Future of the L.A. Festival in Limbo : Culture: Directors of popular local arts festival scrap plans for 1996 event.

The Los Angeles Festival, the citywide festival of arts and culture that has been produced four times since 1984, has announced that it has put on hold plans for its next event, originally planned for 1996. In a prepared statement, festival officials cited lack of potential private and government arts funding comparable to that needed for past multimillion-dollar festivals.

The statement from festival Director Peter Sellars and other officials said the group will continue to review possibilities for smaller and less costly festivals in upcoming years.

Sellars could not be reached for comment Monday, but said in the statement that “we are confident that we will see the project reinvented when it makes sense in the life of the city. . . . Our goal is a new type of cultural entity, one that can reflect the scope of a city as rich and complex as Los Angeles. It is essential that we respond to the urgent realities of the present with work that can move quickly, efficiently, but with dazzling intensity.”

Since the 1990 festival, the Los Angeles Festival organization has been plagued by financial ups and downs. It is an offshoot of 1984’s $11-million Olympic Arts Festival directed by Robert Fitzpatrick, who also directed the $7-million 1987 festival focusing on European arts. After the 1987 festival was completed, Sellars took over the directorship, changing its focus to explore non-Eurocentric arts and culture during the next two festivals--a 16-day, $5.5-million festival in 1990 celebrating Pacific Rim countries, and, in 1993, a four-week, $4.2-million festival of the arts and culture of the Middle East and Africa.

While the 1984 and 1987 festivals ended barely in the black, the 1990 festival, which featured many free events and brought in artists from all over the world, ended with a $500,000 debt that took three years to repay.

The budget for the 1993 festival was slashed from $5.2 million to $4.5 million just months before opening performances began, and in order to keep from going into debt a second time, the focus of the festival was changed to present primarily Los Angeles-based artists representing Middle Eastern and African cultures instead of imported artists.

However, debt was not the problem this time. Maureen Kindel, festival founding chairwoman and board member, confirmed on Monday earlier reports that the 1993 festival did not incur any significant debt despite the fact that an individual donor who had promised a $75,000 contribution had reneged on the deal at the last minute.

Lamenting the loss of the communitywide festival, John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, said Monday that the event brought a new audience to the Getty, long a bastion of European arts. During the 1993 festival, the Getty presented a popular concert series featuring the music of the Middle East and North Africa.

“And we kept [the audience]. . . . We are now doing [an exhibition] of the art of Isahan, which is in the territory from which those musicians came, not our traditional European beat. . . . The community groups which were our audience for the festival became our contacts for this show, so they’ll be here again.”

Added Walsh: “Just as an audience member talking, during the festival I went places I’ve never been before, and never knew existed, to see concerts and performances. . . . God help us if we don’t have events that do this. We’ll be back on our own little islands again.”

Music and spoken word from the 1993 festival will be incorporated into “The Village in the City,” a three-hour radio series produced by RadioWest and distributed by the National Assn. of College Broadcasters.