ENTERTAINMENT

The 50: The group that made CAC free

Carol Motsinger
cmotsinger@enquirer.com
Leo J. P. D'Cruz, a member of The 50, a group whose goal is to raise money for local arts and to make admission free to the Contemporary Arts Center, is pictured in front of Pia Camil's "Credde II."

Free has to be funded.

For the Cincinnati Art Museum, free admission came as one check. One big check: A $2.15 million gift from the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Foundation which ensured the Eden Park historic destination opened its doors to the public with no charge.

But that was 2003.

In early 2016, the Contemporary Arts Center announced it would drop an admission charge for at least three years, starting Saturday with the opening of Do Ho Suh's "Passage."

With the help of some 50 checks.

A newly formed CAC patrons group, know as The 50, pledged $150,000 to subsidize visits to the Downtown museum, taking its lead from The Johnson Foundation that first guaranteed some $75,000.

So who are the signatures on these checks? There are some names you know. Maybe a moniker you've spotted on office doors in City Hall (Yvette Simpson). Or seen attached to big movie production announcements (Kristen Erwin Schlotman).

But most of these patrons are new to philanthropy. Well, more than most. Say 90 percent.

It's not just new faces. The 50 is a new modern model emerging in our post-recession reality. Populated by supporters between the ages of 25 and 45, it's also a colorful concept easy to spot in the graying world of patronage.

And cultural institutions have noticed because philanthropic success is increasingly not one well-timed phone call away.

Now, it's texts to dozens of friends. A coffee shop meet-up with a neighbor. An enthusiastic email from a mentor.

When the CAC opens its doors Saturday for free, there won't be a new wing named after each of the givers.

But you should know some of The 50 anyway.

Johnson Foundation CEO Amy Goodwin, 37, of Over-the-Rhine.

The Organizer

She calls it "artist envy."

Amy Goodwin's attended drawing and painting classes. She once took that stained-glass making class. She wasn't too shabby at jewelry making.

"I do really believe, at our core, that is why we are here," she said. "We are here to create something, to put something out there that wasn't here when we came into the world."

Maybe she hasn't found that thing, her thing, just yet. It's OK if she doesn't, she says.

"I think it's more than OK to be a consumer of art," the head of The Johnson Foundation said. " ... I can walk in (the CAC) and leave inspired and manifest something in my life."

The 50 is her masterpiece. But don't look for her signature in the corner of this creation.

"It was inspired out of a combination of necessity and desire to do something different," said Goodwin, who is also a contributing member of The 50, independent of the foundation she leads.

In February 2015, CAC executive director Raphaela Platow mentioned that visits doubled when admission was free during lobby construction.

"It started as this off-handed comment and I immediately latched onto it," she said. "(Free admission) feels like the next logical step (for the CAC)."

The Johnson Foundation, a "small but mighty" organization, took that first step with a lead donation of $75,000.

"I think we, as an organization, are not afraid to get our hands dirty and jump right in," Goodwin said.

They also aren't afraid to do something different. Collective impact and giving circles like The 50 are gaining traction around the nation. But it hasn't been done quite like this. And certainly not in Cincinnati.

"I didn't feel like I had one friend I could call for $50,000," she said. "So then I started thinking about my group, my social network. These people are doing amazing things and are good people. I bet I have 50 friends who would give $1,000."

So she wasn't surprised she found 50 giving individuals. She was surprised, she says, at their enthusiasm. All the immediate, no-questions-asked chorus of yes.

"I think it really proved to me and the rest of the leadership team at the CAC that people were really looking for this engagement because they weren't being offered that opportunity elsewhere," she said. "I'm glad I got to them first."

Goodwin knows what success looks like, too.

"Success will be sitting at one of those (lobby) tables and watching people walk up the stairs," she said. "People who wouldn't or might not have done so otherwise."

Michelle and Leo J. P. D'Cruz are pictured in front of Pia Camil's "Lake city interior."

The Community-builders

It's always the apartment.

"I'll be back at the apartment at 5:30." "I'll meet you at the apartment."

Leo D'Cruz didn't use the H-word. Nothing was home, other than his parents' house. The very rooms that got shorter as he got taller.

Now, Cincinnati is home. And he's growing in a different way.

He moved to Northside, with his wife and fellow The 50 member, Michelle, in 2009 from Washington, D.C. Their deep connection and commitment to Cincinnati prompted their financial support, a first for the couple.

"We found a quality of life here," said Michelle, partner and creative Director at Reverb Art + Design. "We wanted to live somewhere where creativity was more of a thread woven throughout the city and not just the job you had. I couldn't find that in D.C. at the time. Everything that led us out of D.C. is what has kept us in Cincinnati."

Leo, partner and CCO at Reverb Art + Design, doesn't even mind if you ask where he went to high school. "I find that kind of endearing because it speaks to how well-connected people are here ... that is one of the most unique experiences I have found in any city," he said.

The couple wants to ensure there are more connecting points, for all types of people, in this community. The CAC's free admission is a start.

"One of my lifelong goals and focuses of my work as an artist and as an educator is trying to break down barriers in the art world," Michelle said. "This incentive to me is as dear to my heart as you can get because the entire point of it is accessibility to the public."

It's not just about building community, Leo noted. It's about shaping it responsibly. And art is the right steward for progress.

