Offsite: For more information on the Madison Art Center expansion debate, first check out the museum's home page, which gives an overview of the museum's history and collection at its current civic center location. Then have a look at the Overture Foundation, which provides a great deal of information on the Cesar Pelli project, including design plans and renderings. To get involved in the movement opposing the museum's construction, see the People's Art District's extensive site.

In 1998 a Madison, Wisconsin, businessman named Jerry Frautschi did something remarkable. The textbook-printing magnate announced that he would provide funding--eventually totaling $100 million--for the construction of an arts complex on a mostly city-owned block downtown. The gift is huge: it equals the NEA's entire budget, or two-thirds of Madison's annual tax revenues. But it is not quite a no-strings-attached donation. In truth, it dangles from one rather large rope: Frautschi is the sole donor, and he has given the money to his own organization, the Overture Foundation, which will determine how it is spent. The public-private arrangements typical for a project of this scale are not required.

This does not play well in Madison, where strong traditions of farm-and-labor progressivism and 1960s radicalism underpin civic life. Here phrases like "public oversight," "democratic process," and "answerable to the electorate" are used with neither irony nor cynicism, and concentrated wealth is deeply suspect.

Most Madisonians support Over-ture (local government and the press included), but a committed opposition has shown little reticence about looking this gift horse in the mouth. An understandable resistance to change fuels some complaints. Dotty Dumplings Dowry, the best beer-and-burger joint in town, will be demolished; and the New Loft teen center, the heart of Madison's under-21 music scene, is being displaced. But the strongest objections are more complex.

Despite Madison's many amenities--in 1996 Money magazine ranked it the best place in America to live--the city of 210,000 has an inferiority complex. Its architecture is symptomatic: aside from some handsome university buildings and George Post's monumental 1917 capitol, Madison is built in unremarkable Midwestern vernacular. Although Frank Lloyd Wright lived at nearby Taliesin, the city's only significant Wright building is his 1951 Unitarian Church.

Overture determined that hiring a big-name architect could put Madison on the architectural map. Visions of Bilbao danced in many heads, and the project received bids from such luminaries as Fumihiko Maki, Polshek Partners, SOM, Robert A. M. Stern, and I. M. Pei. But the foundation opted for a master of artful compromise: Cesar Pelli, known for iconic yet urbane statements including New York's World Financial Center, Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers, and Los Angeles's Pacific Design Center. "I avoid cultivating a personal style," Pelli explains, "because if I did so, I could not respond to the needs and opportunities of each project."

Pelli revealed his design in May 2000: a city block of glass with complicated massing and simple geometric forms. He cleverly shoehorned theaters, galleries, lecture halls, rehearsal spaces, and offices onto the tight site. The design incorporates the historic Oscar Mayer Theatre and the facade of a corner department store, both from the 1920s.

Madison's response was generally positive, if not quite ecstatic, but complaints soon emerged. Doing his best Howard Roark, a local architect scoffed at preserving "products of an era that valued plagiarism and pretension more than creativity and design integrity." The more widely held opinion was the opposite: Pelli had too radically altered the Madison streetscape. Brian Standing, a county planner and video documentarian who is the unofficial spokesperson of the People's Art District--as the opposition to Overture has dubbed itself--sees Pelli's design as a Modernist throwback: "It's a big giant glass building that's gonna stick out like a sore thumb."

Overture, however, is not a monumental Lincoln or Kennedy Center. The design is uncommonly respectful of its surroundings, unlike typical performance halls with ugly utilitarian rears. "All around the block we were careful to surround the building with rooms with windows--and life behind the windows," Pelli says.

But Overture's critics are not concerned with lack of presence on side streets. They're worried about an overabundance of it on State Street--a thriving, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use mile connecting the capitol to the University of Wisconsin, and considered by most to be the soul of the city. Overture is being framed as part of Madison's wider downtown renewal effort. But as Standing points out, "State Street is already what every other city in North America is trying to create." Even now, martinis are replacing Miller High Lifes as upscale bars and restaurants colonize the funky downtown, attracting affiuent suburbanites.

Although Frautschi asserts that his gift "provides the opportunity to create state-of-the-art arts facilities that will reinforce the role of the arts in our community's life," the most concerted attacks have come from artists. One local artist was quoted as saying, "I am part of an arts community that exists in Madison, but it must not be the same arts community to which Mr. Frautschi donated his money." She predicted that it would make Madison "an evermore impossible city in which to live as a struggling artist."

Critics charge that Overture will cater to elite patrons of symphonies and operas, or--worse--consumers of middlebrow traveling productions of Riverdance or Cats. They believe that Overture's bricks-and-mortar priorities belie its high-rent biases. "The thing that struck me about Frautschi's gift is the incredible lack of imagination," Standing says. "If I had $100 million to spend, I would have put it in an interest-bearing account and put out $6 million in arts grants every year, forever. That would have utterly changed the cultural face of Madison."

The prickliest aspect of Overture's development was the planning process. A handpicked committee did the preliminary work; by the time Overture invited public comment in a series of town halls, the fundamental questions of siting and space programming had already been determined. "Overture did what they had to: give the appearance that they were listening," Standing says. "But none of the major decisions were ever up for discussion. And that was deliberate."

In many ways Overture has actually been quite responsive to critics' concerns. In addition to design and program changes--including increasing gallery space for local artists and the renovation and preservation of the Oscar Mayer Theatre--Overture added other efforts: Frautschi is funding countywide arts grants; retiring a nearby theater consortium's debt; providing funds for the children's museum; helping the New Loft teen center acquire new space; and funding a study to set up affordable studio, incubator, and gallery spaces for local artists.

But for all of Overture's good-neighborliness, it cannot help being what it is: a powerful private foundation wielding vast funds. Opponents--noting Overture's use of city property and the city's use of eminent domain--suggest that by allowing the privatization of the public realm, the city has sold out the public trust.

"It's presumptuous to expect that a private gift for a publicly approved purpose should be treated the same way as a taxpayer-supported project," Overture project manager George Austin argues. Frautschi dislikes publicity and is no urban planner, so he entrusted the job to Austin, a straightforward and manifestly qualified man who spent 15 years as Madison's planning and development director. "Overture will add an additional $100 million-plus of civic and cultural facilities, all of which will be owned and managed by the public. That's a pretty good deal."

So far Overture has met nearly every complaint with grace, understanding--and more money. This only fans the fire, as critics accuse Overture of trying to buy their complaisance. "I have enjoyed the arts all my life," Frautschi responds, "and as a lifelong Madisonian, I'm thrilled to help address a community need and be a major contributor to a healthy downtown and region." Whether Madison will say "thank you" to a generous gift given on big money's terms remains to be seen.