1 day Ago By Mary Carole McCauley
The Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts has called a last-minute meeting for Thursday to discuss its finances. The afternoon meeting will “provide an update on BOPA’s fiscal standing and a strategic path forward,” the organization said in a release Wednesday. The public portion of the meeting will be followed by a closed session in which board members will “discuss personnel and business location,” according to the meeting agenda, which also noted “vote required” for the closed session.
, who earlier this year was appointed BOPA’s CEO, declined to comment late Wednesday. It’s not clear to what the “business location” portion of the closed meeting refers to. However, in early 2023 and under the auspices of previous CEO Donna Drew Sawyer, BOPA moved from its former offices at 10 E.
Baltimore St. into an expanded space at 7 St. Paul St.
following that included a newly commissioned mural. The besieged organization has been roiled by one conflict after another for the past two years, culminating in Sawyer’s ouster after she infuriated Mayor Brandon Scott by The quasi-governmental organization reportedly lacked the money to pay for the event. Scott demanded that Sawyer be removed from her post, and she resigned on Jan.
10, 2023. BOPA’s board later agreed to pay her The organization suffered a more recent blow when bad weather forced the cancellation of at Artscape, its marquee event that celebrated its last month, on two of three nights. , a tropical storm caused the festival cancel a day’s programming.
The next organization on BOPA’s fall arts calendar, the , is scheduled to celebrate its 25th anniversary Sept. 27-29. It was not immediately known what impact, if any, BOPA’s fiscal situation will have on the Book Festival.
The Baltimore Board of Estimates approved a one-year contract in June that keeps the arts agency on a short financial leash. changes the way BOPA is administered to bring the once-independent, quasi-governmental agency partly under city control. It is expected to fund three of BOPA’s premiere events in 2024, including the Independence Day celebration, Artscape and the Book Festival.
The contract also imposes several new restrictions on BOPA ranging from a mandated list of public events the festival must mount to quarterly progress reports. And, should BOPA make a serious misstep — as it did repeatedly in 2023 — the document creates a path for the City Council to terminate the contract and defund the cultural group in as little as 30 days..
