Tag: LACMA

Miracle Mile Spotlight: Craft and Folk Art Museum

~ Editor

Miracle Mile Spotlight:
Craft and Folk Art Museum

In 1965 two cultural institutions arrived in the Miracle Mile, launching Museum Row: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and what in time would be known as the Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM). LACMA made its debut with national media coverage and the cream of the city’s high society in attendance. But the real buzz was created by a new café and gallery a few blocks east on Wilshire called “The Egg and Eye.”

“Well, the original concept for The Egg and The Eye was to serve the omelets upstairs and while people waited they would go in the gallery. When they were in the gallery, they would encounter maybe a pot on a pedestal,” explained its founder Edith R. Wyle (1918-1999) in a 1993 interview. “The fact that it was a pot on a pedestal would lead people to understand that this must be art, and I think they got the message. This was a first. People did not display crafts or folk art in an artistic manner in a display setting.”

UCLA-educated, Wyle was an artist with a deep passion for folk art. Her enterprise was an immediate hit and in 1973 it evolved into a non-profit organization with a new name: the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

The inexhaustible Wyle initiated exhibits, workshops, educational programs, and created the Festival of Masks, a multicultural festival. In the process, CAFAM became a dynamic community center in the Miracle Mile – a place not only to see indigenous crafts and objects, but a place to learn weaving, jewelry making, and other skills. This tradition continues today under the guidance of Executive Director Suzanne Isken.

Isken [photo right], former Education Director at the Museum of Contemporary Art, came to the museum four years ago. Her bold and imaginative leadership has expanded scope of its exhibits and classes. Craft and folk art, in her perspective, are not relegated to the past – it is something that is being created today in dynamic new ways. The energy of the museum is obvious to even those passing by on Wilshire Boulevard. A façade project initiated by Isken serves as a very public canvas for Los Angeles-based artists, most notably when the front of the building was “yarn bombed” with knitted granny squares.

 

“When I first came here everyone kept telling me that the museum was a hidden gem and my reaction was: to hell with the hidden,” Isken says. “Our gift shop has always been very popular, but many people didn’t understand that there was a museum upstairs. That was part of our decision to bring the museum downstairs closer to the street.”

A native of Los Angeles and a mother of four, Isken exudes curiosity and enthusiasm. These qualities are evident in the wide range of craft exhibited at the museum – from the work of male quilt makers to an upcoming show featuring shoe designer Chris Francis.

“I came from a contemporary art museum. My vision, given my experience, was to look at more contemporary craft. We have an important place in L.A. at a time when craft is getting a lot of attention. People are really into making things and that is a natural audience for us: the makers.”

Isken views the Miracle Mile as a unique area with a great deal of vitality. “We see ourselves as a ‘hands on’ neighborhood museum. We keep our ticket prices as low as possible. We offer a craft night every Thursday night. We have free admission on Sundays. We try to stay connected to the community.”

Today the hot trend in automobiles, smart phones, and museums is to promote themselves as being “interactive.” But being truly interactive – a museum where you can get your hands dirty shaping a pot or prick your finger learning to embroider – has been a decades-old mission at CAFAM. It has always been a place that appeals to all of the senses, including a sense of community.

Craft and Folk Art Museum
5814 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323-937-4230

For additional information:

Craft and Folk Art Museum website: www.cafam.org

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: Oral History Interview with Edith Wyle, March-September 1993

First Academy Museum Public Hearing Held

~ Editor


First Academy Museum Public Hearing Held

MMRA Protests Digital Sign District, Special Events Center,
and Lack of Parking

On March 16, 2015 the first public hearing on the proposed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and special events center was held at City Hall. Hearing Officer Luciralia Ibarra took public testimony on the many zone changes, variances, and special approvals the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is seeking. The new museum and events venue will transform the former May Co. at the northeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.

The Miracle Mile Residential Association [MMRA] supports readapting the May Co. building for use as a motion picture museum. However, we strongly oppose the Academy’s request for the creation of a digital sign district, which circumvents the hard-won guidelines of the Miracle Mile Community Design Overlay District and will convert the historic landmark into an electronic billboard. We also oppose the demolition of one-third of the historic building to make room for an adjoining 1,000-seat theater that will be heavily promoted for celebrity premieres, screenings, and large events.

Architectural critics have described the project as “a special events center masquerading as a museum.” The array of variances, zoning changes, and conditional use permits requested by the Academy lends credence to this charge: How many museums require catering facilities to host private affairs for 1,350 people? Or rooftop terraces seating 800 people? Or their very own digital sign district?

Some museum experts predict that the new museum will attract a million or more visitors per year – yet the Academy is unwilling to build any new off-street parking for the project. They maintain that the adjacent Los Angeles County Museum of Art has ample parking to spare. Residents of the Miracle Mile find this ludicrous. Visitors to LACMA frequently park on nearby residential streets when LACMA’s underground garage and/or Spaulding Avenue parking lot are full (or just to avoid paying for parking). The idea that a million new visitors to the Academy Museum will not create parking intrusions into the Miracle Mile defies common sense.

MMRA President James O’Sullivan submitted detailed written arguments against granting the approvals and zoning changes. He attended the hearing with MMRA Vice Presidents Alice Cassidy and Ken Hixon, who voiced their opposition to the project as proposed. Cassidy questioned the public benefit of a special events center intended principally to host private events.

Carthay Circle Homeowners Association and Beverly Wilshire Homes also had representatives at the hearing to express their opposition to the project.

[Top image courtesy of A.M.P.A.S.]

