A collection without a home

The Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture is still without a permanent home, but the organization does count 122 items in its permanent collection, and will have most of them in display through Feb. 28 in its temporary home across the street from Los Angeles City Hall.

The museum, now housed next to the city-owned Los Angeles Mall’s food court at 201 N. Los Angeles St., has been in its current location since last summer, when government redevelopment efforts displaced the museum from the former bank building it owned on Main Street. The museum’s Board of Trustees, which received $2.9 million for the old building along with a year rent-free in the current space, continues to search for a new home.

Meanwhile, the organization held a reception Monday night to kick off its exhibition of permanent-collection items. Jaime Cruz, the museum’s general manager, said the exhibition includes 76 pieces, including a set of copper axes from Mexico’s Oaxaca region, thought to be 1,000 to 1,200 years old.

Other pieces range from photographs by Tony Gleaton, who has spent years working in Latin American communities with African roots, to six oil paintings from Juan Manuel Sanchez, Mario Mollari and Juana Elena Diz, who together make up the Argentine artists’ groups known as Espartaco. Cruz said the museum has obtained most of its pieces through contributions from artists and donors since 1994. Admission to the museum, which is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, is free.

Led by a board dominated by professors and university administrators, the Latino Museum has struggled to find a niche, despite its status as the only institution of its kind in a major city whose population is more than 40% Latino. Conceived in the late 1980s and closed in 2000 amid canceled exhibitions and more than $400,000 in unpaid staff salaries and other bills, the museum has struggled to find a niche. It reopened in February 2002 with an amended roster of board members, hired Cruz as general manager and paid off its debts late last year, using money received for its former building.

-- Christopher Reynolds