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Municipal Collection : Art in L.A.: Trying to Catch Up

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Times Staff Writer

Hung along the corridors of power at Los Angeles City Hall are the gems of the city’s little-known municipal art collection: a $25,000 John Altoon abstract, a like-priced Robert Cottingham work of photo-realism, a $10,000 Arnold Mesches acrylic.

They are the exceptions. Room 545 of City Hall East is the rule.

There, jammed side by side in the windowless storage room, is the bulk of the city’s collection: dim landscapes, a modernistic steel-plexiglas sculpture of unknown intent, a gold metal-flake box that upon opening presents a silver spoon, thereby making some sense of its title, “Born with a Silver Spoon.”

A visitor picked up a dusty greenish landscape and turned to Tom Meyer, a city graphic artist who formerly cared for the collection. How much is this worth?

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Nothing ,” he said, shuddering.

In dozens of other cities, Los Angeles’ exceptions are the rule.

Valued at $200,000

Los Angeles’ 900-piece city collection is valued at $200,000, more than half of it in seven paintings; San Francisco’s municipal collection is worth more than $20 million. Three-thousand paintings, sculptures and various other works are displayed across San Francisco--$3 million worth at the airport alone--and the excess is stored in a vast warehouse on a city pier.

Sacramento, in the midst of an arts renaissance, has nearly 100 public art projects under way, with an estimated price tag of $2 million.

New York City’s multimillion-dollar collection spans the breadth of art styles. Its parks contain 1,500 statues and sculptures, some of them dating to the 1800s. There are nearly 400 murals, 150 stained-glass windows and more than 100 portraits in City Hall alone. Chicago and Seattle each have acquired at least a million dollars worth of artworks in recent years.

What those cities also have are generous donors and “percent for art” ordinances, under which a small part of the cost of city buildings is set aside to buy artworks.

Boon for Artists

The laws, enacted by 19 states and dozens of cities and counties across the United States, have proved an economic boon for artists and a popular beautification tool for governments, art authorities say.

Last year alone, 15 states--excluding California, which has no such law--spent $2.5 million on “percent for art” works, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies in Washington. Millions more were spent by city and county governments and redevelopment agencies.

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The windfall runs from a park bench in Santa Monica to a 12-story jail facade in Sacramento, a sculpture commissioned for New York’s East Harlem Art Park to a stained-glass clerestory window in a Chicago police station.

Los Angeles officials are scrambling to catch up, pressing for donations of high-quality art and, particularly, for a citywide “percent for art” law to expand art from museums to the city’s streets and buildings.

They point not only to gains made by other cities but to Los Angeles’ own Community Redevelopment Agency, whose “percent for art” policy--applicable only in redevelopment areas like downtown--is heralded nationwide. The policy is responsible for the placement of nearly two dozen major works and the construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

“People want more out of life than just getting along,” said City Councilman Joel Wachs, an art aficionado who plans to propose a Los Angeles percent ordinance within months. “They want beauty. There’s no reason you can’t have beauty all around.”

Beauty is only one of the reasons art authorities cite for the burgeoning of “percent for art” laws since the first ordinance was passed in Philadelphia in 1959. City officials across the United States say their surveys consistently show high interest by residents in the arts and a general fear that without art, their environment will come to resemble a concrete forest.

“Urban American design has left many cities anonymous and unsurprising, really quite dull,” said Richard Andrews, director of visual arts for the National Endowment of the Arts. Until three months ago, Andrews was coordinator of Seattle’s Art in Public Places program, which administers that city’s 1% for art ordinance.

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‘Everyone Can Enjoy’

Money spent on the arts supports artists and provides art for all people, regardless of income, “percent for art” supporters say. And because the artwork is generally tied to the place of construction, art becomes prominent in many neighborhoods, not just in civic centers. Its widespread prominence can attract new residents and, important to tax base-conscious cities, new businesses and employees.

“It puts art out in front, out of the living rooms of the homes, and says ‘Here’s something everyone can enjoy,’ not just something for people who can afford it,” said Alan Sieroty, president of the Los Angeles Cultural Arts Commission and a former Democratic state senator.

