County moves to expand art projects at public sites

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has adopted the county’s first formal Civic Arts Policy, which will allocate 1% of design and construction costs on new county capital projects to provide or finance civic art components for these projects.

The number of county capital projects varies from year to year. In 2003-04, the county authorized $522 million for such projects.

Laura Zucker, executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, said in an interview Wednesday that the policy would allow the county to expand its arts influence beyond county-owned arts institutions, such as the Los Angeles Music Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to the full range of county facilities.

“In addition to courthouses, it’s libraries, sheriff’s stations, parks, animal care facilities, even probation camps,” Zucker pointed out.

The county policy differs from the policy of the city of Los Angeles -- which mandates that 1% of construction budgets of nonresidential projects costing more than $500,000 be spent on on-site art or be put into a city trust fund for arts programs -- because it does not apply to private construction.

Civic art projects eligible for funding include sculpture, murals, neon, glass, mosaics, photographs, prints and calligraphy; any combination of forms of media, including sound, film, holographic and video systems, and “new genres.”