The curtain could come down on L.A. County’s long-running arts internship program this summer, after the Board of Supervisors, wary of an impending fiscal crunch, voted Tuesday to move consideration of the program’s fate into upcoming budget deliberations unless money can be found to support it in the county’s civic art program.

Because of the short timetable for placing interns in summer arts jobs, supporters say that moving the program into budget talks for next fiscal year would effectively kill it.

Supervisors asked the Chief Executive Officer to report back next week on the possibility of using money to fund this year’s internships from the county’s Civic Art Program, which allocates 1% of the budget of new capital projects for the installation of art in and around them.

The CEO had recommended that the board adopt a stripped-down version of the program that would have put 75 college undergrads to work this summer. The program’s funding–$500,000 last year–was to have been cut in half, with concessions and contributions required from participating arts organizations.

But coming up with $250,000 from county reserves was too much for the board majority in the current economic climate.

“It’s going to be a very tough year for us,” board chair Gloria Molina said. “We’re going to be facing some unbelievable challenges.”

She, like other supervisors, praised the internship program. But she suggested that the arts commission and the organizations that employ arts interns needed to do more to tap into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare funding to fill their positions this summer.

Molina said the TANF recipients include single mothers getting back into the work force, with children depending on their paychecks. “They might not be the bright young college interns,” Molina said. “They are needy families…who need some help.”

She said the TANF program has created 4,566 temporary subsidized jobs in the private and public sector–more than 1,100 of them in Los Angeles County workforce, from the parks department to the Registrar-Recorder.

“I do hope that the arts community will step up and take advantage of this wonderful program,” Molina said.

Searching for compromise, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky briefly suggested that the county put up $125,000 for this summer’s program, with another $125,000 coming from TANF. Then Supervisor Don Knabe offered a motion to investigate using funding from the civic arts program, and, if that proves impossible, including the program in the overall budget debate. That motion passed 3-2, with Supervisors Yaroslavsky and Mark Ridley-Thomas voting against it.

In its 10 years of existence, more than 1,100 college undergrads have taken part in the summer arts internship program. Many of the participants are pursuing studies they hope will lead to careers in the arts. Some end up being hired by the organizations for which they interned.

In the Hall of Administration lobby after the vote, supporters of the internship program, many wearing red-and-white stickers reading “Art Feeds LA,” said they were disappointed and puzzled.

“It’s a little bit head-scratching,” said Cynthia Campoy-Brophy of The HeArt Project, which provides arts education for teens in continuation high schools. “We know there’s a budget crisis, but this is such a win-win project that leverages such great benefits for the entire community.”

Danielle Brazell, executive director of the nonprofit organization Arts for L.A., which mobilized former and potential interns to speak out in favor of the program, said floating the notion of using TANF for arts internships “is really positioning apples and oranges.” The CEO report to the board had said that the TANF option was not an ideal fit for the arts internship program because of limitations it placed on which students could take part, and complications involving their compensation.

Immediately after the vote, Laura Zucker, executive director of the County Arts Commission, said she needed more time to reflect on the board’s decision before commenting. “OK, to be continued,” she told the group in the lobby.

Reached later, she said, “I think that we need to weigh the options that the board put forward.”

Posted 3/2/10

Posted 2/25/10

Here’s what Lisa Dring got out of her arts internship at Circle X Theatre last summer: The chance to produce a reading of a work called “punkplay.” Some grant-writing experience. An associate producer’s credit on the one-man show “Violators Will Be Violated.”

Here’s what else she got: a job.

Dring was one of more than 120 paid interns who worked in Los Angeles arts and cultural institutions last summer, part of a long-running county program that has been targeted for closure due to budget constraints.

Now it looks as if the program—cut from this year’s budget—could get a one-year reprieve.

Under a plan being presented to the Board of Supervisors on March 2, a stripped-down version of the program would put 75 college undergrads to work this summer. The program’s funding would be cut in half—to $250,000, transferred from county reserves—and concessions and contributions would be required from participating arts organizations. The interns would be paid $3,500 for 10 weeks of fulltime work.

“It’s a good thing, and it’s important for the economy right now,” said Arts Commission executive director Laura Zucker. “It’s jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs…It’s saying ‘We’re not going to stop thinking about the future.’ The creative economy is at the center of Los Angeles’ economy.”

Arts for L.A., a nonprofit arts advocacy organization, is asking former interns and other supporters to write letters and attend Tuesday’s meeting to show their backing for the program.

