Great Escape: Mr. Killoren Goes to (the Other) Washington

At the Polar Bar following his October 4 going-away party at City Hall, outgoing Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs director Michael Killoren shared a drinking secret learned from his ever-smiling role model, the late arts macher Peter Donnelly: a tall glass full of ice and gin, with no telltale olive, so it looks like you’re drinking water and you don’t worry about spilling. Yet Killoren opted for riskier martinis instead, working his last Seattle arts room without spilling a drop on his natty suit, displaying a skill for drinking as adept as his politicking.

Earlier, at the formal affair, City Councilman Nick Licata said, “The great thing about working with Michael is, every time he shows up in the office, he’s got a smile on his face.” Sure enough, in a room festooned with parodies of Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster featuring his face in place of Barack Obama’s, and surrounded by applause from the arts power elite, Killoren was all smiles. “People all day long try to cut your budget,” Licata added, “and Michael walks in, he’s happy, he’s got energy, and I’m thinkin’ – is that what art does to you?”

Killoren has plenty to grin about. Obama just hired him to run the National Endowment for the Arts Local Arts Agencies and Challenge America Fast Track in the other Washington. He earned the job in his canny eight-year reign here by handing out over two million dollars a year to Seattle artists and to 140 organizations, meeting politicians’ need for result quantification, beefing up art education in Seattle schools, increasing arts access for communities of color, and making arts conspicuous to bureaucrats, partly through shows at City Hall. 

“Even little things like putting local musicians on City phone lines when you’re on hold instead of Muzak – it all adds up,” said Killoren. “It’s a stealth [strategy], incremental, incremental. We grew the pie.”

But the pie abruptly shrank this fall. Soon after the announcement of Killoren’s impending departure, Mayor McGinn proposed slashing Arts & Cultural Affairs’ budget 7.5 percent, a move that would kill the Mayor’s Arts Awards, scads of concerts and exhibits, and two and a half staff jobs, including that of Killoren’s assistant, who is out of work this month. Still, on October 4, which McGinn proclaimed “Michael Killoren Day,” people tried to be upbeat. “Arts education has really ramped up in the past eight years, and Michael was instrumental,” said arts commissioner Michael Seiwerath. “He’s done an awful lot,” said Councilwoman Jean Godden.

It remains to be seen if his successor will be able to do as much. •