In some areas, supporters have successfully sold “percent for art” laws by stressing that they can meld the functional with the aesthetically pleasing and use art to solve problems.

In Sacramento, the facade of the new 12-story County Jail is being designed by one artist; another is designing the windows, walls and seating for the jail’s interior.

Although the intent is to beautify the building, officials also hope the artwork will “ameliorate the building and its presence,” said Jennifer Dowley, coordinator of the Sacramento Arts Commission’s public art program.

“The art money is actually building functional things,” she said. “A wall will have to be there anyway. Seating needed to be purchased anyway.

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‘Extraordinary’ Impact

“You could spend $100,000 on doorknobs and plumbing fixtures and the public would never think they were different,” she said. “But $100,000 to deal with the facade? Millions will see it. The impact is extraordinary.”

In Santa Monica, officials are using the city’s year-old “percent for art” ordinance to solve a nettlesome problem: people getting lost in the downtown parking malls.

“There are a lot of parking structures that all look the same,” said David Lutz, director of the city Arts Commission. “People can remember which level they’re on, but they can’t remember which parking structure they’re in.”

So artists hired by the city soon will paint different and, it is hoped, memorable murals in each structure to remind motorists where they parked, Lutz said.

Laws vary across the nation, but most provide that 1% to 2% of the cost of construction on city property will be set aside for artworks of any kind--paintings, sculpture, stained-glass windows, mosaics--to be placed in, on or around the building. Public access is mandatory.

In cities where the earliest laws were passed, officials said the actual cost has been slight, less than 1%. Either the art money is used for something necessary anyway--an artist-designed bench replacing a mass-manufactured one--or the builder cuts the price on other, less noticeable items, officials say.

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Little Vandalism

Art officials also report few problems of vandalism on the artworks, even those placed outdoors--with the exception of pigeon droppings. In San Francisco, more than $5 million in artworks have been bought with “percent for art” funds since 1969, when the city adopted its ordinance. More than $3 million has gone for artworks displayed at the city’s rebuilt airport; about $320,000 was spent to decorate a new wing of San Francisco General Hospital.

There has been “very little, remarkably little” vandalism, according to Claire Isaacs, city director of cultural affairs. “People apparently have a feeling about the art.”

In Los Angeles, with the exception of redevelopment areas, efforts to place art in government buildings, plazas and streets have been voluntary.

The city’s art collection began before World War II, when the Cultural Arts Commission purchased two paintings, said Virginia Ernst Kazor, a city curator. Although the city sporadically solicited art through the years, there were only 300 pieces when Kazor took over as the collection’s curator in 1970.

There may have been more, but for a bookkeeping oddity: When a piece disappeared from its prescribed location, its inventory number was simply reused, Kazor said.

Some good works of art were collected along the way. Several were donated by Home Savings, which for more than a decade, ending in 1976, purchased winners in the All-City Arts Festival. Home Savings displayed the works in its offices and then gave some of them to the city. More were donated by artists whose work was solicited by Cultural Affairs Department employees.

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Persistent Donor

A few were given by prominent residents. The most expensive item in the collection, a $50,000 circa-1860 Gustave Dore painting of robed monks that hangs in the Municipal Gallery Theatre in Barnsdall Park, was a gift from Occidental Petroleum Corp. chairman Armand Hammer.

Some were gifts of the heart, if not exactly decent art. One elderly woman who, graphic artist Meyer said, “loved Sam Yorty and reeked of perfume,” made repeated gifts of her portraits. At least once she showed up and asked to see them on display, prompting a flurried search until workers found her artistry in a storage room and hung it in a conference room, especially for her.

Historically, the best works have been displayed on City Hall corridors and offices--and the rest have languished in storage.

“Basically, we were running an interior decorating service,” Meyer said.

But city officials are taking the first steps to change that. At present, the collection’s 900 works range from “museum quality to works of rank amateurs,” said Fred Croton, general manager of the Cultural Affairs Department.

The Cultural Arts Commission, which traditionally acted as a rubber stamp in accepting virtually anything that was offered, has recently tightened its standards. Officials have been heartened by a few recent donations of high-quality works.