“It was absolutely amazing. I cannot advocate enough for the program,” said Dring, 22, a recent USC grad who is now on staff at Circle X Theatre as communications director/development associate. She said that she was able to plunge into significant work—“I didn’t get anybody coffee or anything”—almost from the very start of the internship. “I got to do everything.”

“It really helps, no matter what profession someone is going into, to really see firsthand what it takes to create art in this town,” said Circle X’s artistic director, Tim Wright, who has been the company’s intern supervisor for the past 10 years. “I can’t say enough how much the L.A. County arts internship program has meant to us…I’d hate to see it go away.”

“We’ve had an incredible crop of really talented young people,” added Amina Sanchez, associate director of the program department at the Skirball Cultural Center. “They’ve enabled us to present our major summer programs. We can’t do without our interns.”

Laura Katz, a UCLA grad and an intern at the Skirball last summer, worked on its free Sunset Concerts series. She called it “a really great way to get a real work experience,” since it was a fulltime, paid position. Katz, who hopes one day to work as a film music supervisor, said she also enjoyed having contact with world musicians like Issa Bagayogo, from Mali, when they performed at the Skirball.

At Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar, operations director Trini Rodriguez said it was a dream come true when Stacy Valdez became an intern in the nonprofit’s bookstore last summer. Here was someone who loved books, was in touch with the community and could work with software programs to create business analysis and inventory management reports. “We just had the best fit,” Rodriguez said—such a good fit that when a staff position came open, they offered the job to Valdez. “That’s a good thing—a very good thing actually,” said Valdez, 20, who in addition to working at the bookstore is a student at Mission College.

Zucker said that many of the program’s participants, like Dring and Valdez, stay involved with the arts institutions in some capacity after their internships are up. “A few,” she said, “have become the executive directors over time.”

A Chief Executive Office report recommending restoration of this summer’s program noted that the Arts Commission had previously explored whether it could tap into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare funding to keep the program afloat. It found too many limitations on student eligibility, and complications involving compensation, to make that a feasible option. The report said that the long-term objective should be for the Arts Commission to work with local colleges to create an internship-for-credit program.

Posted 2/25/10

The Civic Park, part of the stalled Grand Avenue Project, would be built on county land running from the Music Center on Grand Avenue to City Hall on Spring Street. The $56 million project will be built on land leased by the county to the developer, The Related Companies. As part of the original agreement between the two parties, Related pre-paid some of the leasehold rent on the condition that the funds would be used to build the park and not for any other purposes. Once the park is finished, the county will have the option to purchase the property back for $1.

The project “will remake an often overlooked public space into a spectacular community gathering space that will provide an iconic park for Los Angeles,” according to a Chief Executive Office letter to supervisors asking for authorization to move ahead.

Models of the planned park depict a sweeping expanse of trees and lawns, along with plaza and terrace spaces, a dramatic fountain and a striking view toward Los Angeles’ equally iconic 1928 City Hall.

“This could be the jewel for all downtown,” Russell Brown, president of the Downtown L.A. Neighborhood Council, told the board during public comments before the vote.

The board voted 4-1 to move ahead with the park. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich objected, citing concerns about delays in the project and reservations about the county’s agreement with Related.

With their vote, the supervisors authorized CEO William T Fujioka to sign a “lease lease-back” document and other agreements with developers, and to begin discussions on programming, operations and maintenance of the park with the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County.

Construction is expected to take two years, concluding in the summer of 2012.

The park will have four distinct areas: fountain plaza, performance lawn, community terrace and event lawn.

The historic Arthur J. Will Memorial fountain will be restored, and, if funds permit, “multi-cultural botanic gardens” will be added in the community terrace area to showcase plants from more than 100 “biozones” around the globe—each representing a culture present in modern day Los Angeles.

The park also will include a children’s garden and an event staging area that can accommodate community markets.

“Programming for small to large events and festivals is a crucial cornerstone of the planning of the park,” the CEO’s letter said. It noted that the park must support a range of “formal” uses such as concerts, as well as informal activities like strolling, reading and picnicking.

The developer aims to turn the steep grade of the four-block site into an asset, using “generous amphitheater steps and planted terracing” to create ADA-accessible pedestrian ramps and seating spaces.

