Diversity Must Be Served

As we hurtle toward the next millennium, Calendar asked six recently appointed leaders of area cultural institutions--the leaders of tomorrow--to reflect on the future of the arts, both regionally and in a broader context. What follows is an edited version of their responses.

Naturally, opinions differ, depending on the institutions represented, as well as the personalities of the individuals. Some say they already have embarked on projects that will speed them into the future, but Willem Wijnbergen--who arrived in March from Amsterdam to become managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and is, so to speak, the newest kid on the cultural block--is determined to shake up both the institutional organization and music programming.

These leaders also share many concerns. Everyone interviewed is aware of the multiethnicity of the Los Angeles area and wishes to serve that diversity. Mea culpa acknowledgment was given to the fact that current arts audiences often do not reflect such diversity, partly because arts institutions traditionally have largely focused on Eurocentric art (consider the repertoire of classical opera and music, as well as the focus of most blockbuster art exhibitions). But there is also the fact that many institutions do not yet know how to pull in wider audiences.

With cutbacks in arts education in public schools a national epidemic, we may wonder whether the arts really are just expendable frills. Not surprisingly, these leaders deliver a strong “no” to such suggestions--they share the staunch conviction that the arts can, and do, enrich our lives. More pointedly, Andrea Rich, president and chief executive officer of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, believes that art can create a valuable sense of community in a city better known for its far-flung, highway-gridded sprawl.

The resounding optimism is that Los Angeles--with its diverse population, its wide-ranging resources, its strategic location between the Pacific Rim and the continental U.S., not to mention its affluence and the stardust aura of its entertainment industry--could well be on its way to becoming a major arts capital of the 21st century.

Andrea Rich

President and chief executive

officer, Los Angeles County

Museum of Art

Los Angeles today, and as we approach the 21st century, is probably the most culturally diverse city in the world. The one link that could be the great beneficiary of this caldron of cultural interface is the arts, because the arts are about culture, they’re about creativity, they’re about human aspirations as reflected in each culture. They’re about similarities that bind and differences that define cultures, so it seems to me that the success of our great human experiment called Los Angeles could very much be enhanced by active participation on the part of arts institutions.

Clearly, in the entertainment industry--to the extent one views that as an art--L.A. is the international center. In the visual arts, Los Angeles increasingly is becoming not the international center but an international center, and that is so because it is perched on the Pacific Rim at the turn of the 20th to the 21st century, the way New York was perched toward Europe at the end of the last century.

Our mission is very clear: to collect and conserve and present the finest examples of creative visual output from all cultures and all periods of history. And, this is the important additional mission we’ve given ourselves, to translate those collections into meaningful experiences for the widest array of audiences. And by that we mean our multicultural audience. That’s a huge undertaking, though it really is what the focus of the 21st century is about. . . . Hopefully, it will build linkages and create community. There’s no better way to bring people together than through mutual understanding of creative expression.

If, in 15 years, 50% of the population is going to be of Hispanic heritage and today only 7% of our visitors are Hispanic, we have to do something. One of the things we’re doing is going into partnership with Spanish-language television. We are also highlighting certain kinds of collections and exhibitions. We will bring in a Diego Rivera exhibition; we’ve gotten a collection of major works of modern Mexican masters; we will be having “The Road to Aztlan” exhibition.

What we must do, and do, do, is to create a broadly based, well-balanced exhibition program that will have popular appeal--such as the Picasso and Van Gogh shows--together with much more focused shows that appeal to cognoscenti, like the Arthur Dove show or the [upcoming] show on Ottoman calligraphy. . . . If we only did the scholarly, narrow-interest-band show, we couldn’t justify the public support and subsidy that we get. If we only did big blockbusters that were fairly obvious, then we would not be pushing forward and doing our job in bringing a public along to appreciate and understand new art forms as they’re evolving, so we have to do both.

I am convinced that the future of this museum rests in our children. With art education having fallen out of the curriculum, we must engage children as early as possible, so we are committed to creating a children’s gallery devoted to changing exhibitions that will produce cutting-edge, high-tech and low-tech interactions for children and families.

Walking the streets of L.A., I’ve learned a number of things--that it is just a fascinating city with huge numbers of well-intentioned people and groups who hunger for their own sense of autonomy and dignity and also for effective collaborations. I found that when we reached out to create partnerships or collaborations, the reaction was overpoweringly positive. . . . It’s given me a lot of encouragement and hope for the role of institutions like this in building a great city.

