[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 106 (Tuesday, June 9, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2802-S2804]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MORNING BUSINESS
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TRIBUTE TO DOREEN KRAFT
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, the last few months have presented an
unprecedented challenge for communities and families across the
country, and Vermont is no different. It is refreshing to take a moment
to celebrate the people and entities that are at the foundation of our
community identities. I want to take a moment to recognize one of these
people in Vermont--Doreen Kraft--who was profiled in March for her
leadership of Burlington City Arts.
For the past 25 years, Doreen has been the director of Burlington
City Arts--BCA--a Burlington city department that promotes Vermont
artists while supporting art exhibition, creation, and education.
Doreen is an integral member of the Burlington city government and arts
community. As described by Pat Robbins, the former BCA Center board
chair, Doreen is ``overcommitted . . . and always overscheduled, but
she is a marvelous fundraiser. Everybody takes her calls. Everybody
goes to lunch with her.'' As the director of the BCA Center, Doreen has
raised millions of dollars that have helped BCA further the arts in
Burlington. Something that I most appreciate about Doreen is that she
makes the arts accessible for all Vermonters. Jacqueline Posley, a BCA
board member who relocated to our beautiful State from Mississippi, put
it best by saying that Doreen fosters an environment at BCA that values
people most for the connections they make in the community, rather than
``by the depth of their pockets.'' While she has led the BCA Center for
25 years, Doreen's work in Burlington began long before she was
appointed director. In 1981, as the mayor of Burlington, now-Senator
Bernie Sanders made the accessibility of the arts a priority, and
Doreen became the first paid employee of the mayor's Task Force for the
Arts. Doreen established a concert series in Burlington's Battery Park
and the annual Burlington Discover Jazz Festival. By 1990, the task
force had become a department of the city government, renamed
Burlington City Arts. In 1995, the year Doreen was appointed as
director, BCA opened its first gallery in the old Firehouse on Church
Street, Burlington's main downtown area. Since then, the Firehouse
Gallery and BCA have gained substantial recognition. With extensive
fundraising and community investment, BCA renovated the Firehouse into
a full visual arts center, renaming the gallery to BCA Center in 2011.
Since 1995, the gallery has become a hub for visual arts in downtown
Burlington, helping the city to become a destination known for its
burgeoning arts scene, due in large part to Doreen's work as director.
Doreen has continued to expand the reach of BCA beyond Church Street.
BCA recently purchased and began the renovation of a 9,000-square-foot
warehouse in Burlington's South End, a post-industrial neighborhood
with its own indigenous art scene. While South End artists and
businessowners initially saw the warehouse purchase as an encroachment
by city government on their turf, relations have improved as
collaboration between BCA and South End artists has grown, on issues of
art promotion and city planning.
As renovation of the warehouse continues, I look forward to seeing
how Doreen and Burlington City Arts can continue to give voice to new
artists and perspectives, promoting not only the arts community but
also greater conversation and cooperation between the government and
the people it serves. With that, as we make decisions on how to assist
our communities through this crisis, we must also remember the
communities that we represent, and individuals that make our
communities so remarkable. I want to recognize and thank Doreen Kraft,
not only for her everlasting support of the arts, but as an ardent
public servant whose efforts highlight the importance of community,
equality, and accessibility.
I ask unanimous consent that her profile be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From Seven Days, Mar. 11, 2020]
After 40 Years and Five Mayors, Doreen Kraft Steers Burlington City
Arts Into the South End
(By Margaret Grayson)
Doreen Kraft doesn't really want to talk about Doreen
Kraft. During a recent reception for new exhibitions at the
BCA Center on Church Street, she preferred to direct a
reporter's attention to everyone else in the room: a
dedicated board member; Burlington's supportive mayor; the
brilliant director of another local nonprofit.
Upstairs in her office, the longtime executive director of
Burlington City Arts praised its successive gallery curators
and explained how willing they had been to do hands-on work
and volunteer extra time. She talked up a waitress at a
restaurant that was partnering with BCA, who, unacquainted
with Kraft, recently encouraged her to make a donation to the
organization.