The project will require demolition and re-engineering of ramps into the County Mall garage from Grand Avenue, relocating ramps into the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, shifting the placement of flags now located in the Court of Flags, and demolishing a surface parking lot.

Civic Center coffee aficionados, take note: the project site will be largely off-limits during construction, except for emergencies, facility maintenance and “access to Starbucks.” The Starbucks stand eventually will be demolished and the cafe relocated to a new, one-story building on the fountain plaza level, along with ATM facilities, public restrooms and park support offices.

Posted 2/16/10

Break out the Ray-Bans. Los Angeles County’s lifeguard towers are about to undergo a Technicolor summer explosion.

From May to September, county lifeguard towers from Palos Verdes to Venice to Malibu will bloom with bright images of golden fish, blue flowers and psychedelic patterns of green, yellow, purple and pink.

The public art display, “Summer of Color – Lifeguard Towers of Los Angeles,” is the brainchild of Bernie and Ed Massey, who run the non-profit arts and education group Portraits of Hope.

The artists applying the colorful acrylics: thousands of L.A. area children and adults from schools, shelters, hospitals, after-school programs and Scout groups. On a recent morning, young students from Palisades Elementary School pitched in, painting bright colors on some of the 1,800 pre-cut plastic panels that will be fastened to the towers this spring.

About 150 of the iconic towers will get the makeover. The project may be the most eye-catching display to hit the sand since “Baywatch.” But it’s not just a decorative addition to the beaches, which are visited by 45 million people annually. As part of the program, which is funded with private donations, students will also get an education in civic issues and problem-solving. There’s a broader social objective, too.

“We want people to recognize the power of collaboration,” says Bernie Massey. “Seeing all of the towers transformed will become a great unifying symbol for people all over Los Angeles County.”

Launched in 1995, Portraits of Hope started by wrapping the oil well on Olympic Boulevard near Beverly Hills High School with bright panels. Since then, they’ve brightened up New York City taxicabs with their trademark vibrantly colored graphics, as well as New Orleans schools, NASCAR racers, and even a blimp.

The Masseys are partnering on the project with L.A. County’s Beaches & Harbors Department, which donated temporary studio space in Marina del Rey, and the Lifeguard Division of the county Fire Department. The lifeguards had only one major demand.

No red paint.

That’s the color of the lifeguards’ signature jackets and swimsuits—and for safety’s sake, not a great color for a beachfront art installation.

If you’d like to help apply the rainbow of other colors the project will be using, drop Portraits of Hope an e-mail.

Posted 2-16-10

Hundreds of thousands of people have attended Los Angeles County’s free Holiday Celebration over the past 50 years. But for only a select few has it been a command performance.

Just ask Janice and James Hahn.

The children of the late, legendary Supervisor Kenneth Hahn—who created the celebration—always knew what they’d be doing when December 24 rolled around.

“We’d all go down to the Music Center,” says Janice, now 57 and a Los Angeles city councilwoman. “And—I confirmed this with my mother—I would get a new holiday dress every year for this occasion.”

Janice says her biggest memory was when her dad allowed her junior high glee club to perform one year. It was a tough gig to land. The 2nd District supervisor would turn impresario for those early concerts, acting as emcee, overseeing just about every aspect of the performances and serving as all-around gatekeeper. Hahn served as county supervisor from 1952 to 1992, and his musical micromanaging is now part of his considerable legend.

“My dad and his chief of staff were the talent scouts in those days,” Janice says. “They decided who sang and what they sang.”

Musical groups clamored to take the stage, especially when the program moved from the Sports Arena, where it began in 1959, to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1964. But in the early days, Supervisor Hahn needed to hustle to line up talent for what was then called “The Christmas Music Program.”

And he wasn’t above putting the squeeze on family.

“At first, they didn’t have enough participants so they brought in my uncle George, who was an organist. He loved playing the Sports Arena organ in the gaps” between acts, recalls James, who was 9 at the time of the first concert and went on to become mayor of Los Angeles from 2001-2005. “We actually needed him because otherwise we would have had dead air.”

These days, James, who was appointed to the bench last year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is hearing cases involving foster children at the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court in Monterey Park. He describes it as “a court unlike any other court” and says the holiday season adds a certain poignancy to what are already difficult times for the children who appear before him.

And when James reflects on the Holiday Celebration started by his dad, it’s his own family recollections that resonate most.

“The memorable times for us were more family moments: When I brought my children down there for the first time, when my sister brought her children for the first time, and then her grandchildren.”