Placido Domingo

Artistic director designate,

Los Angeles Opera

Los Angeles is a place with such an important amount of people--the world of recording, television people and movie people--certainly all these people have children, they have family, and I think it is essential to provide their children a certain standard of [cultural] education. On the other side we have big, big communities of different [ethnicities]--the Latin community is tremendous whether you talk about people from Mexico, from El Salvador, from Guatemala, from South America; also Korean people, Japanese people. . . . They need something better than what they have.

Everything that happens on the West Coast has certain limitations of distance . . . to the international community. But every day I see more and more people coming to the performances in Los Angeles. We just have to do things that are so exciting that we will move even more people from around the world.

I’m looking forward to improving the cultural life of the Spanish-speaking people--they have only television, soap opera, salsa, but they don’t have the possibility to see opera or zarzuela or Spanish theater, which has great writers from Spain, Central and South America. I would be encouraging people to bring these to the community.

Once the Philharmonic moves to Disney Concert Hall, we will have more time at the theater [the Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion] so we’ll need a higher budget [for more productions]. Besides the opera, I really would like something the whole time for the Spanish audience--zarzuela and the Spanish theater. My dream is that that will be something continuous and may become part of the company.

When Los Angeles Opera asked me to be artistic director, [I said] I won’t be happy just to do the regular repertoire. I think we have to educate, to give possibilities to new composers, to new works, unknown works. It is a lot to do, but you have to do it in a clever way.

[From my experience at the Washington Opera] I have learned some things that may apply directly to Los Angeles like budgetary business, production business, rehearsals, everything, but one thing is that I really have to use a different mentality, I have to do different things for the different cities, they have their own personalities, and I have to create exciting things that will appeal to each city.

I am building my season 2001, 2002, but I don’t want to talk about it just yet. I really want--boom! at the right moment--surprises to happen.

Sheldon Epps

Artistic director,

Pasadena Playhouse

The facts bear out that Los Angeles is now a major city of the arts and certainly a real hub of the theatrical activity that feeds this country. . . . [We need] to stop apologizing for thinking of ourselves as only a city where movies and television are created, when in fact we are creating so much wonderful work in all of the arts.

One of the joys of Los Angeles is that it is a very international city--it’s difficult to walk down any street in Los Angeles and not see people who are different than you. So as arts organizations reflecting the city, we are by nature multiethnic, multicultural organizations creating work that draws on this vast variety.

The theater is very much an endangered species . . . so the primary mission is to keep the art form alive, to perpetuate the form and to do it in such a way that it is not merely maintaining the status quo but constantly looking to expand the art form and making it both attractive and relevant to contemporary society and to contemporary audiences. One of the biggest missions this theater has is to appeal to a new audience because the audience that has been there is growing older and may not be there in a few years. We need to develop audiences for the next century.

There’s too much good work out there by artists of color for any one theater to take care of it all. Beyond that, I know the Pasadena Playhouse audience is not going to see the work of East West Players, they’re not going to see the work at Inner City Cultural Center, so if they’re going to be exposed to that work, they’re going to be exposed to it here. The other half is that it’s also important to serve the artist. The Pasadena Playhouse is, theatrically speaking, one of the big boys. Those artists--be they writers, directors, actors--deserve the opportunity to work on this stage, to see their visions fully produced.

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that the theatrical community here is vital, it’s alive, it’s electric, it’s enormous. Last year’s Theatre L.A.’s Ovation Awards was one of the most exciting evenings--to see the Shubert Theater packed with people to celebrate the theater in a way I have not seen as strongly voiced in any other city I’ve worked in, including New York City. I think it’s because the focus is less here on theater as a business than on theater as an art form.

Barry Munitz

President and CEO,

J. Paul Getty Trust

With the Getty now open and the California Science Center so successful, and by the year 2002 we’ll have the Villa reopening, we’ll have Disney Concert Hall opening, the Cathedral opening--all of this, if they can all work together, then the role they play is profound for the city in terms of its values and the tone of living here and of visiting here. The goal hopefully would be to raise the level of civility, of culture, of commitment to a healthy community.

With the strength of existing arts organizations, and now with the newer institutions like the Skirball Cultural Center, the new Getty, and the science center, I don’t think there’s any question that, with New York, we are the two major cultural centers in the United States and two of the major centers in the world.

The key is to try to understand [our local audiences] as well as possible. We spend a lot of time talking to leaders in all the communities around Los Angeles and reaching out to them, communicating with them. There are a great number of ways [in which we program to the region]. We announced with the White House a partnership which includes preserving cultural heritage sites in Los Angeles. We are working [on conserving] the Siqueiros mural; we reach out to Los Angeles schoolchildren; we talk in a variety of languages through a variety of media; we give grants to local agencies; we engage the libraries; we share resources with Skirball, which is our closest neighbor, we have a joint program with UCLA’s master’s degree in conservation, [the list] is endless.

