The Fine Art of Giving Help

There’s an art to raising money for the homeless on the highly competitive streets of Los Angeles’ skid row.

Some shelters ask for contributions through ads in newspapers and on billboards. Others rely on direct-mail appeals or on solicitations in corporate boardrooms.

And now there’s art--the oil painting kind.

A chance donation of a 100-year-old French painting to the Union Rescue Mission has led to the creation of a 400-piece art collection at the South San Pedro Street shelter that is now worth an estimated $1.2 million.

Most of the donated works will eventually be sold. But for now, some of them will be displayed on Wilshire Boulevard, starting Sunday, to introduce the mission and its work to wealthy Westsiders who may also decide to become donors. In the past, mission leaders say, fund-raising efforts have been weak in that part of town.

The art collection program is the first in the nation for a homeless shelter, according to John D’Elia--a onetime Presbyterian minister from Burbank who has become the mission’s official art curator.

“This has turned into a full-time job. That’s how much this thing has grown,” D’Elia said Friday as he helped volunteers hang 52 paintings and photographs in makeshift gallery space at 6300 Wilshire Blvd. that has been donated for the one-month show.

D’Elia had joined the mission’s fund-raising staff just two weeks before the first painting unexpectedly arrived at the shelter two years ago. It turned out to be an 1889 oil on canvas by Jules Breton titled “La Fille du Mineur.”

It was being offered by Santa Monica entertainment marketing executive Ted Eccles, who told officials he had long been an admirer of the mission’s work.

“Anyone who drives around the streets of L.A. knows we have a homeless problem. I knew that the mission did a good job of helping people,” Eccles said Friday.

Mission operators were stunned when the painting was appraised at $170,000.

They quickly put out the word that donations of other paintings would be welcomed. Soon, artworks were dribbling in.

The donations turned into a flood in February, when D’Elia got a call from Great Western Bank.

The Chatsworth-based bank had 245 paintings to give away. They were leftovers from a corporate art collection once owned by flamboyant banker Bart Litton, whose savings and loan the bank acquired in the late 1960s.

“We were impressed by the educational program that the Union Rescue Mission had,” Great Western spokesman Tim McGarry said.

Those works have been appraised at $617,000. D’Elia said the art collection has spawned an art education program that is being added to rehabilitation and vocational education programs already conducted at the 810-bed downtown shelter.

This month’s Wilshire district exhibition includes works by Picasso, Rembrandt and Jean Charles Cazin as well as contemporary artists Robin Palanker, Stephen Lack and Ed Reep. Photographs by Jon Warren and Chris Wolven are also included.

D’Elia said the mission’s collection continues to grow. Artists have begun introducing him to other artists--including the musical variety, he said. “I met a classically trained guitarist who’s interested in doing a concert for us,” D’Elia said.