Posted by Allison Woods on November 10, 1999 at 23:13:58:
I've just been to a meeting at Seattle Center for my day job. One of the agenda items was the impact of 695 on the Seattle Center. It seems that the impacts on the Center are much less than imagined, only about $55,000 in 2000. The Center decided the easiest way to fix the budget was to cancel Arts Edge for 2000. This is a done deal. The reasons, besides the obvious neatness of it all, were that 1) the EMP is opening next spring, and the SC Budget Department decided that the EMP events would attract basically the same crowd as Arts Edge. (I say hmm....) 2) Arts Edge has no budget line. In other words, they were carving that money out of other programs. 3) Arts Edge has no major sponsorship.
The guy behind Arts Edge, Andy Frankel, just left the Center (officially on a leave, but who knows if he will be back) so for the time being, we've got no one behind the return of the event. Personally, I was underwhelmed by the event, but thought that it had huge potential as a large-scale forum for out-of-the-mainstream art.