Transit Funding Increases L.A. Arts Endowment Budget

The windfall of arts funds for local artists, which began with the passage last November of the more than $20 million Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts, is getting a $2.7-million addition--plus several million more in years to come--from another local government agency, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. The agency is allocating one-half of 1% of all construction costs for its rail transit commuter lines for public art works in each of its stations.

According to the LACTC’s Public Art Administrator Jessica Cusick, who is responsible for the commission’s Art for Rail Transit program, the commission plans to “promote a wide variety of visual art” through the program, including sculpture, wall murals and artistic design features such as benches, fences and lighting. At least one piece of public art will be installed in each station, and artists will be involved in the design process of some of the stations as well.

The move, which Cusick said will improve the neighborhoods and communities through which the aboveground light rail transit lines pass, is the latest in what public arts administrators are calling a new outlook on the importance of public art.

“I see it entirely as a quality of life issue,” said Barbara Goldstein, project coordinator for the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs department, during a Tuesday night meeting with local artists at Barnsdall Art Park. “People are beginning to see the way the arts can be used as a way to enhance the quality of life in Los Angeles.”

Ray Grabinski, LACTC Commissioner and Long Beach City Councilman, said artists are not the only ones who will benefit from the windfall of funds being spent on public arts.

He said that art in public transportation systems “makes waiting in a station more of an event, and takes away some of the apprehension and a little of the waiting time.”

“What we hope to do is expand the public’s awareness of contemporary art,” Cusick said of the Art for Rail Transit program, which will begin with the first commuter line--the 22-mile Long Beach-to-downtown Los Angeles Blue Line which is scheduled to open next July.

But the program will not end there, as LACTC will be commissioning artists “for years to come,” Cusick said. She said that in addition to the $2.7-million art budget for the Blue Line, the commission expects an arts fund of $1.5 million to $2 million for its 20-mile Norwalk-to-El Segundo Green Line (scheduled to open in 1994), and similar amounts for future lines (four are currently under consideration).

(In a separate program for the rail transit’s downtown underground Metrorail portion known as the Red Line, which is administered by the Rapid Transit District, $575,000 has been allocated for artists’ fees and the construction of art in those stations.)