Arts Cubbyhole in Midst of Tug of War

At the state Capitol recently, two Senate and Assembly subcommittees began fighting over a one-room office in Van Nuys.

The office, which houses the California Arts Council’s three-woman regional staff, does not look capable of raising an eyebrow, much less spawning a controversy. Tucked away at the end of a dark hallway at the Van Nuys State Office Building, it is so modest that one of the staffers spent her own money buying posters to cover the blank walls.

Actually, the space was designed as a conference room for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control staff next door until the state Department of General Services told the Arts Council it could lease the cubbyhole.

When the Arts Council moved in earlier this year, however, it triggered protest from some who say Van Nuys is not exactly a mecca for artists and therefore is an inappropriate location.

Waters Leads Charge

Leading the charge was Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who insisted at an Assembly committee hearing that the office, which serves all of Southern California, should be in a more centralized location. Waters echoed the desires of the Legislature, which last year stipulated that the Los Angeles office should be located where minorities could reach it. Just exactly what that meant, however, was left to interpretation.

Waters, during hostile questioning of Arts Council Director Marilyn Ryan at the hearing, asserted that a location in central Los Angeles would be more accessible to the city’s arts community and also to minority arts groups in such areas as South Central and East Los Angeles, Whittier and Downey.

State Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys), however, is just as determined to protect the Arts Council’s Van Nuys address. Van Nuys is, after all, a part of the City of Los Angeles, the senator notes, and besides, the space is cheap.

Both in Key Posts

The two legislators’ opinions are important because Waters chairs the Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee and the Robbins chairs the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review subcommittee, both of which scrutinize the Arts Council’s budget each year.

Last month, Waters’ subcommittee told the Arts Council to move closer to the center of the metropolitan area. Last week, Robbins’ subcommittee instructed the Arts Council to stay put.

“It’s not going to be moved, period,” Robbins promised this week.

If the subcommittee chairmen remain intransigent, the matter could be resolved in a conference committee.

Waters said Thursday that the location of the Arts Council office is symptomatic of a larger problem that the state agency and Ryan have in communicating with the arts community.

“I think the real issue is whether or not the Arts Council can ever settle down with good leadership and good management so that the arts community is made capable of developing the arts in the state of California in the way that it should be developed,” Waters said.

She said the arts community expressed its desire a year ago to locate the office in an area convenient to it, but the Van Nuys site was picked nonetheless. Large concentrations of Los Angeles artists, art galleries and art groups are in the downtown loft area and on the Westside. The state agency should talk with the arts community and come up with a solution, she suggested.

Issue of Minorities

The Arts Council treatment of minorities is uppermost in the agency’s agenda because the National Endowment for the Arts rejected the state’s recent grant application in part because of insufficient minority programming. The state has hired a minority coordinator who works out of the Van Nuys office.

Understandably, the arts groups in the San Fernando Valley do not want the agency to move. They see its presence here as the first break they have gotten from the state.

“I have no compunction at all to tell you the California Arts Council is greatly needed in the Valley,” said Joyce Aimee, president of the San Fernando Valley Arts Council, which represents 50 Valley arts groups. Aimee, who is also executive director of the Americana Dance Theater, noted that about half of the Valley arts council’s members represent minority groups.

Historically, Aimee asserts, the Valley has been shortchanged when the arts agency issued grants, but she said this should be minimized now that a state representative is here reviewing worthy projects first-hand. In the past, when Valley groups wanted a state arts official to watch events, they usually were told there was no money in the travel budget, Aimee said.

Psychological Blow

Luke M. Bandle, general manager of the Cultural Foundation, said a move would be a psychological blow to the Valley arts community, which is beginning to blossom.

Los Angeles did not have an arts satellite until Gov. George Deukmejian established one in 1983 when he appointed Vera Johnson, a longtime Republican party worker from Tarzana and co-chairman of the San Fernando Valley for George Deukmejian Campaign for Governor, to head an office.

Johnson first worked out of her house and then the state rented space from the Department of Rehabilitation before it moved to the Van Nuys State Office Building.

Economics was the primary reason for the office being put in Van Nuys, said Robert Reid, chief deputy director of the Arts Council. The agency pays $328.50 a month to lease the 450-square-foot space, which overlooks Van Nuys Boulevard.

Space a Bargain

The state shopped for space downtown but could not find a comparable bargain, said Chuck Clark, a General Services space planner. Downtown space typically costs $1.50 a square foot, almost twice the Van Nuys price of 73 cents. Private lease space in East Los Angeles usually costs 85 cents.

The Van Nuys location should not be a hardship to inner-city arts groups because the staff is often in the field visiting organizations, said Johnson, whose title is special assistant to the director.

However, Manazar Gamboa, director of the Concilio de Arte Popular, an umbrella group for Hispanic artists and art groups, calls the Van Nuys location “kind of strange” because it is far from where most of the artists are.

James Burks, a director with the Inner City Cultural Center in Los Angeles, said a downtown location would be advantageous because groups could drop in more often to talk with the staff. Burks said familiarity is important because many smaller arts groups that desire state grants do not have the name recognition of larger, established groups.

The executive director of the inner-city center, C. Bernard Jackson, said he plans this week to offer the Arts Council extra space in his organization’s office.

There has been an attempt at appeasing all sides. Stephen Goldstine, chairman of the Arts Council, suggested that a satellite office in downtown Los Angeles might solve the problem.

However Reid, Arts Council chief deputy director, said it would be “ludicrous” to have a satellite operation for an office that is only one room.

“I assure the taxpayers of Los Angeles we’re not going to have two offices in Los Angeles,” Reid said.