‘LAX’ Citywide Biennial Plans a Return : Art: Despite a shaky start last year, the show celebrating L.A. artists aims for a second installment in November and December, 1994.

“LAX: The Los Angeles Exhibition,” a biennial art show that got off to a shaky start last December, will return.

The second installment of the citywide celebration of Los Angeles art is planned for November and December, 1994, according to attorney Joseph R. Austin, president of the “LAX” board.

“We accomplished what we wanted with the first show and we loved doing it, so we decided to stay together and support it,” Austin said of the board that formerly operated as the directors of the Municipal Art Gallery. The group divorced itself from the city facility last year after a personnel shake-up forced the resignation of former gallery director Edward Leffingwell, who organized “LAX.”

Leffingwell planned the show as an ongoing project, in answer to a much-discussed need for a Los Angeles biennial, but by the time it opened he had left his post and the board was considering alternatives to long-term support for “LAX.” However, the 22-member board has renewed its commitment to the exhibition and hired Leffingwell as executive director, Austin said. The group expects to raise between $250,000 and $350,000 for the 1994 show, he said.

The seven institutions that collaborated on the first show--the Municipal Art Gallery, Otis School of Art and Design, USC’s Fisher Gallery, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Plaza de la Raza--are expected to continue their participation. The California Afro-American Museum and East Los Angeles College are likely to join the group, and talks are under way to add two Pasadena venues--Art Center College of Design and the Armory Center for the Arts.

According to Austin, the mission of the biennial is threefold: “We want to make Los Angeles a place where Los Angeles artists can show their work and feel appreciated as part of the community; we want the people of Los Angeles to know what interesting artists we have here, and we want to create support for institutions that exhibit their work.”

Instead of a West Coast version of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s nation-wide biennial in New York, “LAX” is envisioned as a festival of Los Angeles art, Austin said.

On alternate years, the board intends to sponsor Los Angeles exchange exhibitions with foreign cities, but that project won’t get rolling until 1995. This year, the group will support “About Place,” an exhibition of installations about living quarters at the Municipal Art Gallery.