A shifting canvas in Pasadena

Ever since railroads and orange groves brought great wealth to Pasadena more than a century ago, the city has carried out a tradition of giving back in the form of art.

At the turn of the last century, Pasadena’s love of the arts was part of what historian Kevin Starr called a “genteel tradition,” which included a Shakespeare Club and a Grand Opera House.

Later, museums such as the Norton Simon and the Pacific Asia (not to mention the Huntington in neighboring San Marino), and venues including the Pasadena Playhouse and the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, added to what many in the region regarded as one of the best cultural offerings for a city of its size.

But these days, Pasadena’s art scene is in flux.

The city is reeling from the announcement that the venerable Pasadena Playhouse is closing because of money woes. Three years ago, the city’s two main orchestras, the Pasadena Symphony and the Pasadena Pops, merged, and since then, the joint organization has struggled financially as well.

All three organizations struggled with an aging demographic base, mounting debt and increased competition from other art venues around Southern California.

By contrast, museums such as the Huntington and the Norton Simon have managed to attract a younger and more diverse audience, including families. The Huntington, for example, has in recent years opened a children’s garden as well as a Chinese garden, which garnered significant financial support from the area’s wealthy Asian community.

At the same time, some avant-garde performing arts groups are rising, challenging the stereotypes of Pasadena’s arts scene as a place that honored tradition but rarely pushed the envelope.

A new outlook

With bold aesthetics and risky programming, organizations such as Furious Theatre, The Theatre @ Boston Court, the Pasadena Museum of California Art and Side Street Projects are managing to challenge Pasadena convention.

Side Street has installed funky mobile art installations across the city, while Furious Theatre staged the world premiere of “Canned Peaches in Syrup,” a post-apocalyptic love story in which the world is divided into cannibals and vegetarians.

“It definitely seems as if the perception of Pasadena as a stodgy place has been challenged,” said Nick Cernoch, general manager of Furious Theatre.

Some of Pasadena’s arts organizations are pushing for a younger, diverse audience by hosting musical events at museums, say, or tailoring specific exhibitions. The Pacific Asia Museum recently included manga and anime in an exhibition about Japanese samurai, as a way to broaden the exhibit’s appeal.

The result, said Terry LeMoncheck, executive director of the Pasadena Arts Council, a nonprofit group that supports arts organizations in the area, is that things are shifting. “But they should be,” she added. “If art isn’t shifting, there’s something wrong. And it’s probably not art.”

Though Pasadenans long reveled in their city’s self-contained nature, which allowed them to partake of rich cultural offerings without having to get on a freeway, that has begun to shift.

More competition

The last two decades have seen an explosion in the region’s arts scene, and with the remaking of organizations such as LACMA and MOCA and the introduction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Getty Center, several arts leaders said they now find themselves competing for audiences not just with one another, but also with the larger L.A. arts scene.

Theater- and museum-goers who once never traveled west of the 110 or east of the 605 are discovering venues elsewhere. That’s created problems for some local organizations trying to attract and keep members.

For some organizations, that has meant looking beyond the San Gabriel Valley for financial and audience support. Michael Seel, executive director of the Theatre @ Boston Court, said that some of his organization’s members come from the Westside, Claremont and Orange County.

“The arts world in Southern California is highly competitive,” said Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard. “But it’s also vital. And Pasadena has continued to develop as a center of arts and cultural activities.”

Several area arts leaders said that the economic downturn has exacerbated a divide that was already starting to occur.

“It’s a mixed bag in Pasadena,” said Scott Ward, executive director of the Armory Center for the Arts, a community arts center. “Some nonprofits are really strong, fiscally, and others are a bit more close to the precipice.”

A landmark’s woes

In the case of the Pasadena Playhouse, the financial struggles of the 90-year-old landmark had been well-known among many of the city’s culturally connected residents. And though the Playhouse had a loyal subscriber base, many of those supporters were aging and either dying off or not attending theater anymore.

Ward, who said he is optimistic that the Playhouse will regroup and ultimately survive, said that nonprofit arts groups have to look realistically at the niches they fill. “Other things have grown up around,” he said. “People’s business models have to change.”

The experience of the Pasadena Pops and Pasadena Symphony -- which now go by the name Pasadena Symphony Assn. -- is instructive.

In early 2009, a decline in donations and a shrinking endowment forced the orchestras to cancel five concerts. A new executive director has said that the organization is gradually paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and has begun using popular composers and titles to boost revenue for classical concerts.

That experience, said Emily Hopkins, interim executive director of Side Street Projects, a mobile visual arts collective, showed that the size of an arts organization makes a big difference in how it can react to both economic forces and the shifting taste of patrons.

She said that smaller arts nonprofits often have “a very entrepreneurial attitude. That’s what’s helped us . . . we are able to react to how things evolve.”

When A Noise Within, a classical theater company based in Glendale, started looking for a permanent home several years ago, Pasadena was at the top of co-founder and co-artistic director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott’s list. Pasadena, she said, “has a long history for support of the arts. And we thought we’d be very complementary to what was already there.”

Rodriguez-Elliott said she found city officials, especially Bogaard, to be “extremely helpful” in making a move to Pasadena work. Though the city did not provide any financial support, it did help the organization identify potential sites and clear bureaucratic hurdles. A Noise Within will break ground next month on a facility near a Gold Line stop in East Pasadena.

Bogaard admits some of Pasadena’s art institutions are struggling but said he believes the city will remain a magnet for the arts. He noted the city has spearheaded a number of arts festivals and “arts nights,” when cultural venues around the city open for free. Those events, Bogaard said, “underscore for the people of Southern California what is available here.”

cara.dimassa @latimes.com