LACMA’s $300-Million Roof

In Los Angeles, things that were very now then tend to be very then now.

It seems only yesterday--not nearly 16 years of yesterdays--since I first stood in the forecourt of LACMA’s new Robert O. Anderson Building and experienced what was then touted as the strength, the sheer boldness, of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer’s neo-Deco glass-block and green-tile spectacle, and what were called its venturesome harmonies, both of the exterior, with its 1920-30s architectural blend of Miracle Mile, and of the interior, with its unloved 1960s William L. Pereira museum galleries. “To greet this grand event with anything short of slightly woozy enthusiasm would be off the mark,” Times critic William Wilson ululated.

Now, in less than the age of the average Britney Spears fan, that entire assessment has been obliterated because the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art went unanimously berserk and voted to tear down most of what remains--in the eyes of most of the world, a pretty-darned-near-brand-new museum. All to make room for the brainchild of that Britney Spears (or is it the Ani DiFranco?) of modern architecture, Rem Koolhaas. The list price for his revision, which is simply going to keep the rain off--not change the rather mixed worth of the museum’s present collection--is $200 million. Wait! Board chairman Walter L. Weisman says it might come to $300 million--which means, bet on at least $400 million. But for the sake of argument, let’s call it $300 million. No wonder a few strained voices gasped that this is a lot of money for a new roof over the same familiar artifacts. Even if, as a Koolhaas roof, it’s the trendiest roof in the world, hovering over three new levels of galleries, eateries, offices and work space.

At the risk of being blasphemous, maybe there are better places to put one-third of a billion donated cultural dollars than a new house for an old art museum.

Modernization by Metalith was the rage in this city. Just look at the Staples Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The idea was that if you drop a huge fortune into a large, pretentious public building, our cultural, business and social environments must correspondingly improve. More recently, though, there breathed another idea--what some rashly called a new maturity--bidding for appreciation and renewal of past architectural resources, particularly in the city’s downtown. This urban whimsy couldn’t help but sound vaguely Un-Angeleno, and the new LACMA redesign plan puts it righteously behind us. Older buildings--even if they’re younger than our schoolchildren--once again are categorically inadequate, ugly or morally deficient. The work of the architect of that moment must fall before the vision of the man of this instant. But even accepting that, might not there be more directly beneficial ways to nurture our straightened local culture with such a flood of money?

Doug Stone, a spokesman for California public schools Supt. Delaine Easton, notes that just $200 million, notwithstanding the Belmont Learning Complex fiasco, could buy around 40 new schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Of course, those who distrust the LAUSD might argue that, compared with the garish splash of a new museum, solving L.A.’sschool-expansion crisis for the next 30 years would be a wretched waste of money.

But what if this so-far imaginary bequest were concentrated on cultural education, on creating new generations of Angeleno creative artists and art lovers? On, if you will, museum-content providers. Ninety-one-million dollars would provide a music, arts, theater and dance teacher at every school in the district, according to Stone. Another $44 million would provide at least one arts textbook for every one of the district’s 750,000 students, as well as improved classrooms, more arts supplies and “professional development for teachers.” This gets us to just $135 million, well under half of Weisman’s $300-million estimate for the Koolhaas roof. That $135 million also leaves, according to the board’s own estimate, more than enough of the overall proposed sum needed to rehabilitate and expand the entire extant county museum.

Whatever the goal of the spending, you have to consider who it’s coming from; that is, the objectives of the donors. It appears that certain high-rollers backing the Koolhaas proposal, seeking posthumous homes for their own collections, are willing to dig deep into their pockets for the new facility. But the more rank-and-file prospective donors, who would contribute the bulk of the cost, might do well to contemplate the the 1986 walls of LACMA’s Times Mirror Court, which bear the names of thousands of individual and corporate givers who endowed the tentatively doomed Anderson building.

One might well want a more enduring memorial. So, what about endowing arts education, which has suffered enormously since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13? LAUSD spokeswoman Stephanie Brady notes that the district is now planning its first high-school arts campus on the site of the current administrative center at 450 N. Grand Ave. “We’re in year three of a 10-year recovery in arts funding,” Brady says. The new plant is expected to cost $30 million. Staffing will cost millions more.

Carl Selkin, dean of the School of Arts and Letters at California State University, Los Angeles, suggests that such public schools and other arts programs could be supported--and influenced by--a nonprofit endowment institution. “What New York City did was to set up a private, nonprofit educational foundation [that] support[s] the arts in its schools.” This in addition to that city’s own, long-established dedicated campuses--such as the High School for the Performing Arts and the High School of Music and Arts--that graduate thousands each year.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, has long prided itself for its own wealth of musicians and modern artists, while treating this affluence of talent as a fortunate accident. Selkin says, “We must build an infrastructure for the arts on the educational level. The proven basic benefits include better school attendance and more student involvement. And, in the end, you not only have far more artists throughout this diverse community, you also have an expanded community that appreciates and supports the arts. After all, tourism alone can’t sustain an artistic community.”

Neither, come to think of it, can museums.