Kraft excels at this kind of schmoozing, probing and
promoting at the same time. People describe her as a coach,
an advocate, a great listener--essentially, who she is to
other people, as if her role is to reflect the best version
of everyone around her. It's an approach that has helped her
grow BCA--through the administrations of five different
mayors--from a janitor's closet in the basement of city hall
to a municipal department charged with fostering public art
and culture.
Since the organization's founding in 1980, Kraft, 68, has
been a driving force. For the last 25 years, she's led BCA as
it has created galleries and studios, developed art classes
and summer camps, curated art in public spaces, won and
distributed grants, and organized citywide events such as
Festival of Fools and Highlight, Burlington's New Year's Eve
celebration. The city contributes a portion of the funds for
those cultural activities.
Kraft raises at least half of the rest of the money single-
handedly. Most recently, she
[[Page S2803]]
spearheaded the purchase of a building at 405 Pine Street
that now houses the organization's art studios. Kraft and her
team need to find $5 million to renovate it.
``She gets overcommitted. She's always overscheduled. But
she's a marvelous fundraiser,'' said Pat Robins, cofounder of
the Church Street Marketplace and former BCA board chair.
``Everybody takes her calls. Everybody goes to lunch with
her.''
Jacqueline Posley, a recent transplant to Vermont by way of
the state's Stay to Stay program, joined the BCA board last
June. She said that in her home state of Mississippi, she
felt the arts were only for people with money. At BCA, she
said she felt valued more for her willingness to make
connections in the community than the depth of her pockets.
She describes Kraft as an inclusive and unpretentious leader.
``Doreen will put out the food trays, will sweep the
floors,'' Posley said. ``Every job that needs to be done, I
could see Doreen doing it.''
Robins credited BCA's long-running success with Kraft's
ability to take risks and, more importantly, pull them off.
If this story were a documentary, there'd be short takes of
nearly a dozen Burlington leaders all saying the same thing:
BCA would not exist today without Kraft, despite her attempts
to redirect the spotlight. When BCA is praised, Kraft's name
is attached. When it's criticized, she is often targeted
personally.
This particular arts job also comes with political perils.
BCA is an arm of city government and whoever happens to be
running it, and Kraft is, technically, an annual appointee of
the mayor. She navigates it all with a highly developed sense
of direction and diplomacy.
``I love to see and engage with people who believe that the
arts are central to community life,'' Kraft said. ``And if I
can be a part of that process and move that forward and make
that more possible and attainable, then my heart sings.''
She's deeply loyal to Burlington: ``I cannot imagine doing
this anywhere else.''
Working the gallery opening at the BCA Center, Kraft
noticed immediately when Mayor Miro Weinberger walked in. She
asked her boss if he'd be willing to speak to the crowd, then
jumped into action to corral all the featured artists and
curators to start speeches before he had to leave, and gave a
glowing, on-the-spot introduction praising Weinberger's
support for BCA.
It was a calculated move on Kraft's part, honed from
decades of experience. But her words, delivered in a loud but
warm New York-accented alto, rang totally authentic.
Government Startup
When he became mayor of Burlington in 1981, Bernie Sanders
had an agenda. On it was a desire to ``make the arts more
accessible to all, regardless of social, economic or physical
constraints.'' But he faced a powerful board of aldermen,
known today as the Burlington City Council, who stymied his
attempts to hire staff and appoint department heads.
So Sanders created the Community and Economic Development
Office, along with a youth office and the Mayor's Task Force
on the Arts, to circumvent the board of aldermen's control.
Kraft was appointed to the cultural task force and became
its first paid employee in 1983, working out of a closet-size
office. Soon known as the Mayor's Arts Council, the group
started a concert series in Battery Park and cofounded the
Burlington Discover Jazz Festival with the Flynn Center for
the Performing Arts in 1985.
In 1990, the Mayor's Arts Council became an official city
department, renamed Burlington City Arts. Kraft was on the
board at the time but didn't become executive director until
1995. Like Fletcher Free Library, BCA derived only a portion
of its budget from taxpayers. Today, it gets 40 percent of
its $2.2 million operating budget from the city and 60
percent from philanthropy and outside grants.
Kraft had the requisite fundraising skills to make that
arrangement workable. As it turned out, she also had a knack
for recruiting young talent.
