Atelier Moves to the Mall

Big changes are afoot at the USC Atelier. The gallery is moving to a new site within the Santa Monica Place shopping mall.

Now closed for relocation, it will reopen in the mall’s second-level Market Faire section, one floor above the dining area, on April 6.

However, the new home is temporary. The gallery will move again, although not before December, as part of an “updating process” in which more than half of the mall’s store space is to be released to new vendors, according to mall officials. Sounds like a lot of packing and unpacking, but the plan seems to auger well for art.

Efforts are under way to find a permanent Atelier site that is larger, more accessible and more prominent than ever, say mall officials who also want to display more art projects generated by the gallery elsewhere within the mall.

“I’m looking for a way to enhance visitors’ trip to the shopping center,” said Tom Gilmore, group marketing manager for the Rouse Co., developers of the mall. Noting Santa Monica’s commercial gallery boom, he added, “Art is such an integral part of the community.”

Said Atelier Director Noel Korten: “The arts in general and the Atelier in specific are going to be more visible and more important to the mall.”

Meanwhile, Korten is happy with the gallery’s interim space. It may look smaller, but it is roughly the same size as its predecessor and has its advantages, he said.

“I think there’s more foot traffic in the area than where we were, and it’s also more of a hang-out place,” with tables and chairs adjacent.

In addition, the new space will have a small (2-by-3-foot) window gallery called Avago, modeled after a project in Sydney, Australia, created to let “artists ‘ave a go’ at new ideas without the encumbrances of a commercial gallery or the formalities of a museum,” Korten said. It will also be viewable any time the mall is open.

“It’s a way of allowing us to extend our hours so that some portion of our programming can always be seen” during mall hours, he said.

The Atelier, which has presented 58 exhibitions since 1982, will reopen in April with an installation by Paul Berger, a photographer who manipulates images with computers. The artist will discuss his work on April 6 from 3 to 5 p.m.

Mall space for the USC Atelier, a satellite of the university’s School of Fine Arts, is donated by Santa Monica Place Inc. and the Rouse Co. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday, noon-6 p.m., and Friday, noon-9 p.m.

HELPING OUT: Art Access, a one-year pilot program recently launched by the New York-based American Federation of the Arts, will make it easier for some art institutions to host traveling exhibitions of 20th-Century American art.

Under its current program, the federation originates contemporary and historical traveling exhibitions and makes them available to its 600 member museums at a reduced fee, largely by dividing the cost of the exhibits among all participating institutions. Still, those costs are often prohibitively high for many institutions, especially small museums.

With a $150,000 grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, the federation will provide an additional fee subsidy of up to 20% for member institutions to host exhibits of 20th-Century art. Information: (212) 988-7700.

The federation also recently announced that Los Angeles art collector Eli Broad has been appointed to its board of trustees.

MORE HELP: Professional artists living in California and working in any contemporary craft may apply for $5,000 fellowships from the Santa Fe-based Western States Arts Federation.

WESTAF, a service and grant-making organization for 13 Western states including California, has 15 such fellowships to award. In addition to the cash prize, winners will have their work featured in a catalogue distributed to curators, dealers and collectors. Grant application deadline is June 1. For information and applications, write: Diana J. Platts, Special Projects Coordinator, Western States Arts Federation, 207 Shelby St., Suite 200, Santa Fe, N.M., 87501.