For additional information:

City of Los Angeles, Depart of City Planning: Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts, and Science Museum Notice of Public Hearing

Miracle Mile Residential Association: Position Statement Prepared by James O’Sullivan for Academy Museum Zoning Administrator Hearing, March 16, 2015

Transcript: Zoning Administrator Hearing on Academy Museum Project, March 16, 2015

Govan Eyes Residential Area of Miracle Mile for Future LACMA Expansion

~ Editor

 

“That’s the Only Way to Go…”

Govan Eyes Residential Area of Miracle Mile
For Future LACMA Expansion

Overlay of latest Zumthor design of LACMA. Map courtesy of Google.

The latest iteration of the Peter Zumthor design for a new Los Angeles County of Art was revealed last month. The original oil blob concept has been squared off and its roof has been perforated by rectangular protrusions to allow for taller galleries. The “horizontal skyscraper,” as L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne describes it, still bridges Wilshire Boulevard.

Its footprint south of the boulevard – on what is now LACMA’s Spaulding Avenue parking lot – appears to have swollen in size to accommodate its new function as one of only two entrances to the museum and as the location of a ground floor 300-seat theater. Thirty to forty feet above this will be a south facing open-air plaza overlooking the Wilshire Galleria condominiums located north of 8th Street between Spaulding and Stanley Avenues.

On March 25, 2015, Hawthorne hosted an event, “Debating the New LACMA,” as part of his Third Los Angeles Project at Occidental College. The symposium featured LACMA Director Michael Govan, making a pitch for the new museum, and a panel of experts examining the pros-and-cons of the proposed re-do – including architecture critic and Miracle Mile resident Greg Goldin, a frequent contributor to this newsletter.

At the gathering it was emphasized that Zumthor doesn’t design on paper as much as he does with models. His process, we were told, is notoriously slow and involves numerous interpretations. But it is clear that regardless of the final design, the new museum will span Wilshire and invade a densely populated part of the Miracle Mile.

Wilshire Boulevard has always more-or-less served as a moat to shield the nearby residential area from the full brunt of disturbances from museum traffic, events, and noise. By lurching south of the boulevard into the Miracle Mile the largest museum west of the Mississippi River will become the hulking next-door neighbor to thousands of residents. This intrusion is fraught with problems – it is the museum equivalent of “mansionization” and will overwhelm the entire neighborhood.

Zumthor’s original design encountered stiff resistance for encroaching on the La Brea Tar Pits. “We love the Tar Pits,” Govan quipped, “but they didn’t love us back.” It is obvious that he has now set his sights on the residential area of the Miracle Mile. At the Occidental College event Hawthorne raised a frequent criticism of Zumthor’s elevated single-story plan for the museum: that it will not easily allow for future expansion.

Here is a transcript of the conversation that ensued:

Govan: To the question of you’re building a form, which came up, which is not easily – you can’t easily add on to. In the land area the only place you can go is up and . . . going up is not that practical. So, what is the future of expansion? One idea would be, if you bridge Wilshire Boulevard, you actually do annex – a hundred years from now, not now, not in the lifetimes of people we know – you could expand a park for Los Angeles in areas, that has been done before, with relatively low density spaces and rental apartments and things. So, you could expand that direction, where you can’t go into the Tar Pits. So, it does provide our successors, by a hundred years…

Hawthorne: [interrupting] So, you’re talking about on Wilshire Boulevard?

Govan: Well, on or around. You have to get across the boulevard to do that easily. Because of the way the Tar Pits frame and you have buildings on the other side. So, that’s the only way to go.

Translation: LACMA has nowhere to grow but south, into the residential blocks below Wilshire. Like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and other museums with global ambitions, LAMCA would gobble up its neighbors.

Govan’s assurance that future expansion will not occur in this century is undercut by the fact that since opening in 1965 LACMA has been expanding (or trying to). By their very nature, major museums must grow or die – particularly in this age of monument building and star architecture. Govan knows this. By stubbornly adhering to the obvious limitations of an elevated single-story concept for a new museum, LACMA has no choice but to move into the Miracle Mile.

The welcome mat is not out.

Click on image to enlarge.

[Image of Zumthor model and bottom graphic courtesy LACMA.]

For additional information:

Los Angeles Times: Peter Zumthor’s Plan for LACMA Undergoes Makeover

Curbed Los Angeles: Peter Zumthor’s New LACMA Redesign is a Lot More Boring

YouTube:  “Debating a New LACMA” – Occidental College, March 25, 2015(actual event begins at the 1:40:00 mark)

MMRA Newsletter, November 2014: LACMA’s Billion Dollar Debt (and Michael Govan’s Very Good Day)

How to Dress for the Oscars • Commentary by Greg Goldin

~ Editor

From the MMRA Newsletter, March 15, 2014:

How to Dress for the Oscars
by Greg Goldin

One of the most pressing issues facing the Miracle Mile is the Academy’s plea to bend the City’s rules to permit its new museum to dress the exterior of the historic May Company building in a combination of digital signs, banners, and super-graphics. As spelled out in the Academy’s Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR), the iconic Art Deco landmark will be transformed into a massive billboard, incessantly selling Hollywood from all four sides of its limestone façade, from the sidewalk to the roof.

The Academy, it seems, regards one of Los Angeles’s most beloved buildings as little more than a table rasa for hyping Hollywood. All told, the Academy has announced a total of 21,722 square‐feet of signs – and more to follow on the exterior of the theater it plans to build behind the May Company. Remarkably, even the building’s most famous feature, the gold-leaf “perfume bottle” at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, will be defaced, draped in a 63-foot tall Oscar statuette silhouette.

Normally, it would be impossible for the Academy to even contemplate this kind of signage. Landmarked buildings are designated landmarks for a reason: to ensure the continued existence of their architectural and artistic merits. The Academy is working quietly, behind the scenes, to convince the guardians of our cultural heritage – notably, the Los Angeles Conservancy – who thus far are not pleased with the museum’s proposed signage.