What I’ve learned [from the reaction to the Getty] is that people will come, care about, learn about, engage the arts and culture in Los Angeles. There are lots of people around the world who wanted to believe that California would not hold its own in cultural sophistication, and that’s absolute nonsense. It’s nice to see it proven. We’re approaching now 2 million visitors in this first year--the projections were for half that. Affirmation, that’s what it has been. It’s one thing to argue in theory, it’s another thing to have the facts at your disposal.

Willem Wijnbergen

Executive vice president

and managing director,

Los Angeles Philharmonic

I don’t think [Los Angeles is a world arts center] at the moment, though in the entertainment field it is, in our own classical musical industry we are because, funny enough, the world looks at the Los Angeles Philharmonic as the great innovator. We are perceived to be top quality and ahead of the crowd, but is that a reason for people to come to L.A.? No, because the greater environment has not enough to offer in the perception of those who normally travel to New York to do this, to do that.

Our mission is to develop our audience. During the past decade we have been very successful in developing artistically as an organization, but we have to bring it home again and make this organization important to a much larger section of this city, which is so diverse--including the Asian population, the Latino population and many others. If we can find the right format, then that mission will be accomplished.

Another part of our mission is education, because it’s not being done in school. We have to pick up that role somehow to make sure people are aware of it, so education is extremely important. The symphony orchestra all this century has gotten away with being a 19th century organization. It was for a select few, so the whole development of democracy and a different society almost went unnoticed.

Here [in L.A.] everyone’s different--that’s what makes this environment so interesting--and also so challenging. If you look at the Hollywood Bowl programs, we’ve included jazz because there’s an enormous opportunity to take that art form, an American art form, very seriously. I think that’s very important to the black American community, so that’s one example. In another series we went into what we call world music--Cuban, Brazilian, Argentine, Russian, what have you.

Getting ready to do a great job at Disney Hall, it’s very exciting. By that time we should have reinvented ourselves. We’re reorganizing the whole institution--thoroughly. We’re getting rid of the traditional ways of being managed, we’re establishing small cross-functional units . . . very flat, not so hierarchical. That’s all happening now--creating an organization extremely responsive to its environment.

I’ve got a confirmation that all the dreams I’ve had for this city can actually happen--I think it has the resources, I think it has the mentality, I think it has the talent, it has the location to reinvent this business. To me it is one of the most welcoming environments I’ve seen in the world.

Jerry E. Mandel

President, Orange County

Performing Arts Center

We have people moving here from Pacific Rim countries and from Latin America, so the biggest challenge facing us is how to assimilate our new populations into our art forms. Our institutions will need to be cutting-edge in trying to make this happen so that the new populations can experience and get interested in classical art forms, and we need to be cutting-edge in moving some of their culture into our programming. That will be the major thrust in the first half of the next century.

This is the place where the arts of the 21st century are evolving. To do that, we have to build our arts infrastructure. We simply don’t have enough world-class facilities right now in which to showcase our art. It all started taking off recently with the Getty, the Disney Concert Hall. Southern California, for its size, doesn’t have enough quality performing space, you’ve got to have that. The good news is that it’s in the planning.

Our institution’s goal is to provide the opportunity for the people of Orange County to experience all of the classical arts--opera, classical music, ballet, Broadway, jazz, and other popular music. We have a large population, and we’ll do over 300 events next year, so our mission is to bring them in here, stretch the audience a little. Simply put, we want the very best for the most people.

Our population is diverse, our audience isn’t. So we’re going out to schools. When our expansion is completed, we’ll have more space to provide programs to appeal to different populations. Our biggest problem is to bring people here for the first time, and we’re thinking of different ways to deal with it.

The biggest new project for us is expanding our facilities. We simply don’t have enough. Lincoln Center has seven or eight spaces, the Music Center will have four, we only have two, so to do the things we want, we need more room. If everything goes well, it could be done in five years. We have to raise all the money privately.

You learn pretty quickly in the arts that you never can please everybody. There’s nothing that’s safe, nothing that always works. It’s extremely important to have a well-defined philosophy of programming and go ahead and do it. Second, as long as it’s excellent, you’re doing the best for the community. Third, this is a business. I love the arts, and art does so much for the world, but if you don’t run it in a businesslike way, you’re going to be out of business.