L.A. Arts Community Needs a Political Champion

More than 150,000 visual, literary and performing artists live and work in the Los Angeles region. There are 1,000 active arts organizations here. The arts help drive major local industries like tourism, fashion, television and motion pictures. But in the city of Los Angeles, where most arts activity is concentrated, support for the arts is shamefully small, and the intersections between community life, political power and artistic expression are unfortunately rare.

When they do intersect, the result is seldom uplifting. After officials at Los Angeles International Airport papered over floor art depicting nudes at Terminal 4, the resulting controversy produced charges of censorship. More recently, an exhibit at the Watts Towers Art Center was yanked after city officials worried that its images of cops and gang members in same-sex dancing poses would provoke violence. Again, there were charges of censorship.

In both cases, not a word was heard from Mayor James K. Hahn or members of the City Council. Their silence points up the city’s embarrassing lack of political leadership when it comes to the arts--and the corresponding need for at least a deputy mayor of the arts.

In the current climate of uncertainty and fear, artists have a special contribution to make; there is no tradeoff for the indispensable cultural interchange their works encourage. “Artists can be a resource that dramatically improves the quality of life and economic vitality of a city,” says former City Councilman Joel Wachs, the city’s most persistent arts supporter.

But L.A.’s politicians “don’t understand ... that it’s politically beneficial to support the arts,” says former county Supervisor Ed Edelman, a strong arts advocate. “Funding for the arts is as important as demands for essential services.”

Los Angeles lags far behind in its public investment in the arts. According to a report by Americans for the Arts, New York spent more than 10 times--$117 million versus $11 million--the amount that Los Angeles did last year. Chicago, Dallas and Charlotte, N.C. also invested more in the arts than L.A.. Within California, Los Angeles spent $4.30 per capita on the arts in 2000, far behind San Francisco’s $28.85 and roughly half as much as San Diego’s $8.80. Recently, the Long Beach City Council unanimously approved a $1 million increase for its Public Corporation for the Arts, a hike of 133%, causing one city official to crow, “The political leadership realizes that Long Beach is poised to become a 21st century city of arts and culture.”

There is no reason why Los Angeles can’t, too. Yes, Sept. 11 has pushed security issues to the top of the agenda, and the economic slowdown means fewer public resources to foster the development of the arts in Los Angeles. But there are new political actors in town, from the mayor’s office to the Cultural Affairs Department to the City Council, and these officials--in particular, the mayor--can still demonstrate their commitment to the city’s cultural advancement in economically lean times.

For starters, Hahn could appoint artists to public commissions and citizen advisory groups, not just to arts-related panels. “We ask lawyers, engineers, bankers, and developers to get involved, why not the creative community?” questions Wachs. Instead of segregating the arts, they should be “marbled throughout the system,” which would add a new dimension of original thinking and problem-solving to all aspects of urban decision-making.

The mayor could, for the first time in the city’s history, appoint a deputy mayor for the arts. Currently, there is no citywide point of contact between the artistic community and the city’s power structure. The deputy mayor could provide one. A deputy mayor could work with such city departments as transportation, housing and public works to give our public spaces greater cultural impact.

Finally, the mayor could give the Cultural Affairs Department a more pro-active role in the city’s civic life by charging it to call an arts summit. Such a summit would explore and document the ways in which hundreds of artists and arts organizations already work with civic and neighborhood representatives not only to enhance L.A.’s aesthetic experiences, but also to prevent crime, assist in community development, teach in classrooms and provide social services. This baseline assessment could be the foundation for new collaborations and increased spending to support them.

There is a solid local precedent for such government involvement in the arts--the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. Laura Zucker, executive director of the L.A. County Arts Commission, says that among the five supervisors there is an “across-the-board acknowledgement that [the arts are] critical to the quality of life in the county.” The board has raised general-fund allocations to the arts from almost $900,000 in 1992 to more than $5 million this year. The “crown jewels” of the county’s cultural landscape--the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hollywood Bowl, the Music Center and John Anson Ford Amphitheater--are subsidized to the tune of $35 million. Each supervisor has an arts deputy who works closely with the L.A. County Arts Commission in making and carrying out policy. In addition to grants, technical assistance and public programs, the commission trains leaders for nonprofit arts organizations, supports folk and traditional arts and works with 82 school districts.

The county’s prominent role in the arts is in part a legacy of the late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, the mayor’s father, who joined Edelman as a key partner in successful efforts to donate the lot on which the Music Center is built and the property on which Disney Hall is now under construction. Edelman pushed to stabilize funding for LACMA after Proposition 13, the property-tax initiative, decreased county revenues and backed ballot initiatives that paid for renovations at the Hollywood Bowl and John Anson Ford theater. Similarly, the late Mayor Tom Bradley used his political clout to “midwife” the downtown Museum of Contemporary Art, secure the land on which the Geffen Contemporary sits, raise corporate money and push for tax mechanisms funding MOCA and the “Great Performances” series at California Plaza.

The relatively paltry spending of L.A. government on the arts is not strictly a government problem, however. The arts community itself shares some blame. After Proposition 13 and Reagan-era budget cuts, arts organizations retreated from the public sphere. The gulf between arts leaders and politicians was often only breached at gala fund-raisers. To remain viable, arts organizations relied on their own entrepreneurial efforts, marketing, direct mail, merchandising and private philanthropies. According to a recent Rand Corp. study, these tactics maintained the arts organizations’ existing audience but rarely evolved into strategies to overcome the barriers to participation among new audiences. Such isolation threatens arts organizations as much as it harms the community.

Local choreographer Lula Washington says, “You can’t always expect the people to come to our table. We have to go to their table.” Arts leaders might then discover that elected officials and civic leaders have a lot to teach them about generating audiences and support. Politicians are skilled at building networks of supporters out of diverse constituencies; their experiences in fund-raising and promotion could yield dividends for arts organizations. Fortunately, there is an emerging new guard of arts advocates, represented in organizations such as Arts for L.A. Claire Peeps, executive director of the Durfee Foundation, describes them as people in the arts who are “bilingual. They know how to speak to people in politics.”

In the midst of World War II, New York educator Rachel Davis DuBois first expressed the concept of cultural democracy, an idea with resonance for post-Sept. 11 L.A. “The welfare of the group,” she wrote, “means [articulating] a creative use of differences. ... This kind of sharing we have called cultural democracy. Political democracy--the right of all to vote--we have inherited. Economic democracy--the right of all to be free from want--we are beginning to envisage. ... But cultural democracy--a sharing of values among numbers of our various cultural groups--we have scarcely dreamed of. Much less have we devised social techniques for creating it.”

Despite the troubling times, politicians in Los Angeles have an opportunity to create a cultural democracy that would be a beacon to the nation, if not the world. By learning from other cities and institutions, and using the power of elected office, they can make the leap suggested by Davis DuBois--and dare to lead a city that elevates the arts.