But the Academy has, it seems, gained one key ally: LACMA. Before it could even think about applying for the creation of a Sign District – the City’s official designation for L.A. Live-style super graphics and kinetic billboards – they needed a minimum of a 3-acre building site. Their lease with LACMA only provided 2.2-acres. According to the FEIR, LACMA came to the rescue, agreeing to “lend” the missing 0.8 acres “immediately north of the Project Site for a total area of 3 acres.”  No LACMA loan, no Sign District – leaving the May Company, which the Conservancy calls “the grandest example of Streamline Moderne remaining in Los Angeles,” close to its 1939 original.

Click on map to enlarge.

Boundaries of the “North Lawn” show park space eclipsed by the .8-acre parcel LACMA is lending the Academy Museum to meet the minimum required 3 acres for a Sign District.

Shortly before press time, the MMRA asked LACMA director Michael Govan a few questions about the art museum’s agreement to lend the Academy the additional land to qualify for the creation of a Sign District. As yet, Mr. Govan has not had the opportunity to reply – and we, of course, welcome his views.  Here’s what we’d like to know from LACMA:

  • Does LACMA have any concerns about the extensive signage that would wrap the historic May Company building? Have they expressed these concerns to the Academy and the City?
  • LACMA originally committed (at the time Ogden Drive between Wilshire and Sixth Street was vacated to make way for the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Resnick Pavilion) to keep the May Company building unaltered. How does the Sign District comply with this earlier pledge?
  • According to the FEIR, the Academy will use that additional .8 acres for even more, as yet undisclosed, signage.  Does LACMA approve of this use on its parkland adjacent to Levitated Mass and the Resnick?

What follows are three illustrations submitted by the Academy’s architect, Renzo Piano, depicting the signs that will festoon the May Company building if the Sign District is approved.

Click on illustration to enlarge.

As seen by a pedestrian or driver going west on Wilshire Boulevard, both corners of the May Company building will become massive signs, 38 feet high by 44 feet wide.


Click on illustration to enlarge.

Along Wilshire Boulevard, at ground level, the old display windows will be filled with digital signs, the pediment above the canopy transformed with a “branding” banner, the eastern corner subsumed beneath yet another huge piece of polychrome plastic, and the golden mosaic blanched with the outline of world’s best-known trophy (barely visible in this rendering but clearly visible in the next, below).

Click on illustration to enlarge.

The full effect of banners, digital displays, and the Oscar statuette, can be seen in this last rendering.  The Art Deco masterpiece is now ready for its close-up!

For additional information:

Academy Museum Final Environmental Impact Report: Academy Supplemental Sign Report

Academy Museum Final Environmental Impact Report: Sign District; Resnick North Lawn Easement

 Greg Goldin is the coauthor of Never Built Los Angeles and a curator at the A+D Museum. From 1999 to 2012, he was the architecture critic at Los Angeles Magazine. He is a longtime resident of the Miracle Mile and was featured in the MMRA Channel’s YouTube presentation: “The Miracle Mile in Three Tenses: Past, Present, and Future.” Greg is an occasional contributor to this newsletter; “LACMA’s Billion Dollar Debt (and Michael Govan’s Very Good Day)” appeared in the November 2014 edition.

2014 Annual Online Survey

~ Editor

[Miracle Mile Residential Association Newsletter, November 2014:]


Miracle Mile Residential Association
2014 Annual Online Survey

Click on map to enlarge.
In November 2013, the MMRA launched its first online survey of Miracle Mile residents to gain a better understanding of your attitudes and opinions on central issues, such as traffic and development. Last year’s poll had 114 respondents; the results can be reviewed here.

The 2014 annual survey repeats many of the key questions asked in last year’s survey, which will indicate how opinions have shifted (or not) in the past 12 months. While hardly a scientific survey, the poll provides a “snapshot” of the community and helps guide the MMRA in prioritizing our efforts. The Miracle Mile Residential Association is a consensus driven organization and polling helps to ensure that the actions of the MMRA reflect the will of the residents we represent.

The MMRA also uses more targeted polls to gauge opinions on single topic issues. Both the “MMRA Mansionization-RFA-HPOZ” and “LACMA Bridge Over Wilshire” surveys are still open. You can participate in those polls or view the results in the links below.

The annual poll is not just for residents living within the boundaries of the MMRA [see map above], we are also interested in how residents in neighboring areas feel, too. The survey will remain open until December 31, 2014. The results of the annual survey will be featured in the January 2015 newsletter.

We utilize SurveyMonkey for our polls; it is a secure and simple way to gather your input. Participation is completely anonymous and your honesty is welcomed. So, please take a few minutes to complete the poll – there are 60 questions with opportunities to make specific comments. And you can skip over the questions that don’t interest or apply to you.

2014 Miracle Mile Residential Association Annual Online Survey

Participate in the survey

MMRA Mansionization-RFA-HPOZ Survey (May 2014)

Participate in the survey
View the results

LACMA Bridge Over Wilshire Survey (July 2014)

Participate in the survey
View the results

LACMA’s Billion Dollar Debt

~ Editor ~ 1 Comment

[Miracle Mile Residential Association Newsletter, November 2014;] 

LACMA’s Billion Dollar Debt 

(and Michael Govan’s Very Good Day)

Commentary by Greg Goldin

 

Supervisor Ridley-Thomas: Is this Michael Govan Day in L.A. or what? We’re trying to figure that out. Did you know what today was?

Michael Govan: That today was?

Supervisor Ridley-Thomas: Yeah, Michael Govan Day in the city, in the county of Los Angeles? Did you know that? It is. Thank you.

Michael Govan: Thank you.

