Fritz Friedman, San Diego Arts’ Man of the Hour
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San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Fritz Friedman
Fidel Castro said, “Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour.” Fritz is definitely the man of the hour to ensure that San Diegans in fine arts and the performing arts benefit from California’s significant investments in rebuilding arts communities devastated by the Covid pandemic and expanding an arts labor force to sustain future economic growth.
California allocated $600 million in its 2021/2022 budget to enable more than 500 arts and cultural organizations to rebound from almost two years of closures during the ongoing pandemic. Having shown political biceps in fending off a recall election with two-thirds of the State on his side, Governor Gavin Newsom flexed those muscles on October 10, 2021 when he signed the California Creative Workforce Act (SB628) to provide job training and opportunities to workers in the arts.
Arts and Culture Commissioner Friedman adheres to a precise definition of a City Commissioner. “Commissioners are all government-appointed volunteers who are charged with recommending cultural and artistic policies for the City of San Diego.” He elaborates: “The Board works to support the mandate of the Mayor and his staff to ensure fair, equitable representation in all arts programs, policies and funding to the diverse communities. Being aware of the systemic lack of equity which exists in our society, the Commission is also especially sensitive to the needs of the underrepresented.”
He will fulfill his Commissioner duties with keen awareness of the aspirations of artists and cultural organizations among the estimated 210,000 Fil-Ams (Pew Research, 2019) living in America’s Finest City. “One area I will focus on is making sure that the substantial Filipino American community in San Diego has access to the programs and funding which the Commission has available, wherever appropriate,” Fritz pledges.
Yet, he observes, “I have discovered that a lot of the Filipino groups do not even know that the Commission exists and that it is available to help in whatever way it can. I hope to help change that.”
Fritz welcomes input from constituents, who may reach him at arts@sandiego.gov.
Fritz Friedman
Totally Occupied in Retirement
At a spry 71 years of age, Fritz is retired only from his former Culver City office at Sony Pictures, which he occupied as a senior executive for many of his 34 years in various divisions of the company. He serves as President of The Fritz Friedman Co., his production and marketing consulting firm. His list of clients starts with Sony Pictures and extends to Invoke, Electric Entertainment, and Parrot Analytics.
Nonprofits pluck his heart strings. He currently sits on the Board of Trustees of his high school alma mater, Boston College High School, and the Board of Directors of Loyola Productions, the global Jesuit production company and California Humanities, the California arm of the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he was appointed by then Governor Jerry Brown in 2014. Since retiring in 2014, Fritz has belonged to The California Commission for the Humanities as an appointee of Governor Jerry Brown.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Fritz Friedman, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta
Fritz is active member in the alumni groups of Vassar College, where he received his BA, and The Annenberg School for Communications at The University of Pennsylvania, the source of his MA in communications.
As for fitting the mold of a sedentary retiree, he says, “As far as retirement is concerned, I am not [like] ‘most people’, and I will stop being active in the world only when I think it’s time. And that time is not now.”
When he’s not in San Diego or consulting in Los Angeles, he accompanies his internist anesthesiologist husband, Jeffrey Krebs, MD, to Ironman competitions around the world.
It all comes back to the wisdom he gained from a lifetime of feeding his interest in the arts. “Arts and culture are important in all cities because of their transcendent power to transform individuals and communities, especially in diverse cities like San Diego.”
Fritz enacts his belief that “when we are exposed to other cultures and the historical context is made clear, people begin to understand people who may superficially be different. But with knowledge, the basic humanity of all of us can come through to create a better appreciation of other cultures.”
Fritz Friedman has always had a strong appreciation of not only Filipino culture, but also of different cultures in general that will help make San Diego the national model of a multicultural city in a century of tremendous, and sometimes tumultuous, shifts in demographics and attitudes.
Anthony Maddela writes fiction, fills his bird feeders and enjoys his family and friends in and outside of Los Angeles.
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