When Pascal Spengemann came to Burlington in 1995, planning
to stay for only a few months, he saw BCA's Firehouse Gallery
on Church Street and thought it was cool that there was art
on Burlington's main drag. BCA had converted the ground floor
of the historic firehouse into a gallery that same year.
Through the windows, he saw makeshift walls and paintings
hung with fishing line.
But one day during business hours, Spengemann went by and
the space was closed. So he went next door to city hall,
found Kraft, and convinced her to hire him to supervise the
gallery and keep its doors open.
Spengemann lobbied to take over the curatorial duties, and
after he put on a well-received test-run show, Kraft let him
take the reins.
``I was pretty green and looking for something to do, and
she really believed in me,'' Spengemann said. ``I felt really
supported by her.''
Under his supervision, the Firehouse Gallery began to gain
recognition. In 1998, the Burlington City Council approved a
proposal to renovate the old firehouse building into a visual
arts center, and the newly formed BCA Foundation launched its
first capital campaign. In 2004 the renovation was finished,
and in 2011 it was renamed the BCA Center.
Today, curator Heather Ferrell cites receiving grants from
the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts as evidence
that the BCA Center is respected in the broader contemporary
art community. Many considerations go into the shows the BCA
Center puts on throughout the year. Ferrell said they aim for
various levels of ``accessibility,'' meaning how much
interpretation to add so people can understand and enjoy the
work, and how much to challenge the audience.
She also tries to balance showing Vermont artists and
national artists, and integrating the two rather than having
a separate gallery for Vermonters as was done in the past.
For example, local artist Stella Marrs guest-curated the
current main-floor exhibit, ``Apocalypse Diet,'' at the BCA
Center, featuring Vermont and national artists.
Sara Katz started working at BCA in 1999, but it was after
she volunteered to help out in Kraft's garden that she got to
know the director. The two chatted, pulled weeds and began
what is now a 20-year working relationship.
``She's curious about people,'' said Katz, who has since
become the organization's assistant director. ``I was just,
like, a 22-year-old nobody at that time, and she wanted to
know how I thought.''
Today, Katz is BCA's behind-the-scenes force, making sure
administrative tasks are handled so Kraft has time to be the
face of the organization.
``You know, she's just this kind of public dynamo,'' Katz
said. ``She's really incredible with human relationships. She
just understands people in a really intuitive way, so it
makes a lot of sense for her to be out in the world as much
as possible.''
Filmmaker to Rainmaker
Kraft grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y., and majored in studio
art at the University of New Mexico. But, unsure what to do
after graduation, she fell in with ``a group of merry
pranksters,'' she said. Kraft moved to a farm in Bethel, VT,
as part of the back-to-the-land movement. Though she enjoys
gardening, she admitted it was a hard year.
``There was just no question I was not cut out to be a
farmer,'' Kraft said.
She started teaching an art class at a local high school
and met Robin Lloyd, who was teaching in nearby Rochester.
Lloyd was making films, which Kraft had never done before.
But they started working together, and Lloyd taught her the
medium. They both moved to Burlington, into the house on
Maple Street where Lloyd still lives today, and Kraft went
back to school at the University of Vermont, studying film
production in the communications department. (She also did
stints at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and Hampshire
College.)
Kraft and Lloyd were both influenced by the work of Maya
Deren, an experimental filmmaker whose work focused on
Haitian vodou. In 1973 the two took the first of many trips
to Haiti, where they made a short film about the country's
colorful painted buses.
Later, Kraft and Lloyd commissioned local artists to make
paintings that they then used in a 20-minute stop-motion
animated film, called ``Black Dawn,'' exploring Haitian
history. The French government bought copies for all of its
embassies; Kraft said it's the only movie of hers that has
ever made money. She and Lloyd founded a production company
called Green Valley Media in 1974; Kraft still sits on the
board.
Kraft also embarked on more personal filmmaking projects,
including a re-enactment of her mother's childhood in a
convent school in Ireland. Kraft called that still-unfinished
work her ``film in a can.'' She'd like to edit it someday,
but ``it's not something you can do on a weekend,'' she
noted. ``I mean, I would need a sabbatical, and they don't
have sabbaticals in the arts.''
In a way, making films helped prepare Kraft for her job at
BCA. ``In the early days . . . I would be petrified of being
onstage or, you know, introducing concerts at Battery Park,''
she said. ``People would push me out there.
