Cultural affairs chief steps down

Margie J. Reese has resigned as L.A.’s top arts official, ending a five-year tenure in which funding for grant making, classes and other programs she administered as general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department were drastically slashed.

Reese announced her departure to the Cultural Affairs Commission at its meeting Friday, members said Monday. The commission mainly serves as a sounding board for the Cultural Affairs Department. Reese would not comment Monday.

Her tone at the meeting “was kind of bittersweet,” commissioner Charles Stern said. “She’s established some real emotional and professional bonds with this city, and they’re hard to sever.”

Reese, 55, was appointed in 2001 by Mayor Richard Riordan. Coming from Dallas, where she served as director of cultural affairs, she succeeded Alfonso “Al” Nodal, who often had to cope with austerity budgets during his 12-year tenure.

Although Cultural Affairs is, dollar-wise, one of the municipal government’s smallest departments, the general manager’s job entails responsibilities that have ramifications throughout the city, and it comes with a large megaphone for arts advocacy.

The department distributes to artists and arts organizations grants ranging from tens of thousands to a few thousand dollars, prized not only for their face value but also because they can certify merit and achievement in the eyes of other potential donors.

It also operates and maintains two fragile historical landmarks, the Watts Towers and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House, and is responsible for maintaining the extensive collection of outdoor murals that dot the cityscape.

Reese tried to hold the grant program steady as dollars dwindled from $13.3 million during her first full year running the department to the current $9.6 million -- a 28% decrease. She also tried to maintain after-school arts classes in city-run neighborhood arts centers, feeling they were especially important for kids in poorer neighborhoods who could latch onto the arts to develop their talents and stay out of trouble.

A defining moment for Reese came in 2004, when the budget office of then Mayor James K. Hahn proposed disbanding the Cultural Affairs Department as a cost-saving measure. Using her megaphone quietly, she rallied enough support to persuade City Hall to reconsider.

“When the chips were down, Margie made some calls, galvanized the troops into action,” said Anthony De Los Reyes, president of the Cultural Affairs Commission. “Grants are down, but the department’s alive and well, and she was a major factor.”

Both as a councilman and now as mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa has lamented that the Cultural Affairs Department is “among the most underfunded of any big city in the nation.” But his first budget proposal calls for an increase to the department of only $219,000, to $9.8 million. Arts grants will also be reduced under the plan, in order to fund the startup of a three-year process that would yield a new cultural master plan for the city.

De Los Reyes and Stern said the Cultural Affairs Commission aims to push for a larger, more reliable funding base for the arts. De Los Reyes pointed to recommendations of a blue-ribbon panel that Hahn appointed after sparing the department, including allocating more hotel-tax dollars to cultural affairs.

Villaraigosa’s office had no comment on the resignation by press time Monday.