COMMENTARY : Lannan Shift Hits the Heart of L.A. Art

When a 1959 sculpture by Edward Kienholz satirizing a legendary Los Angeles art dealer and curator came up for auction in 1989 at Sotheby’s, having stood for years in the home of an influential L.A. collector, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the sculpture would be whisked away into a European museum or another private holding.

Kienholz has always had his largest following in Europe, while free-standing early works are coveted by private collectors. Certainly no local museum could step forward to capture this historically significant work of art for public display in the city in which it had been made.

“Walter Hopps Hopps Hopps” sold for $176,000, a record auction price for a work by the artist. Bidding had been fierce. And the winner was: the Lannan Foundation, newly established in L.A. Without fanfare--without even so much as a formal announcement--the foundation had done what no other institution in town had had the conviction and wherewithal to do.

Now, those days are over. The stunning recent news that the Lannan Foundation has ceased its multimillion-dollar program in collecting contemporary art ranks as a 6.6 for the American art world. It’s a devastating blow.

It’s a loss not just of cash in a beleaguered market that lately has shown hopeful signs of picking up (although the impact of that sudden drain should not be minimized). Far more important is the relationship to the larger profile of Lannan art programs, which had hitherto been widely regarded as a rare model of enlightened philanthropy in the visual arts.

First, let me begin with full disclosure by acknowledging a past affiliation with the Lannan Foundation. Between 1987 and 1989, until I joined the staff of The Times, I served on the Lannan’s consultative three-member Art Advisory Committee, principally advising on exhibition grants and occasionally discussing collecting parameters. (I was not involved in the acquisition of the Kienholz.) The foundation, then headquartered in Lake Worth, Fla., had decided to reconfigure its program and, most dramatically, to relocate to Los Angeles.

With an endowment then in excess of $110 million, the options were many. Still, one central attitude was most appealing--and frankly refreshing--about this complicated and audacious effort.

In deciding on components for a program in the contemporary visual arts (Lannan also sponsors a literary program and a range of charitable activities), one crucial question always stood front and center: How can a philanthropic undertaking best support artists? The answer to that question was the test for every program idea proposed, and it has been the key to the foundation’s accomplishments.

A competitive program of exhibition grants to museums and nonprofit spaces was one significant way to assist living artists through the public display of their work, and it was launched early on. With the eventual construction of a modest but exquisite gallery of its own at its new offices in an industrial park southeast of Marina del Rey, which opened in 1990, exhibitions organized in-house or brought from other museums became a staple. And plans to help underwrite publishing in art criticism also were developed in order to enhance the generally weak climate of public dialogue in which art is made.

From the start, though, the centerpiece of the Lannan Foundation has been the development of its collection of postwar art. It was simply understood: There is no more important demonstration of commitment and support for an artist than the acquisition of his or her work.

This pivotal understanding was the one thread of continuity between two generations of Lannan philanthropy in the visual arts. The foundation had been started in 1960 by J. Patrick Lannan, a Chicago financier who had begun collecting about four years before. At his death in 1983, several thousand works had been acquired.

That collection could be most politely described as being of mixed quality. Like a lot of first-generation self-made millionaires, Lannan’s enthusiasm for art far outpaced his eye.

He made some terrific purchases--an important 1944 Robert Motherwell, a spectacular 1958 Clyfford Still, a vaporous 1964 Agnes Martin line painting, Frank Stella’s monumental 1964 copper-stripe painting, a wonderful 1969 diptych by Alfred Jensen, two Brice Mardens from 1970-71, an early Mike Kelley wall sculpture and more--but they were in the distinct minority.

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Clearly, if the elder Lannan wasn’t knowledgeable about the history of modern and contemporary art, he did know that he liked artists. He liked their independence from the herd and their insistence on a freely inventive voice. He supported that spirit by acquiring their work.

This became the platform for the second, sadly short-lived phase of the foundation’s collection. Lannan’s son, J. Patrick, Jr., sought to sharply raise the level of quality without lowering the focus on the guiding spirit. By hiring a professional staff and making a string of notable acquisitions, including substantial bodies of work by artists both internationally famous and under-known, he was succeeding in the noble aim.

That’s over now. The decision to stop collecting and to transfer those funds (some $2 million annually) to charities for the poor is hard to understand. As with any family foundation, it’s impossible to calculate the familial dynamic that likely played a role. Nor should worthy philanthropic activities be pitted against one another.

Nonetheless, the sudden shift away from a 30-year tradition of collecting art inescapably represents a public loss of faith in art’s power. Lannan says its exhibition grant program will remain in place, along with its own series of shows and its underwriting of published art criticism. There are no plans to disperse the collection that has been built.

Those pledges are all to the good. Still, it’s not too much to say that the heart has been torn from the Lannan Foundation’s activities in contemporary art. It’s a tragedy for the art life of L.A.