One Door Closes, One Opens : Lannan family will shut its Westside gallery but boost its grants to artists

The Lannan Foundation gave the Los Angeles art world quite a jolt recently when it announced it will close its Westside exhibition space, donate the major artworks in its collection to established museums and sell off the remainder. But the foundation deserves applause for a move that, whatever the initial shock, is both original and deeply necessary.

The airy Lannan galleries, just east of Marina del Rey, are elegant in their simplicity. Siah Armanjani’s Poetry Garden, in the courtyard outside the galleries, is a quiet triumph that no off-hours visitor soon forgets. Since opening in 1990, the galleries and the garden have welcomed art shows and poetry readings of superb style and brilliance.

All this will be missed when it comes to an end a year from now. And yet by selling or otherwise dispersing the late J. Patrick Lannan’s art collection and discontinuing new acquisitions, the Lannan family will be able to increase its annual outlay in grants dramatically, from $4.5 million to $6 million: a million new dollars in grants to visual artists and half a million more to writers.

It is easier to raise money for a new art museum, concert hall or library than for a new artist, musician or writer. Artists, musicians and writers can only be supported; they cannot be owned. But they are the creative heart of the matter, and as the nation stands poised to disendow its national endowments for the arts and the humanities, the Lannan family is stepping boldly into an enormous breach.

The family’s action recalls a legend about Alexander the Great. The conqueror, so the tale goes, was promised a monument by the inhabitants of a town he had liberated. Returning to the town after a lapse of five years, he asked to see his monument. “Your monument surrounds you,” he was told. “But I see nothing,” he objected. Then the head man called out “Alexander!” and scores of small boys came running up.

The artists and writers whom the Lannan Foundation has supported and now, in increasing numbers, will continue to support are J. Patrick Lannan’s living monument.