Even now, it’s a hard habit to shake.

“My mother and I, wherever we may be, make a point of tuning in to it, either on radio or public TV,” Janice says.

She thinks the concert has changed for the better over time. “It’s really so much more diverse now, and more inclusive of so many more expressions of holiday times.”

As for all the Twittering, Facebooking and YouTubing that will accompany this year’s festivities, well, let’s just say her father, who died in 1997, preferred to do things old-school.

“I think he probably would have said word of mouth was what carried that program year after year after year.”

It’s been a while since the younger Hahns came out for the free show. “I haven’t been there in a few years,” James Hahn says, “but this might be a good year to go back.”

As for Janice Hahn, she’ll be spending the holidays in Colorado with her grandchildren and will have to miss the celebration. But she’s glad it’s there. As an elected official, she knows how hard it is to keep such programs afloat in challenging economic times. This year, the supervisors had to come up with an extra $100,000 to keep the program, which has a total budget of $900,000, going at its current 6-hour running time. She thanks them for doing so, and for honoring the original vision behind the extravaganza.

“It’s still today part of what he wanted. My father came from a very poor family. He lived in poverty most of his life before he became an elected official. I think that he always felt that this magnificent public building, no matter what your status was, should be free to the public one day a year…He really believed in that one day a year: making people feel like they were special, with no cares in the world, to act like the wealthy–free parking, big luxurious chairs…listening to a glee club perform Jingle Bells.”

“Particularly in times like these, people really appreciate this gift.”

Kenneth Hahn with his granddaughter Karina Natalie Hahn

One of the many choirs that has performed over the years at the county's Holiday Celebration

Supervisor Hahn, with one of many choirs, was legendary for micro-managing the selection of performers at the Holiday Celebration

Here’s an insider’s guide to making the most of Los Angeles’ ultimate choir-palooza in its golden anniversary year. (Did we mention that it was free?)

The operatic repertoire is full of passion, suspense and dizzying turns of fortune—kind of like what’s been going on at LA Opera, which is fending off financial uncertainty even as it gears up for its most ambitious year ever.

Los Angeles County stepped onto center stage in the hero’s role on Tuesday, guaranteeing a $14 million loan to keep the opera afloat.

“We are absolutely thrilled that the County of Los Angeles has recognized the important and prestigious role that a world-class opera company plays in our community,” said Plácido Domingo, LA Opera’s general director. The board’s support, he said, “will enable us to continue as a prominent and vital element in the cultural life of Los Angeles and in furthering this region’s stature as an international cultural center.”

The cash infusion will keep the opera going through June, 2012, when the company expects to repay the loan from more than $30 million in pledges made since June by donors responding to the opera’s urgent fundraising plea.

“They’re passionate and they put their money where their mouth is,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said of opera fans. As a result, the new financing arrangement carries “very minimal risk,” Yaroslavsky said, adding that the alternative simply is unacceptable. “This is one of our major tenants at the Music Center,” he said. “If they go, it sets off a chain reaction of events that could topple the Music Center.”

The financial crisis, coming at a crucial time in the 25-year history of the LA Opera, is not unique to this company, said Music Center CEO Stephen D. Rountree, who during the past year has also been serving as LA Opera’s chief financial officer. “Opera companies are always pressed but [LA Opera] had their operations in order until the recession hit,” Rountree said. “Ticket sales are down across the country.”

For example, the Washington National Opera, which also has Domingo as general director, recently announced cutbacks in staff and programming.

The LA Opera also has been scrambling to dig out of its deficit, cutting staff by 20% and administrative costs by 22%, Chief Executive Officer William Fujioka said in his letter to the board. “It also reduced the number of productions in its 2008-2009 season from 9 to 6, and gave fewer performances—48, instead of 67.”

Fujioka said the new loan arrangement “does not put the county in jeopardy whatsoever.” The county will issue bonds that will be purchased by a single financial institution, Banc of America, Leasing & Capital, LLC, which will then provide the money to LA Opera. The county itself is not putting up any cash but is guaranteeing the loan in the unlikely event that the opera’s anticipated donations fall through—something opera and county officials say as highly unlikely.

Placido Domingo conducting the LA Opera

The opera company, whose musical director is James Conlon, is gearing up for performances in June of the Ring Cycle, the four operas that comprise Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” The operatic masterwork is at the heart of the 10-week Ring Festival LA, which begins next April and is expected to draw international attention with its broad range of musical performances, art exhibits and seminars.

