According to the latest report of the Boston Foundation, if your small arts group's "vision either dissipated or lost its resonance with its audience or supporters", you should think about pulling the plug. Of course, you've thought of calling it quits before, but now a Major Player in the Boston Arts Scene is calling out to you with an expensive new study. Look deep into your heart. Consider how fruitless it all seems. Think of the burden that will be lifted from your shoulders if you answer the Boston Foundation's call for some small arts groups to die. No one wants to go first. But after that, it gets easier, and if enough groups expire, the ones that live on will be stronger and make Boston be seen as a world-class city. Wouldn't it be easier if groups went together, all at once? "The Small Arts Group Die-Off" is a contest between those groups which will perform their deaths in competition for a plate of crumbs to be consumed in the afterlife. $5 Kool-Aid proceeds will go to the Boston Foundation for their visionary work.

For More Info: Funeral Director: Ian MacKinnon 617-491-8971 artezani@verizon.net

Of course, only you can decide if it's time to have that special talk with your board of directors. We all want death with dignity. You can seize control of a difficult situation and let the fittest survive. The Boston Foundation is being radically honest with us. In the words of the, It is time to give up. You know who you are. The report said the smaller ones struggle more--it's so sad! Let us help the ones who decide to take their leave by making sure that they go out in STYLE, for once!

The Boston Foundation sees that with more small arts groups and less support, something's got to give. This is not the time to give people more encouragement; the Boston Foundation says innovative start-ups will step in after the die-off has taken place. The report has no secret psychology that is trying to shock small arts groups into new life. This is not a plea for more arts funding a la the "Day without Art" of some years back. Wouldn't it be amazing to plan and watch your own death, perhaps followed by a funeral, hearing the tributes and eulogies given to the little arts outfit that could, and did, until it couldn't anymore, except with more struggle? The ICA may be interested in hosting the various ashes of the various small arts groups in its permanent collection. "If the pie isn't growing, it gets more competitive"- Managing Director, BSO

"WHEN IT'S TIME TO GO, IT'S TIME TO GO" - John Silber on people living too long.