– November 5, 2014 Meeting, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors

On November 5, LACMA’s plan to build a new museum that would span Wilshire Boulevard got its first enormous contribution. To help kick off the Museum’s fundraising campaign to build the proposed Peter Zumthor building, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors opened the public treasury and signed a check for $125 million. The gift, hailed as proof of the county’s commitment to art and culture, whizzed through on a unanimous vote, but it seems neither the supervisors, nor the reporters present that day, had read the fine print. The colossal sum was not nearly enough, it turns out, to get the ball rolling on the Swiss architect’s $600 million (and-climbing) oozing mega-structure. So, the Supervisors agreed to kick in another $300 million – this in the form of a government-issued bond to be repaid over 30 years by LACMA’s patrons and donors.

Even for the multi-billion dollar county, $425 million is a pile of money.  One would have hoped that the self-avowed fiscal conservatives on the board – among them, the socially liberal but financially prudent Zev Yaroslavsky – might have questioned how the money would be repaid and what the citizens are getting in return.  Yet, to hear the string of fulsome remarks by the Supervisors themselves [see link below], the mere appearance of LACMA chief Michael Govan was sufficient recompense for the public’s investment. One of the fawning Supervisors declared it “Michael Govan Day” – only to be told that such a decree violated the state’s Brown Act, and thus had to be withdrawn. LACMA’s imperial and expansionist dreams, it seems, justify the taxpayers’ gifts and loans without inquiry, investigation, or a single note of caution.

Some math is useful here. The County’s Chief Executive Officer, William T. Fujioka, laid the facts out to the Supervisors in his November 5 report. The citizens of Los Angeles county will donate $125 million to LACMA – a gift that will ultimately cost the county $10 million a year for fifteen years, topping out at $150 million. That’s the money that made the headlines. Since LACMA can’t raise the remaining $475 million in construction funds fast enough, the county has agreed to step up, to “provide adequate and timely funding for the proposed Project during its eight year delivery schedule.” That’s the $300 million bond, which will saddle LACMA with new debt of $18 million a year – adding up to $540 million over the 30-year lifetime of the loan. And that assumes the price tag for Zumthor’s creation will actually be $600 million. There are many independent estimates that put the figure at closer to $1 billion. Will the county close that gap, too?

If the past is prologue, there is ample reason to question the soundness of these arrangements. As the Supervisors know well, LACMA is already burdened with debt, and those debts have forced the Museum to compromise recent plans, to the public’s detriment.

The story begins in 2001 when LACMA undertook “Transformation,” its self-proclaimed plan to march west toward the May Co. building. For $50 million, that landmark was going to be refurbished to add 20,000 square feet of gallery space, renew the Boone children’s gallery, and carve out office space for staff. But the money had to be diverted because Museum Associates, which runs LACMA, couldn’t repay the $383 million debt it had amassed to build the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Reznick Pavilion. During the deepening recession, LACMA couldn’t bear the costs of restoring the May Co. while shelling out $15 million a year for the debt service for the BCAM and the Reznick. Thus, the May Co. renovation was jettisoned.

While everyone’s attention was focused on the delivery of Michael Heizer’s very large rock, LACMA’s finances were sinking like one. Its debt was nearly twice as large as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and almost $100 million more than the Museum of Modern Art. The viziers on Wall Street weren’t as easily diverted by the “levitated” spectacle as the citizens and their elected representatives were. The Museum’s bond rating, then perilously close to a default, was downgraded, which put the institution in the unfortunate position of having to find a way to re-leverage itself.

The answer came when a seemingly friendly marriage was arranged between the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (which had failed more times than can be recounted to open a museum) and LACMA. The Academy agreed to an up-front payment of $36.1 million to lease the 300,000 square-foot May Co. building and a chunk of real estate along its backside for the next 110 years. The Academy would get a museum and LACMA was free to reschedule its debts. For the Academy, it was a sweetheart deal; for the public, not so. The Academy paid the pitiable sum of ninety-two cents per square foot in virtual perpetuity, when the cost of much less glorious and valuable space across the street on Wilshire is four dollars a square foot and climbing. Govan told the Los Angeles Times in June of this year, “The idea was not to haggle, not to make an issue of money; whatever was fair was fair.”

The difference between market rents and this no fuss, no mess deal comes directly out of the taxpayer’s pockets, since the County already furnishes LACMA with $30 million a year in operating costs. In effect, the County is now subsidizing the Academy, one of the richest institutions – with access to seemingly unlimited Hollywood money – in the universe.

All disappointing evidence that LACMA lacks fiscal accountability. Now it is proposed that in addition to its current annual tab of $15 million in debt service, another $18 million be heaped on. For the foreseeable future, LACMA would be more than $1 billion in debt. What will this staggering sum mean to the County when the next recession hits?

And, while everyone agrees that public subsidies for the largest encyclopedic museum west of the Mississippi are worthy, shouldn’t forking over $690 million (the real price of the debt repayment) have some steely strings attached. For example, who will own the new Museum if it ever gets built? Will County negotiators extract a guarantee that LACMA have free admission when the new building opens? (The Hammer, in Westwood, is now free, and the new Broad Museum, in downtown, will be as well when it opens in fall 2015.) And, at long last, will the public be given seats on the Museum’s Board of Trustees – that exclusive, self-anointing body of the super-rich who govern LACMA?

Even if Museum director Michael Govan’s plan melts into the tar that Peter Zumthor says inspired his design, these questions will remain. If the Los Angeles County Museum of Art  – whose very name embodies its public heritage – is to be a truly civic institution, then what better time that now, on the brink of its receiving more than a half a billion dollars from taxpayers, to ask for genuine accountability and a place at the table for its true stakeholders?