And on that point, art is poised to triumph over money.

Gustavo Dudamel leads young musicians at the Bowl/Mathew Imaging

It’s a weeknight, just before Halloween. Paloma Udovic, 28, is heading into her fourth straight hour of teaching here at the Expo Center near USC, where her organization, the Harmony Project, is part of a unique collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the city Department of Recreation and Parks. She’s upbeat and gently welcoming as the viola section files in: Cathy Gomez, Claudia Tinajero, and the Pinto-Quintanilla sisters, Amy, 10, and Arian, 13. The Pinto-Quintanillas are a force to be reckoned with around here—a third sister, 16-year-old Adria, also plays cello in the orchestra.

While the Pinto-Quintanilla family trifecta is notable (“I think that’s the record,” Udovic says), it’s hardly unusual.

There’s an infectious energy that seems to pull everybody—brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins—into the vortex of Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), an ambitious and growing program modeled on Venezuela’s legendary El Sistema, whose most famous alum just happens to be that cool new guy on the podium at the Phil.

YOLA isn’t an orchestra per se. Gretchen Nielsen, the Phil’s director of educational initiatives, describes it as a movement to establish youth orchestras in under-served communities. “When you do something this intensively,” she says, “you’re building a sense of community, a sense of family. These kids don’t have easy lives. A lot of them are taking care of siblings, or come from broken homes…If they’re late for class, you ask what’s going on, but you don’t scold.”

It all started when a Los Angeles Philharmonic delegation visited Venezuela to observe El Sistema in 2007—back when the notion of landing Dudamel as the orchestra’s music director was still under wraps. “That trip kind of opened everyone’s eyes,” Nielsen says.

“What happened in Venezuela had to happen here.”

The YOLA EXPO Center Youth Orchestra program is the first such venture, but it won’t be the last. With 200 students ranging in age from seven-year-olds to teenagers now playing in two orchestras at Expo, the Phil is planning to add another site next year, on its way to yet another by 2013, serving a total of 1,000 students.

The Expo Center kids were a focal point of the huge free concert at the Hollywood Bowl that inaugurated the Dudamel Era in Los Angeles.

More than a month later, everybody who was there is still saying the words “October Third” like somebody might say “The Fourth of July”—a holiday, a triumph, a date that will live in ecstasy.

“I thought it was going to be a really big thing. It was even bigger than that, especially when Jack Black came on,” says 13-year-old Arian Pinto-Quintanilla, a student at Palms Middle School in West L.A. “We stayed for the fireworks. Everything was, like, movie-ish.”

As for Dudamel, “he treated us as if we were his actual orchestra.”

Which, in a sense, they now are.

At the rehearsal for the Hollywood Bowl concert, Dudamel, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt inscribed with “YOLA” and “Expo Center Youth Orchestra,” is a natural, encouraging and funny as he leads the students through an arrangement of Beethoven’s Ode To Joy.

He cracks them up. “Violins, I can see you play but it’s so boooooring.” He asks the cellists if they’re a bunch of 85-year-olds. He makes them sing. He precedes a downbeat by counting in Spanish: “Uno, dos, tres, y….”

He’s helping them see their youth as an outrageous power source, something that can help them play—and be—bigger. “What is the size of our instrument?” he asks the cello section. “Is it like this?” he says, indicating tiny. “Or like THIS?”—arms spread wide.

Ode to joy, indeed.

Star-studded concerts at the Hollywood Bowl are one thing. The hard slog of day-in, day-out practicing is another.

Expo Center orchestra students have three nights of group sectional lessons every week and a full orchestra rehearsal on Saturdays. Some, like the Pinto-Quintanilla girls, play in more than one orchestra.

But, amazingly to anyone who ever resisted piano lessons or been pushed into patent leather shoes and paraded into a symphony hall against their will, the YOLA/El Sistema method actually seems…fun.

“It’s very different from the teaching I’ve done where the parents are forcing them,” Udovic says. Here, at the Expo Center, “it’s the other way around.”

Arian, Claudia, Amy and Cathy practice with their teacher, Paloma Udovic.

For the kids, part of the appeal has to be the pure play of it all. Before the viola sectional that the Pinto-Quintanillas take part in, the violins have their turn.

