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Ms grant/36
The advertisement for that position included the requirement: "able to leap tall buildings at a single bound." Dana Chalberg, the Building's administrator since October, hasn't yet been asked to do that. But she is asked, daily, about the use of the Building's five gallery spaces, its slide registry of women's art, its graphics lab, its performance space, its cafe. She is responsible for seeing that rental spaces are indeed rented out, that the Building is staffed up to seven days and six nights a week, that the sound system and lights are in working order for concerts, dances, plays, readings, conferences and meetings, that the Building's membership is steadily expanded, that press releases go out, that we pay our bills.
Our bills. The Building's finances are the chronic worry, as is the case with most institutions outside the patriarchy. Our chief sources of income have been tuition, membership and small benefits at the Building. (Our one large benefit was the August 1975 Building Women concert, with Chris Williamson, Holly Near, Lily Tomlin, Margie Adam and Meg Christian; organized by the Building's coordinator, Cheryl Swanneck. This financed our move to Spring Street, and the extensive renovation of the premises. That is, it paid for the materials. The Building staff, the FSW and hundreds of volunteers did all the work.) In the past two years, we have received NEA and CAA grants for specific projects and for equipment (e.g., for an environmental exhibition of Chicana culture, a historical exhibition of the 1893 Chicago Woman's Building, for the Graphics lab).