Where the Intelligentsia Now Meet

In March 1999, 1,000 people showed up at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to hear artist R.B. Kitaj talk about his love for Vincent van Gogh. The number far exceeded the 600 seats available. Actor Michael York, holding up a poster on which his name was scribbled, was one of the many that didn’t get in.

Two weeks later, 2,000 came to hear beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti address the relationship between painting and poetry at another LACMA venue. Screen and video monitors were set up in adjoining areas to accommodate the overflow.

By any standard, the LACMA Institute for Art & Cultures speaker series has become one of the town’s hottest tickets. Initiated in December 1998, it examines issues in the visual arts and culture-at-large, sometimes tied to museum exhibits.

On Monday, KCRW “Bookworm” host Michael Silverblatt and the institute’s Paul Holdengraber will engage writer Susan Sontag in a discussion of her new novel, “In America,” her California history and her general obsessions and indignations. The event, like all others in the program, is free.

The seeds of the institute were planted not long after the arrival of LACMA president and director Andrea Rich in 1995. A former vice chancellor of UCLA, she visualized a lecture and discussion program similar to those at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y and the New School.

“Traditional museum missions are rather anemic--to conserve, collect and exhibit works of art,” Rich says. “I wanted the institution to be a focal point for intellectual exploration--something lacking in L.A. My instincts told me there was a hunger for it: If you build it, they will come.”

Much of the success of the endeavor must be credited to Holdengraber, “the energizer bunny,” Rich says. A 40-year-old repository of ideas and passion, he speaks six languages and reels off quotes from Goethe, Napoleon, Robert Frost and Groucho Marx. Conversations with Holdengraber are marked by trademark turns of phrase. Someone fails to attend an event? She “lacks the gift of ubiquity.” His inability to cope with computers? “I’m not a son of modernity.”

Raised in Mexico and Europe, Holdengraber studied philosophy and law before receiving a doctorate in comparative literature at Princeton University in 1993. Two years later, he came to Los Angeles as a fellow at the Getty Research Institute. Prepared to dislike this “phenomenally ugly and amazingly beautiful city,” he embraced it--in all its complexity.

“Paul is seeking coherence in a city full of discontinuity--one in which a taco stand sits next to a dry cleaner that sits next to a synagogue,” says author Richard Rodriguez, who spoke on the “browning” of America at LACMA last May. “Gluing things together with constant references to a body of literature, he’s an intellectual Lenny Bruce. And his belief in the vitality of Los Angeles provides residents with much-needed reassurance.”

In this “discombobulated” metropolis, Holdengraber agrees, it’s important to create links. His goal: an organized web between people and institutions--uniting them around ideas.

“The life of the mind is not for pedants,” he says in German-accented English. “As Oscar Wilde put it: ‘Either you make the arts popular or you make people artistic.’ Feed the public a little and it asks for little. Feed it more and it asks for more.”

In early 1998, Rich asked Holdengraber to come up with a game plan and mission statement for the series. By the summer, it had cleared the budget process and, by year’s end, it was a reality. Events--six the first season, 10 the next and possibly 15 during the upcoming one--are held in LACMA’s Bing Auditorium or in the penthouse of LACMA West, once the tea room of the May Co. The locally based Ahmanson Foundation and Ralph Tornberg Trust help pick up the tab.

Each evening features a speaker, interview or symposium followed by an extensive question period. The guest list evolves “organically,” in Holdengraber’s word, growing out of his connections and whatever crosses his path. Scheduling Rodriguez, writer Pico Iyer and Jamaica Kincaid, colleagues say, is a conscious nod toward diversity. The speakers stick around for a two-hour post-talk reception with live music, light snacks and paid bar.

“Holdengraber gives L.A. a cafe community, almost like in Europe,” Iyer says. “When you go into his space you feel like you’re in Prague or Paris--out of touch with the freeways and the drive home.”

‘Eliminating the Podium’

Holdengraber says he’s out to “reinvent” the lecture format. The usual recitation of published words is eschewed in favor of the “unpredictable.” Iyer was persuaded to speak without notes for the first time. Switching from one chair to another, Rodriguez interrogated the public and private facets of himself. And, in an unlikely pairing, socially conscious director Tim Robbins interviewed oral historian Studs Terkel.

“We want a fresh moment when the speakers discover what they want to say,” Holdengraber says. “And by keeping things small and eliminating the podium, we create a sense of intimacy. As Braques says, ‘Everything takes the shape of what you put it in.’ ”

Two series run simultaneously, on no particular schedule. As part of the “Artists on Art” program, poet Jerome Rothenberg related his work to Picasso and the dada movement, and art historian Linda Nochlin spoke on feminism, bodies and history. In the “State of California” series, critic and performance poet David Antin presented his pieces about local dreams and realities while Iyer spoke on living for a week in and around LAX--a project he and Holdengraber conceived as an extension of the author’s “Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home.”

Though the Terkel-Robbins evening was planned in just 13 days, a three-month lead time is average. For the series to succeed, Holdengraber’s desire for spontaneity (“I live my life between chaos and entropy”) had to be meshed with the museum’s need for janitorial services, security and members’ calendar listings.

“Certain things are necessary when you invite people to your house,” Rich says. “Paul has become more organized and we’re learning to wing it.”

In the fall, the institute launches its “Private Passions” series in which experts talk about something other than their area of specialization. Possibilities include UCLA Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander on his love of Wagner, a composer known for his anti-Semitism. For the regular series, the wish list includes David Hockney and Umberto Ecco.

Holdengraber is also working with the Los Angeles Public Library, which has its own 6-year-old lecture series, on a collaborative project titled “Two-Way Street.” A potential topic is dislocation and exile--a subject particularly relevant to Los Angeles, he says.

Another of Holdengraber’s ambitions is to create a “movable feast,” connecting the Atlantic and Pacific rims. By cooperating with museums in cities such as Bilbao, Paris, Chicago and Philadelphia and institutions such as the 92nd Street Y, he says, resources can be pooled.

The first 17 months, Holdengraber maintains, are just his “primal scream.” If the venture develops as he hopes, he’d bring a Mark Morris or a Yo-Yo Ma--performers in other arenas. Censorship and the impact of culture are topics he’d like to tackle to make the museum more relevant.

That’s reflective of a worldwide effort to broaden museum offerings and audiences, Rodriquez points out.

“How perfect that LACMA West used to be a department store,” he says. “Now the museum is one--and everything is available. On the first floor, instead of perfumes, you have a Van Gogh exhibit. On the fifth floor instead of lingerie, you have Pico Iyer talking about LAX and people drinking white wine.”

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* The last event of this season features Susan Sontag speaking at LACMA West’s Penthouse, Wilshire at Fairfax, at 7:30 p.m. Monday. The series will resume after Labor Day. For reservations and information: (323) 857-6088 or iac@lacma.org.