Michael Govan photo courtesy of Aaron Salcido, Zócalo Public Square; Zumthor LACMA model courtesy of Los Angeles Times (© Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner); Levitated Mass photo courtesy of Jen Pollack Bianco, My Life’s a Trip.

Sources:

County of Los Angeles, Chief Executive Office: Museum of Art: Proposed East Campus Replacement Building Project Approval of Financing Concept and Funding for Preliminary Design and Planning Activities

November 5, 2014, Meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors: Transcript

San Gabriel Valley Tribune (3/14/13): Tim Rutten: Financial questions need answers before LACMA swallows MOCA

Los Angeles Times (6/2/14): Film Academy to pay LACMA $36.1 million for movie museum lease

For additional information:

Los Angeles Times (11/6/14); L.A. County supervisors embrace LACMA’s financing plan for makeover

Greg Goldin is the coauthor of Never Built Los Angeles and a curator at the A+D Museum. From 1999 to 2012, he was the architecture critic at Los Angeles Magazine. He is a longtime resident of the Miracle Mile and was featured in the MMRA Channel’s YouTube presentation: “The Miracle Mile in Three Tenses: Past, Present, and Future.” Greg is an occasional contributor to this newsletter; “LACMA: The Sky’s the Limit” appeared in the August 2014 edition.

MMRA Submits Comments on Academy Museum DEIR

~ Editor

MMRA Submits Comments
on Academy Museum DEIR

 

The Miracle Mile Residential Association [MMRA] has submitted its comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report [DEIR] for the proposed Academy Museum at the former May Company site. The nearly 7,000-page DEIR was released on August 28, 2014. The 45-day commentary period closed on October 14, 2014.

The DEIR highlights the scale of the Academy Museum project:

  • The creation of a “Sign District” allowing for the historic May Company building to serve as a background for super-graphics and digital signs.
  • Demolition of the 1946 northern addition of the May Company building to allow for the construction of the 1000-seat “Sphere” theater with a 10,000 square foot enclosed view deck. In total, the overall project will house three theaters with a combined seating capacity of 1,350 persons.
  • A ground level “Piazza” beneath the “Sphere” theatre providing access to the northern entrance to the Academy Museum. The “Piazza” would host outdoor events and screenings with up to 2,500 attendees.
  • Banquet and conference space with a capacity for 1,200 persons, including a “ Tearoom” rooftop terrace with a capacity of 800 persons that will also be utilized for outdoor film screenings.
  • A Museum Café with seating for 150 persons and a 5,000 square foot Museum Store.
  • A projection of 860,000 visitors per year with no new on-site parking.
  • Movies premieres, concerts, and other special events.

The DEIR is a very lengthy and complex legal and technical document that is difficult to concisely summarize. (For an in-depth view, follow the links below to see the MMRA’s comments to the DEIR and our independent traffic expert’s assessment.) The MMRA objections to the project center on traffic congestion, traffic and parking intrusions, infrastructure, public services, and the overall impact of locating a major special events center in a heavily congested and densely populated residential area.

Here’s the backstory.  In the mid-2000s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences [AMPAS] began aggressively acquiring parcels in Hollywood as a future location for a museum. Working with the now defunct Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, which wielded its power of eminent domain, AMPAS secured a full city block south of Sunset Boulevard on Vine Street. Including other parcels, as well as their holdings at the adjacent Pickford Center of Motion Picture Study, AMPAS assembled approximately 8 acres.

Then, with the stock market crash in 2008 and ensuing recession, AMPAS’s fundraising campaign for the Hollywood museum site derailed. They were left holding a large parcel that was suddenly worth much less than they had paid.

Three years later the dream of an Academy museum was revived. In 2011 AMPAS signed a long-term lease to take over the former May Company from Museum Associates, which operates the Los Angeles County Museum of Art [LACMA].

This preamble about AMPAS’s thwarted plan to locate a museum in Hollywood is relevant because it spotlights what is so obviously wrong with their plan to locate the Academy Museum in the Miracle Mile: They are trying to fit all of their grand plans for an 8-acre project in Hollywood into a mere 2.2 acres at the May Company site.  It is not an easy fit.

AMPAS has had to resort to slight-of-hand in the DEIR to create the illusion that an Academy Museum is compatible with the Miracle Mile – so that they can preserve their objective to be a major tourist attraction and special events center. But the only way they can do that is to minimize its true impact on the community.

A 2008 Traffic Study for the proposed Hollywood museum location projected 7,800 visitors per day. The DEIR for the May Company location projects only 5,000 – for a total of 860,000 visitors per year. Museum experts not connected to AMPAS predict that the project will easily draw at least 1 million visitors annually, if not match or exceed LACMA’s current annual attendance of 1.2 million visitors.

Why does AMPAS claim that the Miracle Mile location will attract 2,800 fewer visitors per day than the former location in Hollywood? Answer: To justify the lack of any new on-site parking. In Hollywood AMPAS was going to build a 5-story parking facility with 850 spaces; at the May Company site they propose none.

But even with this miraculous reduction in the number of visitors, AMPAS still needs to conjure hundreds of visitors arriving on foot, bicycle, or wandering over from LACMA, to cram down their numbers to meet city-mandated parking requirements.

The DEIR tortures visitor projections and parking discounts so that it will support its most important finding: That there is already adequate parking at LACMA’s underground Pritzker garage and Spaulding surface lot for the Academy Museum to share parking with LACMA.

This defies reality. The residents in areas adjacent to LACMA have endured the parking and traffic intrusions of LACMA visitors for decades. Everyone knows that LACMA doesn’t have enough parking. The “Full” sign is up almost every weekend at the Pritzker garage and Spaulding Lot. But according to the DEIR, LACMA has hundreds of existing parking spaces to spare.

