“When Minnesota Orchestra leaders learned they had the chance to bring the superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Orchestra Hall—for the first time in 15 years—they gasped, said Dianne Brennan, the orchestra’s vice president of advancement,” writes Jenna Ross in Sunday’s (7/23) Star Tribune (Minneapolis). “So Brennan called her contact at Ameriprise Financial…. In June, Yo-Yo Ma took the stage. Inside the program, a message from Ameriprise: ‘We are honored to sponsor this exceptional event …’ Corporate sponsorships help Minnesota orchestras, theater companies and museums in big and small ways…. Delta Air Lines sponsored the Guthrie Theater’s summer musical ‘Sunday in the Park with George.’ Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank is backing artist-designed minigolf at the Walker Art Center. Bremer Bank was behind the recent production of ‘West Side Story’ at Ordway Center. [After] this summer’s controversy over Delta and Bank of America pulling their funding from the Public Theater in New York … Guthrie artistic director Joseph Haj worried that the episode would have a broader, chilling effect.… In interviews this month, leaders of Minnesota arts organizations said that so far, they’ve seen little change. But the controversy spotlights the growing importance of companies’ marketing dollars to art institutions’ bottom lines.”
Posted July 26, 2017
