Art Exhibit Arrives at LAX Bradley Terminal : Travel: ‘Flight’ show contains models of aircraft and spacecraft. The display inaugurates the airport’s new exhibitions program.

Bleary-eyed travelers in and out of Los Angeles International Airport are used to having only such pastimes as people-watching, napping or reading to occupy their time between flights. But that is changing at the Tom Bradley International Terminal, where the airport has set up a “mini-gallery space” for a rotating exhibits program.

The first exhibit in the “gallery”--set up next to the terminal’s departure-level center escalator--is a show called “Flight.” It contains more than 100 scale models of aircraft and spacecraft ranging from the Space Shuttle Columbia and the B-1 Stealth Bomber to the Wright Brothers Flyer and the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.

“It was so appropriate,” said curator Francine Ellman, whose firm Art Source L.A. Inc., has been working on the $265,000 airport art project since August, 1988. “What would be better than to put up a show about ‘Flight’ in an airport?”

The art program’s first project, called “Welcome to California,” was installed in mid-March. It features photographs on long-term loan including a 48-foot-long panoramic photographic mural of the Owens Valley in the terminal’s arrival area, and four 8x10-foot scenic photos as well as a series of nine nightscapes in the departure areas of the terminal.

“We think it will give a good cultural boost to the people who come to the airport,” said Karl Rach, project director for the airport’s art program. “The dwell time in the Tom Bradley Terminal is longer (than in other terminals), and the passengers are all here at least an hour to an hour-and-a-half. So we thought the public here could get a better feeling for L.A. (through the exhibits); they could see that the culture here is different than it is elsewhere.”

The project has been approved and funded only through next April, with two more exhibits already scheduled. After “Flight,” which will end in August, Ellman plans to mount “Made in L.A.,” a show of paintings, sculpture, furniture and jewelry by about 50 locally based artists, from September through December; and “The Art of the Movies,” featuring costumes, makeup, set design, memorabilia, and models and artifacts used in the movies, from January through April.

Ellman said early on that “nothing at all controversial” will be displayed. “We don’t want anything that’s offensive to anybody,” said Ellman, who is also an art dealer and runs a small gallery on La Cienega Boulevard. “It’s going in a public space, and so we’re very conscious of that. (We) don’t want letters about George Herms’ sculpture, for instance,” Ellman said.

Ellman noted that a main concern of the airport in instituting the art program has been the lack of space and the heavy traffic in the Bradley Terminal. That concern has already resulted in the program’s allocated space being cut in half, Ellman said, noting that originally, the exhibits were to have occupied both sides of the departure level escalator, but have now been limited to one side.

In addition, Ellman noted, although the exhibits will be of what she called museum quality (they are being designed by Tom Hartman, the chief of exhibits at UCLA’s respected Wight Art Gallery), the airport is downplaying them so as not to draw additional traffic to the terminal, which serves an average of 5 million passengers a year.

“They don’t want people going out to see this like they would a museum,” Ellman said.

After the currently scheduled exhibits, the art program will be re-evaluated, Rach said, noting that the current $265,000 budget--including $108,000 for Ellman’s fees, $57,000 for permanent exhibit cases and $25,000 for each individual exhibit--comes out of the airport’s $200-million annual operating fund. That fund is generated from revenues from the airlines and concessions such as restaurants, parking lots and rental cars, Rach said.

Rach added that if all goes well, the program, which was originated and approved by the airport’s board of commissioners, may eventually be expanded to the other terminals.