In truth, the Academy Museum is as much a major special events center as it is a museum, with 87,000 square-feet devoted to theaters, events space, cafes, and a store and 84,000 square-feet for exhibitions areas, collections, and exhibit support.

As stated in the DEIR, the primary purpose and objective of the project is “…providing film screening and premieres in a state-of-the-art theater competitive with venues in size and amenities.”  Translation: The museum hopes to steal some of the audience, and wrestle some of the revenue, from such popular film premier venues as the Chinese Theater, the El Captain, and the Cinerama Dome. The list of additional events, besides film premieres, includes Academy member and public film screenings, traveling shows, concerts, performances, cultural programming, spoken word productions, classes, video and press events, and film festivals. Each of these will attract anywhere from 100 to 1,325 attendees.

These “special events” are intended to “Provide for revenue-generating events that support sustainable Museum operations….” Not surprisingly, AMPAS places no limit on the number of special events per year nor does the DEIR indicate the maximum number of special events that the project could potentially accommodate on an annual basis. That could top 300 per year – especially given their desire for revenue.

From the blare of rooftop movie screenings to the glare of digital signs that violate the Miracle Mile Community Design Overlay, to the onslaught of traffic and nightly events, the MMRA has concluded that the Academy Museum doesn’t fit the Miracle Mile. With all due respect, it should go back to where it came from: Hollywood. That’s where it was originally supposed to be. And that’s where tourists expect to find it.

For additional information:

Academy Museum Draft Environmental Impact Report

Miracle Mile Residential Association – Comments on the Academy Museum DEIR

Tom Brohard and Associates – MMRA Commissioned Traffic Focused Review of the Academy Museum DEIR

Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight – Comments on the Academy Museum DEIR

Carthay Circle Neighborhood Association – Comments on the Academy Museum DEIR

Los Angeles Times [Feb. 28, 2014]: Some Feel Cheated by Change in Film Academy’s Hollywood Museum Plans

“Nix Pix Museum” Says MMRA

~ Editor

A message from James O’Sullivan, MMRA President

The Academy Museum Draft Environmental Impact Report [DEIR] is the final chapter in a sad tale of incompetence and betrayal. Ultimately, it is a perfect example of the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

We got our first look at the Academy Museum project in May 2013. It was a 104-page study that raised a few eyebrows, but that’s not out of the ordinary for a very large project. Then, on August 28, 2014, an almost 7000-page DEIR was dropped into our lap and we realized we were in the middle of a four-alarm fire. Aside from the shock at the size of the DEIR, our worst fears were confirmed: The Academy Museum is a full-tilt special event center masquerading as a museum – Nokia/L.A. Live in the Miracle Mile.

We were never supposed to be in this position. If Museum Associates (dbaLos Angeles County Museum of Art) had done what they promised when they bought the former May Company property in 1994, the landmark building would have been completely restored and now would be the home of:

  • Up to 20,000 square feet of additional gallery space for LACMA’s collection of prints, drawings, and photographs, providing enhanced accessibility and use by students, scholars, and the public.
  • The Boone Children’s Gallery with workshops, a video and new-media center, and other programs for children, young people, and families.
  • Curatorial and administrative offices.
  • Public amenities including a new restaurant and retail space.
  • An underground garage with 1000 parking spaces to replace the 1200-space May Company parking structure that was demolished – and ended up being the Pritzker garage with only 517 parking spaces.

But instead of restoring and readapting the May Company, they built the Resnick Pavilion, BCAM, and ARCO Plaza – piling on debt by issuing construction bonds to the tune of $383 million. And then…

…In August 2011, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded LACMA’s bond rating and Museum Associates found themselves dog-paddling in the deep end of a financial mess of their own making. They needed an infusion of cash to stay afloat. Four months later, in October 2011, Museum Associates abandoned their promise to renovate the May Company for LACMA’s purposes and announced they had leased it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences [AMPAS] for an Academy Museum.

It was a shotgun wedding. AMPAS had flown too close to the sun, too. They had gone on a spending spree acquiring property at the top of the market to build a museum in Hollywood. Then the real estate market collapsed. But they still had a tidy dowry so the terms of this arranged marriage were that AMPAS would pay Museum Associates $36 million up front for a 110-year lease. That’s right, the 300,000 square-foot May Company and the 2.2 acres it sits on for $896.64 per day. It was fire sale, but Museum Associates was desperate for a quick fix to balance their books. In their haste, they conveniently forgot old promises.

In 2005 the residents of the Miracle Mile agreed to give up Ogden Drive (a public street connecting Wilshire Boulevard to 6th St.) allowing the original LACMA campus to be unified with the May Company parcel. In exchange, the May Company would be restored and readapted for LACMA’s uses. We lost a street and a great shortcut to 6th, but it seemed like a win-win proposition: May Company rescued, new gallery space for LACMA.

But then, Museum Associates eloped with AMPAS and now what do we get? A third of the original May Company will be demolished to make way for a giant sphere that looks like it rolled here from Disney World in Orlando; a million visitors a year with no new on-site parking; gridlock; traffic and parking intrusions to our neighborhoods; a digital sign district; super graphics; searchlights; celebrity premieres on Fairfax Avenue; paparazzi; screaming fans; long lines of limos; midnight screenings; concerts; and numerous special events. And will most of these functions be open to the public? Not likely.

He who has the gold rules. And that is why the City will grant all the variances and approvals requested for this project. It’s a done deal. AMPAS has spent over $1 million lobbying City Hall according to the most recent public records. For that kind of money, the City will turn a blind eye to the disastrous impact the Academy Museum will have on the community. A pair of ruby slippers and a major special events center are being plunked down in one the most notoriously congested areas in town – while all the politicians gather to sing a rousing chorus of “We’d Like to Welcome You to Munchkin Land.”