``If you have a camera and a microphone, you have an excuse
to pretty much ask a lot of questions and get to talk to
people,'' Kraft said. Still, she added, ``There are days that
I go an entire day and literally, when I get home, I can't
speak. I'm, like, done. I have to go through that quiet time,
listen to music, listen to news, just transition out of the
day and also reflect.''
Kraft lives in East Charlotte with her husband, artist
Marvin Fishman, whom she met making films. The couple is
thinking of moving back to Burlington, where Kraft hasn't
lived since the 1990s. If they do it, she said, she'd
actually miss the commute, which marks a defined transition
between her job and her home.
Kraft doesn't always achieve work-life balance. Most
recently, she has lost sleep over the purchase of the new
building on Pine Street. A walk through the empty warehouse
that BCA now owns--9,000 square feet of which will be
converted into new studio space and a community room--reveals
just what a mammoth task this renovation will be. Especially
when you factor in BCA's commitment to making the building
net zero in energy consumption. Kraft said she hopes to get
it done in three years.
She's already started giving tours of the building and
reaching out to potential donors. ``She's very good at
establishing the vision, and she's very good at then asking
for people to support it,'' said Chris Thompson, a former BCA
Center curator and former executive director of Generator
maker space.
[[Page S2804]]
``Having done a lot of fundraising myself recently,'' he
added, it taught him that ``you have to believe passionately
in the mission. And if you believe strongly enough in the
mission, you're willing to ask anybody for anything.''
South End `Plan'
Kraft has often been compared to another local woman who
built a thriving arts organization: Andrea Rogers. She was
the founding executive director of the Flynn, instrumental in
transitioning it from a moribund movie theater to a restored
art-deco performing arts center. Rogers ran the Flynn for 29
years before retiring in 2010.
BCA focused on the visual arts because it was
underrepresented in Burlington's arts scene. Avoiding
duplication of the Flynn's performing arts programming and
classes was helpful to what Rogers described as a ``good
working relationship'' with BCA, citing their collaboration
in producing the annual Burlington Discover Jazz Festival.
``We were both dedicated to our own institutions,'' Rogers
said. ``There's no question about that. And I think, because
we were early leaders of our institutions, the both of us
could be charged with being too protective of our own
kingdoms. I'm sure I was considered that, and she probably
has been, too.''
It's a diplomatic way of acknowledging that Burlington's
arts community has seen some turf battles over the years. BCA
has run into resistance from the artists and business owners
along the Pine Street corridor--later dubbed the South End
Arts District--who were protective of their neighborhood and
fiercely opposed to any development that might threaten
scarce, affordable studio space. They rallied behind the
South End Arts and Business Association, which created and
still organizes Burlington's annual South End Art Hop.
Whether or not it was warranted, some believed that BCA--
and, by extension, Kraft--wanted to stake a claim in the
South End, perhaps because of the organization's city-
department status.
That came to a head with planBTV. In June 2015, the city
released a draft of a plan to redevelop the South End--the
postindustrial area of Burlington along Pine Street and Flynn
Avenue. BCA, with the help of a National Endowment for the
Arts grant, recruited artists to create works that would
engage the public and solicit comments on the proposed plan.
But in August, many of those artists became disenchanted
with the process and didn't think their voices had been
heard. They worried that a proposed zoning change to allow
more housing in the area would displace them, and they
believed BCA was complicit.
Amey Radcliffe, one of the artists who received funding for
a community engagement project, put it this way in a recent
email to Seven Days: ``I don't necessarily feel that the
artist/activists that emerged at that time were fully heard
or fully understood. If BCA were less under the purview of
the Mayor, we might see BCA taking more independent stands
and actions--less in-step with the Mayor's development
agendas for the area.''
Signs began to appear around the neighborhood, according to
local media reports, including ones that read, ``BCA: Will
you stand with the arts community to preserve industrial
zoning in the SEAD?'' At that year's South End Art Hop in
September, artists built a temporary cardboard house across
the street from ArtsRiot that was dubbed ``Miroville.''
