Five leaders of cultural L.A. weigh the city's past, progress and its potential

THE ARTS COMMUNITY IN LOS ANGELES has always seemed to exist somewhere in the shadows of the glitz, glamour and even scandals of the Hollywood entertainment world. But with the opening of the Getty Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the appointment of conductor Gustavo Dudamel to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the numerous theater world-premiere offerings and the emergence of the Los Angeles Opera, the "city of the future" is once again trying to establish itself as an internationally recognized cultural center. To explore these changes and discuss the challenges and issues facing arts institutions, The Times recently brought together the leaders of five major institutions in the city. Participating in the roundtable with Times editors and writers were: Deborah Borda, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn.; Plácido Domingo, general director of Los Angeles Opera; Michael Govan, director and chief executive of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Michael Ritchie, artistic director of Center Theatre Group, which includes the Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theatre; and James N. Wood, president and chief executive of the Getty Trust. Nearly all of them came to Los Angeles from the East Coast less than three years ago and discovered, to their surprise, a landscape ripe for development. Following is a partial transcript.

Question: Could each of you talk about what attracted you to Los Angeles?

Govan: In the visual arts and particularly in contemporary art, L.A. has emerged very recently as one of the major centers of art production -- and it's on the rise. There's momentum. The trend line here is up. Artists are fantastic indicators of cultural growth of great cities. In many cities, when artists come in, real estate does, or cultural institutions.

Having spent so much time in New York [most recently as head of the Dia Art Foundation], with a more Euro-centric approach, you can palpably feel -- in Los Angeles -- this connection to Latin America and to Asia. You feel a balanced perspective of the world situation.

And finally, there's a lot to do here; it's in the process of being made, as a place, culturally. When I first got here we had one of these conversations, and people were standing up and saying, "Well, L.A. already is a cultural capital." And the fact is, it's not by some of the standards. I think that's what was attractive -- that its future was not certain but that its future was uncertain. So that thrill of the uncertainty was as much of it as anything.

Wood: Well, the appeal to me was very selfish: There was a chance for a new life, an unexpected life. After two years of retirement, I didn't think that L.A. was going to be my home. For both my wife and I, actually, it's the ideal place to be at this moment. I've had the good fortune to spend time in New York and in Chicago [after being president of the Chicago Art Institute], and if one is going to be an American patriot, as I consider myself, then you have to know the third layer of this school.

At Getty, I knew I would have to learn at a tremendous pace, and frankly, at my age, that's really exciting. And I have not been disappointed. It's an institution with all kinds of potential, a short track record -- a good one. Many mistakes, many successes. So how it relates to Los Angeles was an opportunity to sort of learn in overtime. And the other really appealing factor, beyond the artists and whatnot, was the people running the other visual arts institutions. I realize that's only one small piece of the cultural scene here, but they're all younger than me, they're all smarter than me, and it's a great community. So the odds of success are very good here.

Domingo: Los Angeles has been, for me, a constant in my life. Whatever happens, I always come back to Los Angeles. It's a city where everybody, everything is developing -- in the museums, in the Philharmonic, with the music, in the Ahmanson. Everything is growing. I thought the relationship with Hollywood was something that we could use -- and that we have been using -- to a great success.

The people are proud of the city. I think people are really helping. In many cases you see that many people give money in order to make a tax deduction; I don't see that as much here. They really love the company, they really demonstrate it by helping.

One of the great things about Los Angeles is that -- even though any time I'm here I have to work -- more than in any other place, I have the feeling always that I'm on vacation, don't ask me why. [Laughs.]

Ritchie: What interested me in coming up here originally was the job that was in front of me, the challenge of that particular job. As you can imagine, having spent almost 30 years living in New York [and as head of the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts], I had an imbalanced view of Los Angeles and New York, which is maybe unfair. The more I went through the process -- the more I spent time thinking about Los Angeles -- the more I realized that it is a city that is going through an enormous change, and in many ways the impacts in the culture are leading that change.

There was a lot about the city that became exciting to me. I don't understand the city at all, and I don't think I ever will. But I have become interested in it, being part of the cultural scene and being part of this conversation, the dialogue.

Borda: I was running the oldest musical organization in the world [the New York Philharmonic], and there were three things that really attracted me to Los Angeles -- a surprise for me. The critical mass for me was: possibility, people and places.

The possibility goes back to when I was 8 years old and I was given the most magnificent birthday gift -- I was taken to Disneyland. It's every child's dream. I remember I got here from New York, and it was intoxicating. I had never seen a palm tree! There was just this sense of everything is possible: Whatever you dreamed of was possible. That's not true of every place.

In terms of people, it was actually two people who convinced me: Esa-Pekka Salonen and Frank Gehry.

And all the possibilities: I thought of the possibilities -- if we got Disney Concert Hall, and if we used it to really reinvent not just the Los Angeles Philharmonic but the entire concept of what an orchestra of the 21st century can do, what an orchestra of the 21st century can be.

Q: Los Angeles, like so many large metropolises, is becoming a city of growing income and cultural disparities. How are you as institutions addressing this dual reality of a city in which there are very wealthy people who consume culture, along with a huge, growing class of people who've never set foot in any of your institutions?

Borda: One of the issues that we all deal with is the balancing act between being an artistic institution and a social service institution. If we don't protect the values of excellence and innovation, we will take our institutions down.

We spend a lot of time thinking about this. We cannot provide music education in every single school -- we'd love to, but that's probably not the best use of what we do. It came to us that we could be conveners, if we could take full advantage of where we now sit in the city in terms of a great musical organization, a great orchestra, the Hollywood Bowl, all the things that we do. If we could use that to bring together the many different fabrics of the community and play that role of a convener, that would be the best way that we could use the power and the excellence of this institution.

We made a very determined statement in the selection of our new music director, who, at the time I think, had just turned 26. Someone who speaks Spanish. Some 51% of the people in L.A. speak Spanish.