Of course, the politicians don’t want to make Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg mad. They want invitations to the groundbreaking. Talk about a photo op! But what will be missing from that picture is how Museum Associates betrayed the residents of the Miracle Mile and the surrounding communities when they climbed into bed with the Academy Museum.

[Ruby Slippers photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.]

LACMA: The Sky’s the Limit • Commentary by Greg Goldin

~ Editor

[Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.]

 

LACMA: The Sky’s the Limit

Commentary by Greg Goldin

[Editor’s note: Last month, LACMA Director Michael Govan announced a proposal to build what he hopes will be a Frank Gehry designed skyscraper on Wilshire, across from the museum’s campus. This project would serve as a sort of exclamation point to LACMA’s plan to bridge Wilshire with a new museum designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.]

It may be another decade or so before the Purple Line extension is complete, and riders emerge from the subway stop at Orange Grove and Wilshire, but the oncoming train is already changing the landscape at the west end of the Miracle Mile. If the money can be found, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will inflate a glass kidney bean off the backside of the former May Co. building and LACMA’s oil-slick-inspired $650 million-and-counting blob will ooze its way out of Hancock Park to bridge Wilshire and occupy their Spaulding parking lot. Just added to complete the troika of architectural razzle-dazzle could be the city’s tallest skyscraper, rising above the Wilshire/Orange Grove subway portal.

The hotel and condominium tower, presumably designed by Frank Gehry, would also have LACMA galleries, with a new architecture and design museum, as well as Gehry’s own archives. LACMA head Michael Govan told the Los Angeles Times, “I’m jealous that New York has a Gehry tower [left] and we don’t. My dream is some beautiful piece of architecture with an architecture and design museum at the base, which would add to Museum Row.”  Never mind that much of Museum Row is being decimated in no small part owing to LACMA’s maneuvering the subway portal onto the very block where buildings housing the A+D Architecture and Design museum and two other private art galleries must now be demolished to make way for subway construction.

LACMA owns approximately one-quarter of the 350-foot frontage on the south side of Wilshire between Orange Grove and Ogden, and hopes to forge a development deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority [Metro], Millennium Partners, and landowner Alan Sieroty before the subway construction site is reconfigured as yet another relentlessly dull Transit Oriented Development.

The LACMA chieftain’s instincts may be right – nobody wants another badly-designed building above another badly-designed subway portal – but Govan’s not taking any chances by trying to sell architecture solely on its own merits. Instead, he put a politically correct spin on the proposal. Once Metro opens the block for development, he said, “We know that density is the key to urban living and to the maximization of mass transit — and key to the environment. And so for all the right reasons, this is the right place” for a high-rise.

Thus, Govan shrewdly positions his “dream” as a civic virtue. No one believes this more than LACMA itself, which, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, would become a major real estate developer. The reassuring urban planning rhetoric is meant to neutralize any opposition by making naysayers into nabobs opposed to leveraging a multi-billion investment in public transportation.

While no one doubts that some kind of building will rise once Metro pulls its construction trailers and tunnel boring machinery off the site, LACMA’s ambition is as naked as it is vainglorious. A Frank Gehry skyscraper, looming directly across the street from LACMA’s main galleries, would be, like Trajan’s Column in Rome [right], a triumphal commemoration of the museum’s self-conceived importance not just in the surrounding neighborhood or city – but in the global marketplace of art.

By adding Gehry to the list of Pritzker Prize winning names on the museum’s all-star roster (Renzo Piano and Peter Zumthor being the other two), the museum will have clothed itself in the raiment of “great buildings.”  Who, indeed, will ever again question the eminent stature of a cultural institution that once made the mistake of building an unfashionably dated and decidedly Hollywood version of the Kennedy Center and dared to call it a landmark destination.

The William Pereira designed LACMA campus, circa 1965.

This, indeed, is an essay into the ways in which the rich and powerful need to express the glories of so much accumulated money and power. Culture is the playground of the moneyed classes – whose wallets, and egos, are the ripe targets of the monument builders. What better way to supply a secular crown than with a building, by a world-renown architect, which bears your name?Nothing new, actually, is happening here with this proposed skyscraper.  From infancy LACMA has regarded itself as not only separate, but also above the status it retains as a publicly funded and owned art institution.  Embossed in the public record is the dirty secret that when the County Museum of Art spun itself off from its parent, the Natural History Museum, the new museum’s board of trustees first aim was to leave Exposition Park for the greener (as in, the color of money) environs of the Miracle Mile, then quaintly situated on the Westside – which nowadays, along with the money, has moved much further west.

When County Supervisor John Anson Ford offered the newly separated art museum a downtown plot of land – speculation is that the site was atop Bunker Hill, where the Catholic Cathedral now sits – LACMA’s board rejected the plan. “[I]t was recognized…that the location…would not attract the enthusiasm of potential donors from the west side.”

This quote, from the board minutes of January 21, 1958, was the sort of blunt comment made by civic leaders before the present era of milquetoast public relations statements. The museum’s leaders could not fathom leaving Exposition Park – and its surrounding black ghetto – only to be thrust into a downtown neighborhood populated by the city’s poor and elderly and black and Native American citizens. Westside money was hardly going to flow toward a location redolent of the city’s intractable underclass.

And, so, the museum spent several years lobbying G. Allan Hancock [right], the wealthy oilman who’d given the county the park that bears his name and contains the La Brea Tar Pits. Repeatedly, they tried to convince him to cede a piece of the 23 acres for their art museum, although it had been Hancock’s express wish to build a “fossil museum” dedicated to displaying the park’s unique Ice Age finds. In 1959, Hancock finally relented, agreeing to give the art museum 7 acres, and no more. The moment the plans for the new museum were unveiled – the William Pereira designed complex that is now destined to be demolished – LACMA began its long effort to aggrandize pieces of the park.