Kraft was also the subject of some Art Hop protest art. One
of the buildings in the Howard Space--the warren of artist
studios at Pine and Howard streets--was topped with a large
sculpture depicting Weinberger holding puppet versions of
Kraft and the city's director of planning, David White, on
strings.
``I tried to buy it,'' Kraft said of the artwork. ``I stood
there that night, and I remember saying to people, `I do get
this. I understand it, you know? I'll take the criticism.'
But I also felt that BCA was misunderstood, and our role in
that planning.''
Relations have improved since then. SEABA's current
executive director, Christy Mitchell, said she's excited to
have another organization with a stake in the South End and
sees BCA as a potential ally in getting new signage and maps
pointing tourists to Pine Street. Radcliffe said she thought
the perception of BCA in the area was generally positive and
that the purchase of the building on Pine Street could
provide new opportunities for South End artists.
Steve Conant, owner of Conant Metal & Light and the Soda
Plant--and an early member of SEABA--said he'd been aware of
a ``turf war'' between the two organizations, though not when
he was directly involved. ``It's hard to complain about an
organization that anchors 30,000 square feet of real estate
and commits it to the arts,'' Conant said. ``That's the
biggest risk in the South End: the loss of real estate that
supports the arts.''
BCA's relationship with the city is a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it provides the organization with a significant
portion of its budget, covering staff and overhead costs. It
also provides easy connections with other city departments
and a larger stake in city decision making. On the other
hand, the public money opens the organization up to criticism
about how those funds are used. Dissatisfaction with
Weinberger generally casts a shadow on his appointees.
Kraft, one of the original members of the Sanders
administration, has another challenge: walking a line between
the passionate, activist tendencies of the community and the
bureaucratic nature of city government.
John Franco, once Sanders' assistant city attorney, has
represented opponents of the Weinberger administration in
court; Steve Goodkind, another original Sanders appointee who
headed up the Department of Public Works, ran against
Weinberger in 2015. Among the original group of Bernie
acolytes that former Seven Days columnist Peter Freyne called
the ``inner circle of Sanderistas,'' Kraft is the only one
still on the city payroll.
Lloyd is a longtime peace activist in Vermont and said that
has led to friendly disagreements between her and Kraft. For
example, BCA's annual Festival of Fools often lands on the
August anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in World War II.
``I said, `OK, Doreen, you're having a Festival of Fools,
but I'm going to walk down Church Street with ashes on my
head impersonating what happened in Hiroshima many years
ago,' '' Lloyd described with a laugh.
Because of their long-standing friendship, Lloyd said, she
and Kraft can usually work out a deal when their interests
collide. In the case of the Festival of Fools, Lloyd planned
her demonstration on the waterfront after the last festival
act had performed there.
The women agree to disagree on other controversial city
projects, too, such as the long-planned and much-delayed
construction of the Champlain Parkway through the South End.
``She's a very loyal person for what she gets involved
with,'' Lloyd said. ``I think she's a vital person for Miro,
because she has contacts with a lot of people he might not
have within the arts community and with the alternative
community.''
Lots of people confide in Kraft. ``Not that she gossips,''
said Lloyd, ``but she could certainly do a lot of gossiping
if she wanted to.''
``I'm just pretty open and honest with people,'' Kraft
said. ``Not that we haven't had knock-down, drag-out debate
on certain issues, you know, but I think people respect my
role in the city and that you can't have another identity
outside of BCA. It's just not possible. I can be active in
causes, but I certainly can't take sides, because Burlington
City Arts has to be neutral . . . I don't think I hold back
on my opinion; I just use it appropriately.''
Kraft said the BCA board has considered, multiple times,
whether staying associated with the city is the best path
forward.
``We've gone through that exercise to sort of really look
at ourselves at that time and to analyze the relationship
with the city,'' Kraft said. ``There have been mayors who
said, `You know, it's a good exercise, because are we holding
you back from becoming something you could be more of if you
weren't associated with the city?' ''
But the answer, Kraft said, is always no--the benefits
always outweigh the costs. BCA's new Pine Street studio space
proves her point.
``We would not exist if it wasn't for the platform of the
city,'' she said. ``Either we wouldn't exist or we'd be a
completely independent nonprofit that probably would have
accomplished a quarter of what we've accomplished today. I
think we stand on the shoulders of the city for what we've
done.''
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