A little girl in a sparkling white-and-silver costume floats around the room playing “Invisible String Master,” poking backs, correcting wrist positions, delicately but insistently making her compatriots look more like, well, real violinists.

The informal mood continues into the viola sectional.

“Can we make sure our booties are scooted all the way to the front of the seat?” Udovic urges.

Udovic asks whether the scale they just played was in tune. One of the girls admits she wasn’t listening.

“Listen,” Udovic tells the girls, imparting life wisdom as well as musical advice. “It’s not just in music. It’s in lots of other things. It’s a good thing to do.”

“I view this as a social program, with music as the mode,” says Udovic, 28, a Northwestern grad and self-described “Suzuki baby” who picked up her first violin at age 3. She’s part of a cadre of more than a dozen “teaching artists” on the program staff, working musicians with a gift for instructing young people and an interest in social progress.

Mirna Quintanilla, a medical assistant in Beverly Hills, is the mother of Adria, Arian and Amy—her “three A’s,” she says. Those letters aren’t just initials: “That’s what I tell them for the grades. Only A’s.”

After getting divorced, Quintanilla says, “my priority was to keep them busy.” There were art classes and music, lots of it. They haven’t looked back. “We are busy seven days a week,” she says. Even though they log a lot of miles from their home near the Expo Center (the program aims to serve kids living within a 5-mile radius), you won’t hear her complaining.

“I don’t mind,” she says. “My priority now is my three daughters.”

At left, Amy Pinto-Quintanilla, 10, practices the viola. Her sister, 13-year-old Arian Pinto-Quintanilla, right, plays viola, too. Both also play the violin.

The Expo Center program is free, as are the instruments. “To pay for these classes, we could not afford it,” Quintanilla says. And the results: priceless—like having your daughters perform at the Bowl, under the direction of Dudamel. “I invited all my friends,” Quintanilla says. It wasn’t until the next day that the accomplishment actually sunk in for her daughters: “We played in the Hollywood Bowl.”

Beyond the thrill of such moments, the program derives much of its power from its commitment to spreading its mission and methods around the world.

Dudamel’s mentor, El Sistema founder Dr. José Antonio Abreu, won a 2009 TED award and is using the $100,000 prize to endow the Abreu Fellows Program at the New England Conservatory of Music. Abreu fellows will perform internships at El Sistema-inspired “nucleos” across the U.S.; some will be at Expo Center this spring.

Also in the works: a program developed with USC’s Musical Education Department to begin bringing early childhood music classes to the 3- to 5-year-olds in the Expo Center preschool starting in January.

The Colburn School, across from Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, also is getting in on the act with the Colburn Mentorship Program, in which 20 conservatory students will be paired with 20 Expo Center students for one-on-one lessons.

Abreu, in town for the Dudamel debut concerts, recently dropped by the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration to pay a visit to County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina, along with Philharmonic President and CEO Deborah Borda.

They talked about Abreu’s now-famous observation that children who hold hold instruments can’t hold guns, and recalled the advice he gave Borda when they talked about importing El Sistema to L.A. “Think big but start small.”

The advice now: “Grow without fear.”

But to Tiffany Gallindo, it’s huge. It means she can keep her job on the front lines of the Ryman Arts program, working to bring a free visual arts education and college guidance to gifted Los Angeles high school students, many of them low-income.

It means that Samuel Jang gets to continue his work as production manager for the Southwest Chamber Music Society, including helping to put together ambitious upcoming tours to Mexico and Vietnam.

And it means that Kenton J. Haleem of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum can bring back a position recently put on “hiatus”—a program manager in the organization’s media arts training program for at-risk kids.

All three organizations recently were singled out for grants of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The cash infusion comes thanks to the efforts of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, which together were able to preserve 21 positions in 16 arts organizations.

“The arts are a huge economic engine for our whole region,” says Laura Zucker, executive director of the County Arts Commission. “This is an important employer,” Zucker says, noting that the 300-plus arts organizations that are funded by the county employ more than 21,000 people.

And the importance of the organizations can be measured in more than just paychecks.

At Ryman Arts, a small nonprofit using donated studio space on the USC campus, they’re feeling the economic pains of students and recent alumni first-hand.

“Their calls and needs have been more urgent: Can we point them to more scholarship opportunities because they can’t take on more college loans? Can we arrange for them to stay after class to draw, because the electricity has been turned off at their apartment?” the organization said in its application for the grant. “Can we write another recommendation letter for a college application because they don’t have an art teacher at school?”

