to BOPA’s website.

It is not apparent whether BOPA or the mayor’s office is taking the lead on Artscape. Yuhanick wrote that BOPA is “chiefly responsible for the organization and presentation of Artscape,” while Hall wrote that “at this point we’re continuing to collaborate with BOPA.”

Also up in the air is a $1.5 million grant the city secured from the state to pay some costs of relaunching Artscape this fall. While those funds must be used for mounting the festival, it’s not clear whether the grant money will be administered by BOPA, as originally planned, or by the city.

If the city Office of Arts & Culture becomes responsible for distributing that $1.5 million, andifthe $1.7 million cuts become set in stone, it would appear to put BOPA out of the business of mounting festivals and large-scale city celebrations, at least for now.

According to a revenue analysis prepared by BOPA at the City Council’s request, 77.5% of the organization’s budget was supplied by the city, state of Maryland and federal government for the first nine months of the current fiscal year. Program fees accounted for 16.6% of BOPA’s revenues, while individual and corporate donations made up 6%.

Costello attempted to reassure BOPA staff members that their jobs are safe.

“We value the individuals who work at BOPA tirelessly every single day to uplift the arts in this city,” he said.

BOPA has released a handful of details about Artscape 2023.

The agency has issued a call for vendors and is publicizing the locations of the four musical stages: Mount Royal Station on the MICA campus; Mount Royal Avenue and Mosher Street; Charles Street and North Avenue; and Charles Street and North 20th Street. The festival’s footprint also will include the neighborhoods of Mount Vernon and Bolton Hill as usual.

But the musical headliners have not been announced yet, a traffic plan has not been released, and the Artscape website lacks a map that includessuch key locations as the artists’ marketplace or food trucks.

Yuhanick promised that festivalgoers won’t have to wait more than a few weeks to get answers to these key questions.

“Announcements about musical performers and other details will be made very soon,” he wrote.