‘Being a Little Careful’

“I think we’re being a little careful of what we accept and considering if there would be a public place for its viewing,” said Sieroty, the commission president. “We are also trying to be more positive in terms of encouraging collectors to think in terms of giving to the city.”

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The second necessary move is development of a “percent for art” ordinance, arts officials say, modeled on the successful plans in effect nationally and within the city’s redevelopment agency.

The redevelopment agency’s 1% for art policy went into effect in 1964 and has been responsible for the placement of nearly two dozen major works, mostly sculptures, in 15 projects in the downtown and Bunker Hill areas, agency figures show. Under its terms, private developers who build within the area--taking advantage of tax breaks and other incentives--are required to put aside 1% of the construction cost for art. The private companies keep title to the art as well.

The biggest success of the policy is not a piece of sculpture or a painting--but the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Interpreting the policy in a way that has stunned and delighted arts officials in other cities, the agency asked Bunker Hill developers to provide the $19-million museum to fulfill all the percent-for-art requirements of the 11-acre parcel. Actually, the cost came to more than 2% of the capital construction amount, according to agency figures.

Indications of Success

City officials like Wachs, Sieroty and Croton, who are pushing the percent-for-art concept, repeatedly point to the agency’s success as indicative of what could occur citywide if an ordinance passed.

A voluntary effort by the Public Works Board and other city officials to increase artistic decoration of city buildings has resulted in several murals and--most prominently--a $4-million Japanese garden and tea house at the Tillman water reclamation plant in Sepulveda Basin.

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Percent-for-art supporters say that is not enough. “A law makes sure it happens,” Wachs said.

Arts officials point to California as an example of what can happen when programs are voluntary. While he was a state senator, Sieroty pushed repeatedly for a state percent-for-art law. In a compromise with then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., however, Sieroty settled for a program under which the governor has annual discretion to fund the Art in Public Places program.

Last year, $266,000 was given to the public art program, according to figures from the state legislative analyst’s office. The allocation came under fire from State Sen. John Garamendi (D-Stockton), who took up leadership of the percent-for-art movement after Sieroty left the Senate. According to Garamendi, the figure approved by Gov. George Deukmejian is only one-fourth what would be required under his proposed 2% for art law.

Among states with “percent for art” programs, at least five spent more than California: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa and Washington.

‘Criteria Are Needed’

In each of the last two years, Garamendi shepherded bills through the Legislature calling for a 2% program, but Deukmejian vetoed them on the grounds that the state should not be tied to a specific percent. Awaiting legislative action is a third Garamendi bill calling for mandatory funding.

“We started a (voluntary) program that we hoped would work, and it hasn’t,” he said. “The budget proves that direction is needed, criteria are needed.”

Los Angeles officials differ on the chances for passing a similar law for the city. Croton said the chances for passage depend on whether arts supporters do the “proper politicking,” work that he said has yet to be done.

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Wachs is more optimistic, saying that an arts ordinance is a proper progression from the civic cohesion caused by the Olympics.

“Now, as a city, we’re maturing; people are more cognizant (of the arts),” said Wachs, who is still studying what type of ordinance would be appropriate here.

Even if the council approves the ordinance, Los Angeles will still trail the artistic front runners. In several cities, the percent-for-art concept has produced second-generation spinoffs.

Giving to Art ‘Banks’

Beverly Hills and Santa Monica have established art “banks” to which developers contribute money if they opt not to purchase art. The money, once collected, is used for major civic purchases.

The Beverly Hills City Council further advanced the “percent for art” concept when it passed an ordinance requiring private commercial developers to buy art for their structures. A cap of $50,000 was placed on the required purchases, and no complaint has been heard from developers, said Councilwoman Donna Ellman, who authored the ordinance.

San Francisco officials are considering a similar law governing private developers, with a few twists: Developers could be given the option of underwriting exhibits, providing public space for arts shows or taking similar actions beneficial to art patrons, cultural affairs director Isaacs said.

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There is little open opposition to the concept of government-funded art. But Ellman suggests that cities must set their own priorities.

“In a city with terrible graffiti or abuse of public property, dollars might be better spent for day care or food,” she said. “In our community, we had the ability to say we’re contributing to the nourishment of the soul.”

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