PLAN UNVEILED FOR ARTWORK IN PUBLIC PLACES

Ringing endorsements filled the air Wednesday night in a public forum on the Community Redevelopment Agency’s proposed Art in Public Places Program. If adopted, the innovative program would play a major part in developing downtown Los Angeles as a center of art. The program would commission permanent art works, support a biennial arts festival and create a trust fund to finance performing arts programs and aid institutions.

“I totally support this proposal,” declared Marcia Weisman, an art collector and founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art. “It will be a magnet for downtown and everybody wins--the businesses, the artists, the galleries, the museums and the merchants.”

Most of the 20 arts and business community representatives who took the stand concurred. Speakers offered suggestions and cited caveats, but the only major controversy that surfaced during the two-hour session at the Los Angeles Design Center revolved around some visual artists’ fears that their portion of monies generated by the agency might be usurped by other cultural programs outlined in the preliminary draft.

Under discussion at the meeting was the CRA’s proposed process for implementing the agency’s Percent for Art policy, which affects redevelopment projects in Bunker Hill, Little Tokyo and the central business district. The policy requires that 1% of development costs--less land--be spent on art.

Currently, this money buys permanant works of art or, in the case of the California Plaza development, a whole museum. (The plaza applied its Percent for Art to the Museum of Contemporary Art, currently under construction on Bunker Hill.) The new plan recommends spending a maximum of 60% of the funds for permanent, on-site works of art (such as Louise Nevelson’s sculpture at the Crocker Center and the group of contemporary works installed around the Wells Fargo building).

The remaining 40% would be deposited in a new Cultural Trust Fund. Half of the trust monies would go to a continuing program of performing and visual arts projects and to developing or refurbishing cultural facilities. The other half would help fund the proposed Los Angeles Arts Festival, a biennial affair patterned after the Olympic Arts Festival.

In addition to setting up the Cultural Trust Fund, the proposed policy would establish an Art in Public Places Program (funded by the Percent for Art requirement), provide for arts activities, and establish a selection process for programs and artists.

At Wednesday’s forum, a succession of laudatory speakers--mostly with vested interests--took the stand before an audience of about 150. Robert Fitzpatrick, president of CalArts and director of the Olympic Arts Festival, applauded the “clarity” of the ponderous CRA document and urged commissioners to “protect the integrity” of a programming process that “will only work to the extent that it is free from public and political pressure.”

David Hyun, chairman of Japanese Village, a shopping center in Little Tokyo, gave a rousing talk about the financial rewards of backing the arts. “One percent is not enough,” he said. “Japanese Village spends 10% annually on cultural events (attracting shoppers to the center) and it’s a winner. It makes a lot of bucks.”

Architect David Martin changed the congratulatory tone by charging that the proposed policy takes “the key ingredient of success, the guy who pays the bill, and gives him an art tax.” He also disagreed with the policy of setting up a selection panel of experts to choose artists: “You’re saying, ‘With the remaining 6% percent, let us help you choose. That alienates the fellow who pays the bill.”

Martin’s comments drew little response from the predominantly art-interested audience, but when artist Daniel Citron expressed fears that visual artists would be edged out of Percent for Art monies, he got a vigorous round of applause.

Yet even that concern was mollified by subsequent speakers who argued for a generous approach to all the disciplines, and by CRA Administrator Edward Helfeld’s contention that visual artists’ portion of the Percent for Art pie will not decrease because the pie will get larger. Currently the 1% for art is “one percent of hard construction costs,” he said. In the revised plan, the percentage for art will be based on 1% of all development costs--less land. “There will be significantly more funds in the future,” he said.

Underlying the proceedings was a generally unspoken awareness of the public outrage that sometimes breaks out over public art, as in the recent controversy over Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” in New York.

Artist Sarah Tamor addressed the issue openly when she criticized the establishment of a “elitist” panel to select artists for projects. She urged inclusion of community representatives and building users, saying, “If you want to avoid a Richard Serra problem, you should seriously and squarely deal with the public--not just as an afterthought.”