[spectre] Walker Art closes Media dept. and sacks Steve Dietz

[Andreas Broeckmann]

As a cost saving measure, the Walker Art Center has decided to 
terminate its new media programming initiatives, including Steve 
Dietz's position.

Dietz's latest project, How Latitudes Become Form, just closed a week ago:
http://latitudes.walkerart.org/



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http://www.startribune.com/stories/389/3870414.html


Walker Art Center lays off 7 employees, freezes wages

Mary Abbe,  Star Tribune

Published May  8, 2003
WALK08

In another sign of the weak economy's impact on the arts, the Walker 
Art Center laid off seven people Tuesday and announced that it will 
impose a one-year staffwide wage freeze as of June 1.

The cutbacks, which include the dismissal of prominent new-media 
curator Steve Dietz , are expected to save the center about $1 
million in the fiscal year beginning July 1, said Ann Bitter, 
administrative director.

The center's $90 million expansion program, on which construction 
already has begun, is not affected.

"We have always had a balanced budget for the past two decades, and 
intend to continue that," said Bitter. "Our challenge is not for this 
year but for the long term."

Because of severance packages and other obligations, the personnel 
cuts -- which reduced the staff from 149 to 142 people -- will not 
save any money this fiscal year. They will help trim the operating 
budget from $15.5 million this year to about $14 million in 2004. The 
added savings come in programs being scaled back because of 
construction.

The new-media initiatives department, which Dietz headed, was 
considered a key element in the Walker's new building and its efforts 
to attract younger, more media-savvy visitors. The department will 
survive, Bitter said, but its five remaining employees will focus 
more on the Walker's Web site and educational and audience-service 
programs instead of the ambitious curatorial initiatives that Dietz 
led. Most recently he folded myriad Web-based artists from around the 
world into the show "How Latitudes Become Forms."

Walker director Kathy Halbreich said that all the cutbacks are 
"painful" but that reshaping the new-media department is 
"philosophically and programatically the most challenging." The 
Walker hopes to continue independent projects with Dietz, whom 
Halbreich praised as an "enormously talented leader in his field."

The layoffs follow similar cutbacks at other Twin Cities cultural 
institutions, including the Guthrie Theater, the Ordway Center for 
the Performing Arts and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.