Peter Donnelly is leaving a profound legacy that touches every art form in Seattle

When Peter Donnelly came to Seattle as a management intern in 1964, he was a bright young man, armed only with energy and ideas and ambition. In the following 40 years, first at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and later at ArtsFund, he became a Seattle cultural icon.

There is no one who compares with him in terms of his breadth of influence and power on the cultural landscape.


		Dan DeLong / P-I
	While Peter Donnelly is retiring from ArtsFund at the end of the year, he definitely is not leaving Seattle's arts scene.

His legacy is profound, touching every art form in the city directly or indirectly, not only in terms of major capital projects, in Seattle and statewide, but also in the daily life of the city's arts organizations. Knowing everyone, he sits at the center, his office a clearinghouse, connecting one group to the other, one idea to the next.

"Peter has done more than anyone else for the arts," said Seattle Opera general director Speight Jenkins in a speech at a dinner in late October to honor Donnelly.

At the end of the year, Donnelly, 66, retires as president of ArtsFund, an umbrella fund-raising organization for King and Pierce county arts organizations.

"I've known Peter since he came to Seattle," said philanthropist Bagley Wright. "I was president of the Rep then, and the place was in turmoil. I had fired the general manager the year before, the artistic director the following year. Peter was very civilized, had good manners, was diplomatic and genial. Peter gave board members a sense that being at the Rep was fun when it was not. The only mistake he ever made was going to Dallas. (In between the Rep and Corporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFund, Donnelly spent 1986-1989 as producing director of the Dallas Theatre Center)."

His long list of achievements, Wright said, includes inroads he made in getting people not interested in the arts involved, securing corporate support for major capital projects and providing sound advice to people on where to give their money. "Peter will be hard to replace."

Ken Kirkpatrick, president of U.S. Bank Washington State and chairman of ArtsFund, which Donnelly has headed for the past 17 years, agrees. "We wanted someone with his personal charm, connection to the community and passion. Mayor Greg Nickels summed it up at a recent civic function: 'One listens to Peter Donnelly.' "

Some of his measurable accomplishments include helping draft legislation that created the Seattle Arts Commission in 1971; the construction of the Bagley Wright Theatre in 1983, the first major capital project for an arts group since the World's Fair in 1962; providing the idea for a blue-ribbon civic committee to focus on financial problems of arts groups that led to the $7.5 million National Arts Stabilization Fund in 1986; helping ensure the survival of the National Endowment for the Arts when it was under attack in Congress in the 1990s, particularly by securing the key support of then Sen. Slade Gorton.

He was a prime mover in 1991 in the formation of the statewide Building for the Arts program, which now totals $46 million for 150 arts capital projects, including millions of dollars for buildings in Seattle such as Benaroya Hall, On the Boards, Intiman Theatre, Phelps Center, Seattle Children's Theater and Leo Kreielsheimer Theatre at the Rep.

Donnelly restructured the Corporate Council for the Arts, which became ArtsFund, from an organization barely able to stand on its feet to one that is a model nationwide. It gives away millions of dollars to 75 arts organizations in the Puget Sound area. It obtains the money from its annual campaign (corporate donations and employee-giving programs) and income from various endowment funds totaling more than $10 million, which Donnelly initiated through his wide circle of influential friends and allies. That is, except the most recent, the Peter F. Donnelly Merit Fund, created on his behalf earlier this year in honor of his retirement; it now totals $1.2 million, with money still coming in.

He was instrumental in convincing the Bullitt sisters, Priscilla "Patsy" Collins and Harriet, to donate KING-FM to a consortium of ArtsFund, Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera, and the Kreielsheimer Foundation to donate the Century Building on Lower Queen Anne to ArtsFund.

Donnelly has long played a crucial, and often quiet, role in dozens of other projects around town by getting the right people in touch with one another and providing advice to seemingly legions of important and not-so-important arts people. He is the ultimate insider, known for his energy, affable charm, political savvy, discretion and indefatigable enthusiasm for the city and its culture.