Time and again, LACMA sought to nibble away at the park that Hancock deemed should be permanently set aside for public enjoyment and scientific exploration. In the late-1960s, an attempt by the museum to expand further into Hancock Park met with a global protest. From Kenya, Louis Leakey, the world’s most famous paleoanthropologist and archaeologist, urged the museum to halt its plan, saying that no one would consider building atop a site where the first evidence of mankind was discovered, so why would they build atop the largest outcropping of Ice Age life anywhere on the face of the Earth? That effort flopped, but 20 years later the Bruce Goff designed Pavilion for Japanese Art was completed, taking another bite out of the park.

By then memories had faded, along with the county assurances that Hancock’s final wishes would never be violated. But LACMA never stopped eyeing the park. The first iteration of Zumthor’s modern design for a new museum covered – literally – several of the tar pits themselves. Only when the Natural History Museum, which administers Hancock Park, strenuously objected did LACMA retreat and come up with this latest version spanning Wilshire Boulevard.

In a sense, all of this is prologue, evidence that from the moment LACMA left Exposition Park to the present, an arrogant self-regard has been the chief characteristic of the museum’s stance. Now, in projecting its skyward dreams in the form of a Gehry tower, LACMA demonstrates all of its inherited insouciance, that blithe unconcern that comes with believing your own message and knowing that when you’ve got the money and the power to back it up the sky’s the limit – or maybe not. Actually, there are no height limits along Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile.

•••

Greg Goldin is the coauthor of Never Built Los Angeles and a curator at the A+D Museum. From 1999 to 2012, he was the architecture critic at Los Angeles Magazine. He is a longtime resident of the Miracle Mile and was featured in the MMRA Channel’s YouTube presentation: “The Miracle Mile in Three Tenses: Past, Present, and Future.”

For additional information:Los Angeles Times:
LACMA, Metro Discussing New Museum Tower on Wilshire Blvd.

•••

LACMA Wants to Bridge Wilshire

~ Editor

LACMA Wants to Bridge Wilshire with Revamped Museum Design

 

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has revised his “ink blot” design for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art [LACMA]. The original design received a great deal of criticism for overshadowing the La Brea Tar Pits. The Miracle Mile Residential Association objected to the earlier plan for encroaching on the tar pits and on valuable green space at Hancock Park.

The revised design avoids impinging on the tar pits by spanning Wilshire Boulevard to an anchoring pavilion located on a LACMA owned parking lot on the south side of Wilshire at Spaulding Avenue. This new design retains the original 400,000 square foot single-floor concept, which will be elevated 30-feet above street level.

Although bridging Wilshire would eliminate impact on the tar pits and help to reduce LACMA’s expansion into Hancock Park, the reconfigured plan raises a slew of new questions and concerns for the community.

A New York Times article on the revised design explained: “The museum receives about a third of its $70 million annual operating budget from Los Angeles County and uses county buildings on county land. The City of Los Angeles must approve construction within its limits and air rights above Wilshire Boulevard. Mayor Garcetti and county supervisors were among the first apprised of the design change, suggesting how much this project depends on the support of politicians and governmental agencies.”

The cost of the project is the subject of speculation. LACMA Director Michael Govan has maintained that the razing of the original museum campus and the construction of the new Zumthor structure – along with an endowment fund – would cost around $650 million. Many architects and experts estimate that the price tag would be closer to $1 billion. The cost of this new design – as well as environmental, seismic, and land use issues – will be analyzed in a feasibility study to be completed in spring 2015.

The New York Times article quotes critics of the design who feel “it would be too dark” — “monolithic” or “cavelike” — for a city as sunny as Los Angeles.” It is a criticism that Zumthor feels he has addressed by creating open-air courtyards in the center of the five glass cylinders that would support the main building.

But Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne feels that the revised plan is “perhaps misguided.” Having such a large structure bridging Wilshire had Hawthorne musing on “…what will it be like to walk beneath it? Will it feel like you’re trudging under a freeway overpass? How will the underside of the building be detailed and illuminated?”

It is too early for the MMRA to take an official position on LACMA’s proposal to bridge Wilshire with a new museum. MMRA Vice President Ken Hixon was interviewed on LACMA’s revised plan by The Architect’s Newspaper: “As we’ve painfully learned the devil is in the details. We’re not the design police. We want good design. We want good architecture. But it’s all about the connective tissue.” For now, he [Hixon] points out, such issues — like the museum’s relationship to local housing, available parking, preservation, street life, and, of course, construction—have yet to be specified. An Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the project is still far off.”

 

The dotted line shows the original shape of a planned LACMA building, jutting out over a tar pit. The solid line, which stretches over Wilshire Boulevard, is the revised design.

•••

What is your initial reaction to LACMA’s plan – is it a bridge to the future, a bridge over troubled water, or a bridge too far? Take our survey and let us know. We utilize SurveyMonkey for our polls; it is a secure and simple way to gather your input. Poll participants are completely anonymous and your honesty is welcomed. Just click on this link:

 

LACMA Bridge Over Wilshire Poll

Top and bottom graphics courtesy of Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner; middle graphic courtesy of LACMA.

For additional information:

New York Times:
A Contemporary Design Yields to the Demands of Prehistory

Los Angeles Times:
Peter Zumthor’s L.A.-LACMA vision in need of update

The Architect’s Newspaper:
For Neighbors, Jury Still Out on Zumthor’s New LACMA Plan

The Miracle Mile Residential Association:
Tar Pits Threatened by LACMA Expansion; MMRA Approves Motion to Preserve Green Space in Hancock Park