For decades, the effort to revitalize downtown Los Angeles has been linked to artwork, from the construction of the midcentury modern Music Center in 1964 to the addition of Frank Gehry’s Stainless Steel in 2003.
But the pandemic has been tough on cultural centers and institutions across the country, and Los Angeles has been no exception.
The prices of vacant office spaces in the city center rose more than 25 percent. The shop windows are empty. Homelessness and crime remain concerns. Many arts organizations have yet to regain their pre-pandemic audiences. And there were vivid displays of the area’s thwarted ambitions: graffiti artists covered three abandoned skyscrapers just before the Grammy Awards took place across the street from Crypto.com Arena, and some lights on the famous new Sixth Street Viaduct went out afterward. thieves stole the copper wire.
So it was an important vote of confidence in the continued promise of the area when the Widethe popular contemporary art museum that opened across the street from Disney Hall in 2015, announced last month that it was to begin a $100 million expansion.
And it was largely a continuation of the vision of its founder, Eli Broad, the businessman and philanthropist who was instrumental in trying to create a center of gravity in a famously sprawling city by turning Grand Avenue into a cultural hub. Broad, who died in 2021, helped found the Museum of Modern Art and build Disney Hall before opening the Broad to house his own art collection.
“As Eli said — and he said it when really almost no one agreed with him — downtown Los Angeles is the center, and this area needs a cultural center,” said Joanne Heyler, the Broad’s founding director and chief curator. “He was right. At least our experience and our audience bear that out.”
The Broad — which offers free admission — says its attendance has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, as has the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which says it is again averaging 89 percent attendance.
But other presenters have struggled. Last summer, Center Theater Group suspended productions at one of its three stages, the 736-seat Mark Taper Forum in the Music Center complex, citing financial problems.
“It’s no secret that many arts institutions that are critical to the arts ecology in downtown Los Angeles continue to struggle,” said Hilda L. Solis, the Los Angeles County Supervisor who represents Bunker Hill’s Grand Avenue District. and the nearby Arts District. An email message. “But despite setbacks, this field is resilient. Artists and organizations in the area are finding ways to spin in an effort to reconnect with Angelenos.”
They are also working to draw the public back downtown at a time when office vacancies are rising and hotel occupancy is falling. “It feels a little hollow,” said Christopher Koelsch, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Opera, adding that “it’s a lot harder to sell out our midweek shows than it used to be.”
The opera house expects attendance to reach 75 percent of capacity this season, an improvement over recent years but still down from the 83 percent it had during the last full season before the pandemic.
Traffic congestion remains another barrier to getting people to travel downtown, and some galleries and art organizations are expanding into other areas to meet people where they are.
The galleries Hauser & Wirth and Francois Guebali, which have downtown locations, both recently added locations in West Hollywood. And while the LA Dance Project is expanding its downtown studio and performance space, doubling its seating capacity, it just signed a deal for regular performances at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.
Galleries say they’re not leaving downtown. “They both complement each other,” said Stacen Berg, partner and managing director of Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles, referring to her gallery’s two locations. “West Hollywood is a high-traffic area – we have people coming in multiple times to see a show. The city center serves as a destination. They make their way to come to us.”
Ghebaly said he decided to open another location in West Hollywood to offer collectors the convenience of “proximity shopping.”
“The ideal way to cover a city like Los Angeles is to have multiple locations,” he said. “These neighborhoods are essentially different cities, cultures, identities – like the island states in Greece, only instead of being separated by seas, they are separated by highways.”
Marketers say downtown offers an unusual degree of natural space and creative freedom. “You just can’t see these shows anywhere else in Los Angeles or New York,” said dealer Susanne Vielmetter, who in 2019 developed her downtown gallery and closed her Culver City location.
Hauser’s downtown space, a sprawling complex that includes a bookstore and the popular restaurant Manuela, says it drew 4,000 people at its recent grand opening for Jason Rhoades, Catherine Goodman and RETROaction (part two).
The young people who live and work in the Arts District contribute to the vibrancy of the galleries. “People are coming downtown,” said Mara McCarthy, the founder of the Box gallery, which presents contemporary art and performances. “They’ll go see a show there, get a beer down here and go get ramen.”
Grand Avenue remains a case study in progress and challenges. Some hope that the newly completed development, Grand LA, across from Disney Hall — which was designed by Gehry and includes restaurants, shops, a hotel and residences — delivers on its promise. Just a few blocks away is another hotel, the LA Grand Hotel used to house the homeless.
“Downtown has stalled,” said Richard Kosalek, a former director of the Museum of Modern Art who also led the committee that selected Gehry for Disney Hall. “There should be a commitment to a visionary plan.”
There have been signs of caution from government officials.
Governor Gavin Newsom was announced last month that his administration will push to fast-track construction of a $2 billion, 7.6-acre residential and commercial development called Fourth & Central; which prices itself as “the new gateway to DTLA.” And Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has continued to work to address the homelessness crisis. And the Municipal Council approved nearly $4 million to remove graffiti from abandoned skyscrapers and secure the buildings.
Mark Falcone, founder and CEO of Continuum Partners, which is developing Fourth & Central, said “right now, there’s a perception that there’s more risk in Los Angeles and San Francisco than there was five years ago.” , but remains “very bullish” on the center’s outlook.
“We believe that cultural enterprises are the things that give a community more long-term resilience and stability than anything else,” he said.
Arts administrators also make plans. Mark Taper has started offering some programming again (a return of Alex Edelman’s one-man show and a Michael Feinstein Concert) and plans to announce a new season that its artistic director, Snehal Desaisays it will focus heavily on weekends to address the weakness in weekday attendance.
“The pandemic has accelerated some of the trends that were already happening,” said Rachel S. Moore, president and CEO of the Music Center. “People are much more selective about what they see, but the things that are super popular are super popular.”
The Broad recently recorded the highest daily traffic in its history: 6,200 visitors on March 30. (By comparison, the nearby Museum of Modern Art said its attendance was 1,985 that day.) “There was a sense at first that downtown was in mothballs,” said Heyler, its director. “We’ve fully emerged since that moment.”
In another promising development, the Colburn School for Music and Dance just broke ground on a Gehry-designed extension at its downtown campus that will include a 1,000-seat concert hall.
“There is a need for a medium-sized venue in the heart of the cultural district,” said Sel Kardan, the school’s chief executive and president, adding that he hopes the stage will be used during the upcoming Olympics.
And the Los Angeles Tourism Board has focused its latest—and biggest— ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN for art and culture. “Most people don’t know that Los Angeles is now home to the most museums and performing arts venues in the country,” said Adam Burke, president and CEO of the board.
A few businesses have recently abandoned their downtown roots, including Spotify, which Open a massive new campus in the Arts District and Warner Music Group, which moved in a new five-story building on Santa Fe Ave. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, plans to offer corporate memberships to try to tap into this new line of executives, said Anne Ellegood, the executive director, adding that the museum is “thinking a lot about what we can do to bring artists back to neighborhood.
“Everybody in the cultural sector,” he said, “needs to think about how to make sure artists stay in Los Angeles.”