On the front lines is Gallindo, handling the phones, shepherding student applications, working to bring the aspiring artists and their work into the fold.

“I actually went to an arts high school,” says Gallindo, a dancer who attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and had been working at an insurance company before joining Ryman. “It changed my life and it opened doors. To be a part of something that is providing that opportunity to kids today is very rewarding.” (View recent student artwork on Ryman’s Flickr site).

Ryman artwork by Century City student

At the Southwest Chamber Music Society, there’s a similar mixture of excitement about upcoming projects—and concern about how to carry out an increasingly ambitious mission in an economic downturn.

On the plus side, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department is sponsoring Southwest as it travels later this year to represent the U.S. at the Guadalajara FIL Arts Festival. Even more complex is next year’s State Department-sponsored Ascending Dragon Music Festival and Cultural Exchange, which will include music festivals, educational programs and administrative workshops in the U.S. and Vietnam.

“This is what we’re calling a transformative year for Southwest Chamber Music,” says Executive Director Jan Karlin, “and we needed to bring in someone to manage it.”

Vietnam, from Southwest Chamber Music

But because Southwest is “seeing a substantial decrease in most of our funding sources,” the federal stimulus funds were needed to pay Jang’s salary, the organization said in its application. He will not only to help manage the upcoming tours but also holds considerable responsibilities for Southwest’s musical and educational outreach throughout Los Angeles County.

Jang, whose background is in financial systems analysis and who served on Southwest’s board as treasurer before joining its staff, says he is relishing the change in perspective that comes with his new position.

“Having come from the financial services world—one of the casualties of this recession—it’s a really eye-opening opportunity for me,” he says. Working with “staff, musicians and audiences puts a more human face on this organization. Just last week, I coordinated the start of our music educational program at Keppel and Pasadena high schools.”

Across town, the Hollywood Entertainment Museum has been trying to help a new generation write its own kind of history, as 75 high school students—many of them dropouts, on probation, or otherwise “at risk”—learn the ropes of entertainment industry trades. The museum’s educational arm, the Hollywood Media Arts Academy, which is a collaboration with L.A. County Office of Education and the Probation Department, combines core academics with elective classes, including animation, dance, film production and acting.

The federal grant “can’t come soon enough,” says Haleem, the organization’s director of education and development, who says the group’s program manager had been placed on “somewhat of a hiatus.” Now that there’s money to rehire, he says, “I’m hoping she’s still available.”

“Things are tough right now,” he says. “I think that is the story of the nonprofits right now.”

Students taking part in filmmaking course sponsored by the Hollywood Entertainment Museum

To view a full list of the county and city grants, click here.

Already, 60,000 square feet of gallery space has been added with the opening in 2008 of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano. What’s more, construction is now finished on an open-air pavilion and a concourse that connects the east and west sides of LACMA’s 20-acre mid-city campus.

Another hallmark of the transformation’s first phase: the installation of stunning public artworks, including Topanga Artist Chris Burden’s Urban Light, a neatly aligned collection of 202 vintage Los Angeles street lamps that has drawn crowds of locals and tourists alike.

All this was financed by $201 million in donations—a figure that LACMA officials say surpassed their fundraising goal by $51 million.

So now it’s on to phase two, which is well underway. The centerpiece this time is the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavillion, also designed by architect Renzo Piano. The Resnicks donated $55 million in funding and artwork to construct the new exhibition space, located just north of the BCAM.

The single-story pavilion, scheduled for completion in the summer of 2010, will feature a twenty-foot ceiling and no interior walls, creating a flexible floor plan that can accommodate any kind of exhibition.

Also included in this phase of construction will be the complete rehabilitation of LACMA West, the 300,000 square-foot former May Company department store, built in the late 1930s as a gateway to the historic Miracle Mile.

Since the earliest stages of planning, Supervisor Yaroslavsky has been closely involved with LACMA’s transformation, championing the decade-long project in philanthropic and government circles. He is widely considered to be the board’s most ardent advocate of the arts.

“LACMA’s expansion has been—and will continue to be—a boon for all of Los Angeles,” says the supervisor, whose district includes the museum. “Whether through its architecture, its collections, its outdoor sculptures or its stellar public programs, LACMA is creating a museum in a park that welcomes every resident of Los Angeles County and millions of visitors from throughout the world.”
For pictures and more information on LACMA’s transformation, click here.