City Deal Enables Craft and Folk Art Museum to Reopen

The Craft and Folk Art Museum, a 34-year-old private institution that closed under financial duress at the end of 1997, will reopen Feb. 11 under the administration of the city of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. The partnership will revive the museum, but on a significantly reduced scale.

The annual operating budget of the museum will drop from $1.5 million to about $350,000 a year, although administrators hope to augment that sum with private donations and corporate sponsorship of special projects. The beleaguered institution will operate in a smaller space as well. The museum had expanded into two floors of rented property across the courtyard from its original building on Wilshire Boulevard but now will be restricted to its permanent facility--owned by Craft and Folk Art Museum Associates, a private support group.

Under terms of the merger--a 10-year agreement that was finalized in December but only recently revealed--CAFAM Associates will lease the building to the city for $1 a year; maintain the facility, at an estimated cost of $50,000 a year; and contribute a minimum of $100,000 a year for cultural programs and exhibitions.

In return, the Cultural Affairs Department will staff the museum and take charge of programming but commit no new funds to the project. Although the department will spend $217,000 a year on programs and staff at the museum, the money will come from the existing folk art division, said Adolfo V. Nodal, the department’s general manager.

Patrick Ela, a former executive director of the museum, proposed and facilitated the merger, on behalf of CAFAM Associates, Nodal said. “I was very supportive of it because it’s important to maintain this facility in the city. This works for us because our division of folk arts has been providing programs all over the city, but it hasn’t had its own building,” he said.

The arrangement is unique in that the city will run programs in a building it does not own, but the merger with CAFAM is only the latest of many public / private partnerships for the the Cultural Affairs Department. “We started a partnering program six years ago to try to deal with facilities that were dying on the vine,” Nodal said. Among other moribund outposts that have been revived, the Los Angeles Photography Center and the Lankershim Photography Center now operate with the help of community groups and corporate sponsorship, he said.

The Craft and Folk Art Museum was launched in 1965 by Edith Wyle as the Egg and the Eye, a restaurant and crafts shop. It was reorganized as a nonprofit museum in 1973 and flourished through the mid-1980s. But ambitious expansion plans had to be curtailed, and the museum lay dormant during a $5.5-million renovation in the early 1990s. The museum reopened in 1995 but was in debt and lacked the planned restaurant that might have brought much-needed income. The facility was closed at the end of 1997. Three months later, its collection was sold at auction for $282,164--less than the estimated value of $300,000 to $500,000.

Although the museum will begin its new life on a shoestring budget, Nodal said he is confident that it will flourish. “We have some beautiful shows lined up,” he said. First on the schedule, Feb. 11-April 30, is “Cranbrook: Postopia,” featuring art, craft and design produced by artists in residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

“Fernando Ortiz,” celebrating the work of the pioneering Cuban cultural anthropologist, is planned for May 28-Sept. 4. Other exhibitions include “Carnivale,” featuring photographs and costumes from carnivals around the world (Oct. 8-Jan. 15, 2000); “Girls’ Lowrider Bicycles” (Oct. 26-Nov. 4) and “National Open Competitive Craft Exhibit” (Jan. 27-April 29, 2000).