Arts Community Rallies Around ‘Tattered’ LACE : Complex Realities Face All Institutions

Allan Parachini’s article on “Mending a Tattered LACE” (April 9) simplified the complex issues surrounding the operations of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and my departure from the organization. This oversimplification is an unfair portrayal that needs to be addressed.

I resigned from LACE not because of my relationship with the staff, which was an honest and respectful one; rather, it was due to the lack of a fruitful working relationship with the board. Through Parachini’s article I feel I have been made a scapegoat for an organization that has imploded since my departure because of its lack of a director (a new director has now been named), the recession and the systemic problems that existed before I worked there.

In regard to LACE’s development staff, Parachini’s statement that the “development program had essentially ceased to exist” is false. I had on staff a full-time and a part-time development position and utilized free-lance consultants for the purpose of grant writing. No grant deadlines were missed during my tenure with the organization. In addition, I was searching for a full-time development coordinator to oversee all of LACE’s fundraising efforts as well as for the funds to support such a position.

Artists’ organizations throughout the country are under tremendous pressures. Political attacks from the right have created a chilling effect that has resulted in a loss of revenues from government and private sources. Organizations such as LACE are now being asked not only to serve the artists’ community, but also solve social problems, teach the Constitution by defending freedom of expression, provide accessibility to diverse groups and respond to the experiences of AIDS, homelessness and racism. Artists’ organizations are doing this and demonstrating more moral leadership than our U.S. government.

The opportunity to analyze the changing field of artists’ organizations as supporters of cultural democracy has been missed by Los Angeles media, including Parachini. Instead, what is presented is the story of a changing LACE that shows no compassion for the difficulties of change, one that fails to thoroughly analyze the pressures with which LACE is coping.

Of even greater disturbance to me is the questioning of LACE’s right to exist. As a former director and an artist, I firmly believe in LACE’s future. The strength and legacy of such an artists’ organization lies in its ability to analyze itself around issues of purpose and to re-create and reinvent itself through its programming. Artists’ organizations are vibrant because of their flexibility and accessibility. They breathe and are about contemporary, living art forms and artists. LACE’s existence shouldn’t be questioned but supported.