The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra is in hawk for over half a million dollars. Enter the benevolent provincial government to save the day and pay-off last year's deficit.

The province will erase the orchestra's red ink with a $566,000 cheque on the condition that the WSO raise $3 million over four years. That is in addition to a $730,000 operating grant and a $72,000 touring grant the province awarded the WSO last year from the Manitoba Arts Council. Canada Council pitched in another $780,000. The Orchestra runs an annual budget of about $6 million.

The sweetheart deal is good news for the WSO but leaves a bitter taste for taxpayers who fear the government-to-the-rescue routine will become the precedent set for other mismanaged arts organizations.

To their credit, the WSO is working toward a $10 million endowment fund that would partially release their reliance on taxpayer dollars. But what measures has the WSO taken to restore a balanced chequebook today

When the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) was pressed for money a few years ago, it took stock of its internal operations and implemented some modest reforms.

The WAG cut costs by contracting-out security management; persuading one employee to take early retirement; eliminated a "senior management position" and other support jobs; and reducing hours in two positions

Altogether six jobs were eliminated. This is unfortunate for the laid-off staff in the short term. But in the long term, it sets an important and positive precedent for the arts community as a whole.

Just look at the positions eliminated. In almost every case, they were "support staff" positions. The cuts saved about $500,000 over two years - or, put another way, 6.5% of WAG's $7.8 million budget for the same period.

The Art Gallery has done itself, its patrons and its sponsors an important service. Their self-inflicted economies show that the arts community can survive the lean and mean '90s with less and less support from the taxpayer and still create, display, and promote art. If arts bureaucracies can become as lean and mean as the world around them, they can survive and prosper without government life-support.