Foundation Appoints 5 New Directors

The Cultural Foundation, a private group that hopes to build an arts center in Sepulveda Basin, has appointed five new members to its board of directors, bringing the total to 28 members.

Perhaps the best known of the newcomers is Rafer Johnson, the 1960 Olympic gold medalist who also lit the Olympic torch to begin the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

Other new members include Yen Lu Wong, who served with the National Endowment for the Arts; Susan Hutton, a public relations consultant, and Virginia Rafelson, director of BASE, a San Fernando Valley-based educational program dedicated to teaching English to Spanish-speaking adults.

Also joining the board is David Fleming, an attorney who is president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. In April, the association announced a $150,000 fund-raising campaign to plant 1,000 camphor, jacaranda, California live oak and other trees in the basin.

The Cultural Foundation, established in 1980, has sought to build a multimillion-dollar complex. Arts Park L.A., as it is envisioned, would include theaters, exhibit spaces, a children’s art center and a natural history museum amid rolling hills on 60 acres near Balboa and Victory boulevards.

The Arts Park proposal is being reviewed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the flood-control plain, and the city of Los Angeles, which leases the land.