Latino Museum Struggles to Pay Debt

Two years after opening its doors, the Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture in downtown Los Angeles is facing serious financial difficulties.

It has been operating in the red for at least four months--unable to pay its staff of 12 and some of its creditors. Although the museum will not reveal the exact amount of its debt, employees and others who have come forward say several hundred thousand dollars is owed them.

According to the museum board’s chairman, Charles Calderon, and the facility’s director, Denise Lugo, the shortfall will be covered by $634,000 in state funds expected in the next 15 to 30 days.

“There is no question that we will be able to get out of our financial situation,” said Calderon, a former Democratic state senator from Whittier.

He insists that the museum is not going to close. “It’s been a very harrowing experience, but we will survive. Don’t write our epitaph yet,” he said.

Lugo agreed. “I know everything will be cleared and will be taken care of,” said the former Cal State L.A. art history professor. “It’s just really hard to wait for the state as it dillydallies.”

The museum has had a long and bumpy evolution. The state granted it $300,000 in seed money in 1987, but there were 11 years of stop-and-start progress before the museum launched its first exhibition, in August 1998, in a donated and only partially renovated Bank of America building at 1st and Main streets.

At that time, Calderon made it clear that fund-raising was crucial to the fledgling institution. The goal was $13 million.

Throughout its development, the museum--which charges no admission, has only a small membership base and maintains no full-time fund-raiser on the staff--has received support from a variety of sources: the city of Los Angeles, the Community Redevelopment Agency, foundations, businesses and individuals.

However, according to Calderon, since 1996 the facility has depended primarily on year-to-year allocations from the state to pay its bills.

The money that he and Lugo are counting on to cover the current debts was allocated to the museum in the 1999 state budget.

According to the California Arts Council, which administers state arts funding, $800,000 was appropriated that year; of that, the museum submitted invoices for $165,000 and has been paid that amount. As is typical with such state arts support, the grant was earmarked only for capital and educational projects--not costs like employee salaries or other operating expenses.

Calderon says that he has lobbied his former colleagues in Sacramento for a change in the grant’s terms, to allow debt payment, and that a bill to that effect is under consideration.

According to the office of Assemblyman Martin Gallegos (D-Baldwin Park), the measure he is sponsoring has been fast-tracked--slated for attention before the end of the Legislature’s session next week. The Assembly has already passed the bill; it goes to the Senate on Monday.

However, even if the measure passes, it could take up to a month for the museum to receive any more money, said arts council spokesman Adam Gottlieb.

In addition, the facility will again have to lobby for changes in the terms of its 2000 state funding.

The budget passed in July for 2001 included $1 million for the Latino Museum--the lion’s share of the institution’s planned $1.2 million budget for the next 12 months. Again, the money was allocated only for capital and educational expenses.

Since late spring, many of the museum’s staff have quit.

Margarita Medina, curator of Latin American art, who says she has been working for free since May, has stayed out of loyalty, but her patience is running thin.

“I’m not sure what is happening with the future of the museum,” she said. “They get some grants and donations from private companies, but it’s not a lot of money.”

Heather Saavedra-Pollock, former press coordinator and Lugo’s daughter, said she left the museum in April after going several months without pay. She also said she filed a complaint with the California labor commissioner earlier this month. Young Kim, former registrar of art at the museum, quit in July after going without pay since April.

In addition to its employees, the museum owes money to several local businesses. Glendale Blueprint Co., which has printed nearly all of the museum’s invitations, banners and posters, is due more than $70,000, said Vince Vasquez, head of production.

Olympic Personnel Security in Norwalk hasn’t been paid in six months, company officials said. The museum has been given until the end of the month to settle its debts, they said.

The Times has submitted to a collection agency a $5,000 unpaid bill for ads that ran in the newspaper in 1999.

Photo Impact, which printed the black and white photographs for the museum’s popular Cesar Chavez exhibit in April, is owed several thousand dollars, said Don Weinstein, owner of the Los Angeles business.

“I understand that the money is supposed to come,” he said, “[But] this is causing a lot of problems.”

In its two years as a going concern, the Latino Museum has presented at least seven shows. In Lugo’s view, two of them--this spring’s photographic history of Chavez and a 1999 exhibition of Mexican poster art--were particularly successful, drawing crowds of 5,000 or more to their openings.

However, “Los Four,” a retrospective of work by Chicano artists from the 1960s and ‘70s, which was supposed to mark the opening of the museum’s second gallery in 1999, was canceled for lack of funds.

Some observers ascribe the problems to poor outreach in the local Latino art community.

“The museum [hasn’t been] really proactive in finding out who had a history [and] who could be a viable and authentic partner,” said Debra Padilla, executive director of the Social Public Art Resource Center, which has been commissioning and restoring Los Angeles mural art for 24 years. “All of us want to wish them well. But the preliminary courting that should have been done with the people who have committed their lives to Latino art in L.A. was not done. They forgot to invite the people who could have helped to sustain it.”

Calderon admits that the museum needs to hire a development director who can do long-term planning. The 1999 and 2000 state allocations “will get us through this horrible period and put us in a position for next year to go after corporate donations, foundations and kick off some fund-raising. We are waiting to find [an] angel, but until then we must rely on the state,” he said.

Such reliance is not unusual for a small museum, said Melody Kaschat, former development director and now senior vice president of administration and external affairs for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “The state is a volatile source,” she cautioned. “It is dependent on lots of things, and it’s probably one of the most time-consuming directions to go when you’re raising funds.”

Kaschat said start-up institutions must immediately come up with an aggressive fund-raising plan. “It’s very, very difficult,” she said. “Everyone who walks in the door is an opportunity.

“The museum fills an important niche,” she added, saying she hopes it emerges from its current troubles. “It will take an angel or a group of angels to even things out so [it] can keep going.”