LACE Toasts Colorful Past, Eyes the Future

Spiffed up, slimmed down and more tightly focused under new leadership, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions is celebrating its 20th anniversary. “It’s a milestone of which we are very proud,” said Irene Tsatsos, executive director of the nonprofit visual arts center, who assumed her position eight months ago.

Known as a low-budget, edgy forum for artistic exploration, LACE survived its move in 1994 from downtown to Hollywood, weathered the changing climate of cultural philanthropy and is now retooling for the future, said Tsatsos, who administered arts organizations in Chicago and coordinated the last “Biennial Exhibition” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York before moving to Los Angeles.

“We are moving ahead,” she said. “I have been very encouraged by the support I’ve had for my ideas. I’ve been working well with the board. The response I’ve been getting from artists and colleagues has been really great. We have a new curatorial mandate that is very exciting. There’s reason to watch this organization with renewed interest.”

But first, there’s a party. “XX: The Happening (20years/20performers/20bucks),” billed as “an evening of live art in all media followed by a decadent birthday cake and a rollicking dance party,” will take place Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Hollywood Athletic Club. The extravaganza will feature performance, video, experimental dance and music by Paul McCarthy, John Fleck, Jacki Apple, Sandra Tsing Loh and many other artists with deejay Brendan Mullen.

LACE was founded in 1978 by 13 artists, most of whom had joined forces in East Los Angeles in a program funded by the Federal Comprehensive Employment Training Act. Initially lodged above the Victor Clothing Co. on Broadway, the arts center relocated to Industrial Street in a warehouse district that became infested with crime, then moved to the former Newbury School of Beauty on Hollywood Boulevard in the Community Redevelopment Agency’s Hollywood Redevelopment Project.

LACE has gone through considerable turmoil while compiling an impressive record of programs. During the last two decades, it has presented the work of more than 5,000 artists in nearly 3,000 exhibitions, performances, screenings and public art works mounted throughout Los Angeles.

Yet even as the organization toasts past achievements, it has already begun a new era. Tsatsos is the sixth director of LACE, but the first to also serve as a curator. Her predecessors generally facilitated program decisions made by committees devoted to performance, video and exhibitions.

“The board recognized a need to change before they hired me,” Tsatsos said. “The artist-run model served this organization very well in the beginning. It was artists who recognized the most exciting work.”

But as the institution grew, many other forums for adventurous art emerged and competition for funding intensified, LACE had to be run more efficiently and professionally. “One of the reasons I was hired was to create an institutional presence for the organization, which makes it more effective,” she said.

The arts center derives about 10% of its $300,000 annual operating budget from public sources; the remainder comes from an annual art auction, sales of limited edition artworks, donations from foundations, individual contributions and membership fees. LACE has about 600 members who pay annual fees ranging from $25 for artists to $1,000 for patrons.

*

Raising money is always the biggest challenge at LACE, but Tsatsos said changes haven’t been made to appeal to funders.

“The driving force is the desire to continue to be a viable entity for exciting contemporary programming. Absolutely at the root of all the changes is a commitment to what the founders of this organization had in mind by creating a place to show artwork that didn’t have other venues and was challenging the status quo, pushing the limits of what contemporary art is and how it can function. I think we can be more effective at doing that with the changes we are making.”

In an effort to put more of LACE’s resources into programs, the staff has been reduced to three full-time staff members, five part-timers and “a cadre of interns,” Tsatsos said. The space also has a new look, with the gallery divided into a front section for small exhibitions that rotate every two weeks or so and a large room for longer shows.

Disbanding the program committees and instating a director-curator will create “a cohesive curatorial vision,” she said. That vision may be shaped in part by two new advisory councils, a group of artists who occasionally consult with Tsatsos, and the Directors Council, a support group of curators, collectors and arts administrators who do not serve on LACE’s board of directors.

“Another change is that we are moving away from theme-oriented group exhibitions and toward solo or collaborative projects that allow a more in-depth look at an individual artist’s body of work,” Tsatsos said. “The individual artists’ projects that I’m interested in doing involve the creation of new work and this organization’s role in the production of that work, so we are taking on the role of producer as well as presenter.”

“Annuale,” the annual juried group show inaugurated 12 years ago, will continue, however. This year’s version, curated by New York-based critic Franklin Sirmans, will run from Aug. 6 to Sept. 20.

One measure of LACE’s success is that video and performance, two art forms the institution has championed most vigorously, now have a place in mainstream museums, Tsatsos said.

LACE’s place in the mix of arts institutions obviously has shifted even as it has gained an international reputation. That means its leaders need to be creative as they rework its profile. The projects Tsatsos has in mind--but doesn’t want to discuss yet--might be in any medium, she said. Furthermore, the work might not even be appropriate for LACE’s facility. “It could take any form, and it could happen in another place altogether,” she said.

As for the LACE’s home, that’s another question. The five-year lease will expire next year. “There’s a possibility that we will relocate and a possibility that we will stay,” Tsatsos said. “It’s too early to talk about what we might be doing, but we are very excited about our options.”