"Peter sometimes get flak for being too powerful," said Susan Trapnell, managing director of ACT, who has known Donnelly for more than 25 years. "The fact is he doesn't have any power. This is the interesting thing. ArtsFund is a totally transparent organization with a very specific purpose and purview -- to raise money and send it out into the community at the discretion of the board, not him. The source of his power is his good advice. People listen to him and pay attention. They don't have to take it but are happier when they do. The object may be a particular project or private philanthropy about which he is very confidential. He is very good at putting people together who might share a purpose or vision. He is also a firm advocate of the glass half-full philosophy."

The Ford Foundation paid Donnelly, a stage manager and former actor ("I was lucky: I found out early how bad I was."), to take a look at Seattle and the fledgling Rep to see if he wanted to spend a year there as a management intern, a practically unknown job title in the mid-1960s. However, he already had been offered a job as manager at the newly founded Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence, R.I. "But why not look at Seattle?" he said 40 years later, recalling that moment. The trip was free and the West Coast foreign territory.

What ultimately attracted him was the "sense of possibility," with the Rep and the city itself. "It was a place on the move, just beginning to feel its own muscle, ready to take its place in the world. Anything you could contribute was welcome: It was very hungry for talent. I thought about the job very hard, knowing the decision was important. It became life-altering, and I never regretted it.

"When I arrived, Seattleites apologized for the weather, lack of good restaurants and lack of cultural opportunities," he said. "Now they don't apologize for much of anything. There were only a few professional art venues: Seattle Symphony, which paid its musicians most of the time but not all the time; Seattle Art Museum, a boutique Asian Art Museum, and Ladies Musical Club, which brought individual artists to town. There was also Cecilia Schultz (an independent impresario who presented noted musicians). The Henry (Art Gallery) was sleepy, and the Frye (Art Museum) another boutique operation. Theater here was either a touring company from New York or at the University of Washington.

"Fast forward to 75 professional arts organizations in a couple of generations -- a source of pride because they are of high quality. There is almost no story like Seattle in the United States. It became a very good arts community quickly because of its ambition, basic optimism about the ability to get things done, people wanting to be a player, immense curiosity. There is texture here. In addition to major organizations in every art form, unprecedented in a city of this size, we have second and third tiers of theaters, music groups and visual arts. Dance is less highly developed but it is coming along. These groups add to the ecology of the city, as they do in Chicago, Boston, New York."

Donnelly has long maintained a national presence, with his participation on the boards of various organizations. When the Bush administration was looking for a new chairman for the National Endowment of the Arts, the American Arts Alliance suggested Donnelly as one of four possibilities for the job. However, Donnelly quickly turned down the potential offer, saying, "I'm flattered to be considered but I am happy here. There is still a lot of work to be done. Why leave one of the best arts communities in the country?"

Seattle is known for its insistence on due process, in which everyone gets their turn at the podium. Likewise for the arts: Most arts organizations are more happy to cooperate with one another than not. Donnelly was a key factor in establishing that civic sensibility.

Early on at the Rep, Donnelly was approached by a civic leader who wanted advice about starting another professional theater in town (A Contemporary Theatre, now ACT). Donnelly was uncertain: "We were having such terrible times, finding audiences, going from one crisis to the next, to help seemed dangerous to ourselves. But I found I couldn't say no, and I lent our mailing list. Whatever we had in assets we were not using, we lent. Better to hang together than alone."

The economy has not been kind to not-for-profit, or to for-profit, arts organizations recently, with deficits where there used to none and empty seats. Donnelly is not pessimistic. Good times and bad times go in cycles, and empty seats, in many cases, are a product of the huge increase in the number available because of new facilities and increased performances. "You can't add 3,000 seats a night in a city the size of Seattle quickly without encountering at same point a little difficulty."

Donnelly may be retiring but he is not withdrawing from public life. The Seattle law firm Perkins Coie has given him an office downtown. "I want more time to myself, more time to travel." He has said yes to invitations to join various corporate and arts boards and will participate in the exploration of a public initiative for cultural organizations -- not just the arts -- that would increase the amount of public monies available to them.

"I am going to give all kinds of advice, read fortunes and live a more serendipitous life."

P-I music/dance critic R.M. Campbell can be reached at 206-448-8396 or rmcampbell@seattlepi.com.

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