ahha closes, OKPOP delayed: Is Tulsa's oligarchy competent?

Founded as the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa (AHCT) in 1961, AHCT's home was the Harwelden Mansion from 1969 to 2012. Harwelden served as an arts incubator, providing a mailing address and meeting place for fledgling organizations, and AHCT could serve as mother hen, extending its 501(c)(3) status to the activities of new non-profits until they could get established in their own right. AHCT's 2014 Form 990 stated: "Office space within Harweldon [sic] Mansion is offered at reduced lease rates to council member arts and humanities organizations. Rental of the mansion is also offered free to council members for their own programming and events, furthering the overall mission of the council."

All that seemed to change around the time of the move to the new four-story, 42,500 sq. ft., $18.3 million facility in downtown Tulsa. A new organization, the Arts Alliance of Tulsa, emerged to centralize donations to arts organizations. ahha's new facility seemed to be more of a gallery and activity space, an arts organization in its own right rather than an umbrella group for arts organizations. (My oldest son enjoyed using the dark room there as he was learning black-and-white film photography.)

The property containing the building and the adjacent Woody Guthrie Center are owned by the City of Tulsa, according to County Assessor records.

An interesting note appears in some of AHCT's audited financial statements, for example FY2014:

The Council entered into a New Markets Tax Credit transaction involving Cherokee Nation Sub-CDE LLC, BOKFCDC Fund I LLC, and Visual Arts Center LLC, an entity in which the Council holds a 99% ownership interest. The transaction employs debt and equity financing, as well as federally issued tax credits available for development in certain economic zones. The Council has recorded the resulting net tax credits equity as a contribution directly to temporarily restricted net assets.

A few blocks away, the new Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture (OKPOP) is merely "skin and bones" after $30 million spent, and it needs another $35 million to be able to open, according to executive director Jeff Moore, who spoke to the Tulsa City Council Urban and Economic Development Committee on Wednesday, November 2, 2022. Moore's appearance begins at about 34 minutes into the video and runs for about a half hour.

OKPOP's $30 million building, which is ugly, out of scale for the Tulsa Arts District, and overshadows historic Cain's Ballroom, is still not open for visitors, except for the "stakeholders" that are being given tours and outside groups like the Bob Dylan Center that rent the space for events. Since the summer, the building has been used for artifact storage. A question from Councilor Jeannie Cue suggests that the reason for Moore's appearance was the possibility that OKPOP might not have funds to keep its staff working past December.

Moore describes the construction of the building as Phase 1, "skin and bones," and Phase 2 as "heart and soul" -- "displays, exhibitions and programming" -- in other words, the stuff that actually makes it a museum that people can visit. This is an odd use of "phase" -- ordinarily, a project's Phase 1 would be its initial, basic operational capability, open for business and meeting its intended purpose, and Phase 2 would be a future expansion.

According to the KJRH news story, $9.7 million in state, local, and private funds are committed and pledged for Phase 2, and $1 million of that was pledged by the City of Tulsa out of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, which is the reason for the discussion at the City Council committee meeting. Another $1 million from Tulsa Development Authority was spent in 2019 and 2020 on utilities relocation to make way for construction. Another $2.7 million originated as leftovers from the 2006 Third Penny sales tax. There are also ARPA funds passing through the Tulsa County Commission.

On Twitter, I pointed out that the Cosmosphere, possibly the world's greatest museum of the history of space exploration, began with a used planetarium projector in a poultry building on the state fairgrounds. It grew slowly over time, from one woman's vision, and this year is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

I've long thought that Tulsa ought to have places of pilgrimage for fans of the popular culture figures that were born here or became famous here. OKPOP may someday be that sort of place. Danny Boy O'Connor's restoration of The Outsiders House is a great example of creating that kind of place incrementally.

Couldn't OKPOP have launched modestly in an existing building? But the way of Tulsa's oligarchy is to build big and new -- and unsustainably.

Someone recalled that Blake Ewing had been an executive at OKPOP. He was hired in August 2019 as creative director:

Moore said Ewing will support the design of exhibit space and the exhibits, plus branding and creative outreach, and will do graphic design.

"Blake fits into this in creating direction and creating a built environment, which will help us now that the building design is done," Moore said. "Also, it will be important to look at what the role of OKPOP is in the state and in the city of Tulsa and the region as a tourism draw."

In an October 2021 Tulsa People podcast interview, Ewing said that late 2022 "is the goal" for opening with exhibits. It's now the end of 2022, and displays, exhibitions and programming are still TBD in a future Phase 2.

He seems to have done one episode of the OKPOP podcast in 2020, and then there was a two-year hiatus until Ewing left OKPOP to become Mayor GT Bynum IV's chief of staff. If you followed Ewing's career as a restaurateur, you could picture Ewing in a role that only required him to be an ideas guy, but it's strange to see him as a chief of staff, whose job typically involves keeping the boss's time and commitments organized and aligned with his priorities.

Take the ahha closure and OKPOP's delayed opening, and add to those the downgraded new pedestrian bridge (demolished history to build a plain vanilla replacement with none of the promised frills). Don't forget the mess the Kaiser System made of the University of Tulsa's music and humanities departments with its "New Commitment" plan; new TU leadership is undoing some of the damage, but the departure of faculty and students is irreparable, and the loss of reputation may take decades to heal.

Who wants to bet that NuGilcrease is going to be years late and a real letdown?

It might surprise you to learn how much of what has been happening in the Tulsa Arts District is not entrepreneurial initiative, as it might appear, but philanthropic programming and subsidy. When they ditched the name Brady Village, they ought to have renamed it Potemkin Village.

Looks like Tulsa's billionaire overlords and their minions aren't as competent as they pretend to be. If they're going to insist on being in charge and push us to elect their puppets (three of whom -- Arthrell-Knezek, Dodson, and Decter Wright -- face challengers on Tuesday's City Council ballot), couldn't they at least show some signs of competence? And maybe a little frugality along the way?