[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

                                 ______
                                 

                        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.''

                          ____________________