"Art pushes us to think about things that we never would have before," he said. It teaches us where we came from. Makes think about our place in the world today.

"It really can push us to think about who it is that we want to be as a people, as a community, in Cincinnati and as a nation," Leo said. "That's why it's important that everyone can access it."

Morgan Rigaud

The Thinker

Plastic cups were never quite the same.

Morgan Rigaud's trip to the Contemporary Arts Center in 2009 to see the work of Tara Donovan "changed the way I think about everyday things," she said.

Donovan transforms ordinary objects like cups, toothpicks and paper clips to "create these magnificent experiences," said Rigaud. "I think it was at that point that I said to myself, (the CAC) is a really cool thing that we have in the city."

She still comes to the CAC to prompt introspection. Discover new ways of seeing.

And Rigaud brings her staff along with her. "So much of my professional life is valuing and reporting the value of art for financial purposes," said Rigaud, who owns a Downtown appraisal business. "It's really important to think about art aesthetically and stay connected with concept and beauty and execution.

"It's the real reason why I wanted to be in the business I am in. For personal reasons, I need to be reminded why I started in the first place."

That first place is in her childhood home, watching her mother paint. Or in Scotland, her mother's childhood home. "She made lots of trips back home," Rigaud said. "Every opportunity she had, she pulled me out to go to museums and galleries."

She hopes The 50's efforts will pull more young people into the CAC starting Saturday.

Maybe they see something different after. Maybe they will be the next Tara Donovan.

Her dreams don't begin and end at the open CAC doorway, however. She's already thinking of how resources can be shifted with free admission.

"Instead of spending our customer service time at a point of sale," she said, "I think the real customer service that needs to happen at a museum is conversation, engagement, dialogue."

Instead of selling you a ticket, staff can share a story. Ask you a question. Join you as you walk up the stairs to the gallery space and point out that those sculptures are actually made of cups.

Contemporary Arts Center trustee Will Applegate, 34, of Mount Adams

The Collector

Art is something Will Applegate lives with.

This 34-year-old speaks of his personal collection, centered on graffiti-based work, with a certain tenderness reserved for companions, not commodities. His is a "relationship," not ownership.

That's because it's not really the art as object that's driven his commitment to creativity, solidified through his art history studies or work at New York City's famed auction house Sotheby's.

It's the reaction that matters, he says. It's what happening in the space between your ears – not what's already happened in the space between the frame. And the myriad responses, the divergent ideas, points of view and passion, has massive implications for space outside the gallery.

"It can serve to deepen the values of the city," he said. And those values need to reflect the most people. And the most differences.

That's where The 50 comes in, to open the CAC doors for everyone and to every perspective. And that's why Applegate is one of them.

He's also one of the people who sources inspiration, sees his perspective shaped by the CAC presentations.

Applegate, an Indian Hill native who works in manufacturing, witnesses that influence on the assembly line.

"Being exposed to different artists and different viewpoints really impact the way you design a project or incorporate change," he said. "How you think about art, how you analyze art, uses the same process I use to think about manufacturing."

Manufacturing is his family business. It's what brought him back home in 2011 after six years immersed in the art world of New York City, in galleries and in founding his own art consulting firm.

His first meaningful arts exposure also came from someone with his same last name. His grandmother, Marjorie, is a stone sculptor. Her work is in public spaces in the city, like at the Cincinnati Zoo and Eden Park.

Contemporary art dominated her private space. It enthralled young Applegate, he said. It was so out there, so wild compared to the paintings his parents hung on the walls.

Her collection took his hand, led him on the path that's long been the main route of his personal life. Starting Saturday, it takes a particular public turn.

Procter & Gamble associate design director Tysonn Betts, 42, of Mount Auburn

The Giver 

Who got Tysonn Betts to join The 50?

In a way, Betts got Betts on board.

That's because he made a promise to himself, some two decades ago. Not too long after he moved to Cincinnati to work for Procter & Gamble, just after he recognized the Queen City couldn't hold on tightly to many of his artist friends.

"I made a commitment that if I was going to stay here, I had to help work to make it a place you want to stay," he said. "(Funding free admission) fits into that fabric for me."

And the timing is right. For him. The Contemporary Arts Center. And Cincinnati, which is reaching a creative maturity, he said.

"I think it's also when you start to see this time of success, it's important to give back to the city," Betts added.

Now the associate design director for P&G, Betts found respite and rejuvenation, 20 minutes at a time, at the CAC when it was on Fifth Street. That's when he worked Downtown, and his mentor encouraged him to visit the galleries during the work day.

"It allowed me to feed my creative side, to be distracted and inspired at the same time," he said.

After the CAC moved to its current location in 2003, the museum emerged as a favorite attraction in their "playground." That's how he and his now teenage daughters view the city center.

"There is so much to see, explain, talk about with your kids," the Mount Auburn resident said.

He wants that for your children, too, at the CAC.

See, for Betts, exposure equals opportunity. That opportunity should be – and now is –  available to more members of the community.

The implication of that? It goes back to the young people. Back to the promise Betts made himself as a younger man. And toward a next generation of people like Betts staying in Cincinnati.

"You can't choose a career or a career field if you are not aware of it," the 42-year-old said. "I am hopeful that through this kind of work and the work that is happening in the city, more and more kids of color, minority kids will be able to see what the opportunities are and begin to have this conversation."