Arts enabler or L.A. booster?

During the 36th annual International Pow Wow -- a four-day travel industry trade show beginning today in Los Angeles -- the host city will be placing heavy emphasis on selling its art and culture to the world.

Among the efforts to encourage Los Angeles tourism is a film project commissioned from CalArts by LA Inc., the city’s convention and visitors bureau, that promotes Los Angeles as, in the words of LA Inc., “a vibrant cultural epicenter and edgy arts maverick.” The film will be presented to conventioneers and visiting journalists tomorrow in the edgy new Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, or REDCAT, at the curvaceous, but still edgy, Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Not part of the show, however -- but certainly part of the equation -- is a new question that has recently lent an edge of contention to the L.A. arts community: Should the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, which operates community arts centers, supports festivals and programs and provides more than $3 million in grants to local artists and arts organizations, play a role in promoting L.A. as a cultural destination?

Feelings run deep, and in recent weeks, opinions expressed by the denizens of more than a few neighborhood theaters, artist lofts and rehearsal studios seem very different from the boosterism likely to be heard in the Pow Wow convention halls.

Why are these people talking now?

It all started last month, when as part of a citywide cost-cutting drive, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn targeted Cultural Affairs for possible elimination. He was eventually persuaded to spare the department but with a recommended cut of $3.6 million -- about 30% of its $11.8-million annual budget -- and a push to focus some of its modest resources on aiding cultural tourism.

A 25-member volunteer Mayor’s Council for the Arts, headed by Music Center Chairman John Emerson, was hastily assembled to advise Hahn on cultural matters, with tourism front and center. Robert Barrett, former vice president of domestic marketing for the Convention and Visitors Bureau (now LA Inc.) and currently an advertising executive, has since been named chairman of a council subcommittee on cultural tourism.

Also with cultural tourism in mind, arts patron Eli Broad -- the billionaire businessman who led the fundraising effort for the $274-million Disney Hall -- recommended to Hahn that the city appoint a volunteer arts commissioner, a high-profile spokesperson for the arts who would report to the mayor.

Hahn liked the idea, and Broad now chairs an eight-member committee dedicated to finding such a recognizable face. The search committee includes Emerson; actor Sidney Poitier; Barry Munitz, president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust; Andrea Rich, president and director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Music Center President Stephen Rountree; Antonia Hernandez, president and chief executive of the California Community Foundation; and East West Bank Chairman, President and Chief Executive Dominic Ng.

Some local artists, as well as cultural affairs officials here and elsewhere, see cultural tourism as the potential savior of the Los Angeles arts scene. Such tourism not only raises the profile of the arts, they argue, but fills Cultural Affairs’ coffers with revenue through the city’s transient occupancy tax. One-fourteenth of that 14% tax on hotel rooms goes directly to Cultural Affairs; many cities have similar “bed taxes” that feed their culture departments. Last year, the total for Cultural Affairs was $7 million, more than half the department’s total budget.

In Florida, Michael Spring, director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, says his department staffers cheered when they heard that L.A.’s Cultural Affairs Department had been spared. He points out that his city’s arts face the same competition from fun, sun and theme parks as Los Angeles and have benefited from a push for cultural tourism.

Spring says that Miami has also gotten mileage out of promoting the department’s charismatic board chair, businesswoman Rosa Sugranes, as a spokeswoman for the arts. She delivers an annual “state of the department” address for cultural affairs that receives significant media coverage.

In Miami, Spring says, cultural affairs does not directly fund cultural tourism -- rather, it piggybacks on the resources of the convention and tourism bureau. The key, he observes, is balance. “We collaborate with them on every piece of collateral material they produce. They’re spending hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, and we’re spending tens of thousands to partner with them.”

Officials from Cultural Affairs in Los Angeles, as well as members of the new arts council, insist that the department’s grant-making budget, as well as its portion of the transient occupancy tax, will be fiercely protected. “We feel our grants are sacred,” says Will Caperton y Montoya, the department’s director of marketing and development. But such assurances have failed to convince the leaders of some smaller arts organizations that a new focus on cultural tourism is a good thing.

The trickle-down effect, they contend, provides just that -- a trickle. And even if the grant-making budget is preserved, they argue, time, energy and personnel will be diverted from what they believe is Cultural Affairs’ mission: to provide artists with the support they need to do their work.

Besides, they add, don’t we already have a department of tourism -- that is, LA Inc.?

Tim Dang, producing director of East West Players, says his organization received $40,000 from Cultural Affairs for the current fiscal year. He says East West always uses its money from the department to produce new work. While he calls the assembly of an advisory council a “smart thing,” he worries about cultural tourism dividing the Cultural Affairs Department.

“We know every department in the city has to cut back, but when you’re asked to cut back and add a new mission, you’re doing more things with less money,” Dang says. “I fear that small organizations and organizations of color and organizations that represent particular communities will be especially affected. The tourist promotions will focus on large, mainstream organizations that have the wherewithal to lobby for funding.”

Also skeptical is Fred Dewey, executive artistic director of Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice. “Telling the artists they are valued because they promote tourism is not only problematic, it’s dangerous. It’s a symbol of how our priorities are backwards. We’ve all gotten letters from [Cultural Affairs] saying, ‘We can’t even tell you if you’re going to get a grant.’ Organizations are panicking all over the city. What kind of message does that send?”

Dewey adds that he’s all for the idea of a Los Angeles arts commissioner, provided that that individual has friends with deep pockets. “It’s important for artists to know that their base is going to be there. If it’s not, all the tourists and tourist bureaus in the world are not going to make a difference,” he says.

By contrast, Deborah Brockus, artistic director of the Brockus Project Dance Company and a producer of several series showcasing L.A. talent, is among the artists who believe pushing cultural tourism is a step in the right direction. “A coordinated effort can produce something here like the Fringe Festival in Scotland. If no one knows about your art, you can’t whine that no one comes to see it.”

Brockus also likes the idea of a new arts commissioner savvy enough to tap into the blending of ethnic, commercial and concert dance styles that she considers unique to L.A. “We need someone who is enthusiastic about art, who is well spoken and can bridge the gap between the public and what is associated with ‘weird artists,’ ” she observes.

Ragen Carlile, administrative director of the Dance Resource Center of Greater Los Angeles, agrees. “I think it’s about time. It’s a two-tiered thing: I don’t like the idea of Cultural Affairs going away -- if artists’ funding dries up, there won’t be any arts to promote. But I like the idea of a dedicated effort to promote L.A., other than just the entertainment industry.”

As he begins to plan the strategies for the subcommittee on cultural tourism for the new Mayor’s Council for the Arts, Barrett is confident that the ongoing argument over the mission of the Cultural Affairs Department is just the normal “push and pull” between art and government. And he argues that promoting L.A.’s “edge” as a tourist commodity might not be as far away from the artists’ goals as some believe.

Today’s Los Angeles visitor, Barrett says, doesn’t necessarily want to visit Disneyland.

“The visitors to L.A. are distinctly different from visitors to Anaheim. We need to be clear about that. This is not a family destination.

“These are young, educated, sophisticated people -- they are urban explorers. They are interested in an urban setting that is trend-setting. L.A. artists are involved in making the art of the future. That aggressive edge of Los Angeles includes them.”

Time staff writer Don Shirley contributed to this report.