Taking stock in art
BERGAMOT STATION — Custom framer and part-time artist Barry Blum and his wife Ellen, owners of Art Concepts, have heard it a thousand times since they moved their business here 11 years ago.
“People always say when they come here that they never knew we existed,” Blum said of Bergamot Station’s growing art community. “I’ve talked to people who lived in Santa Monica for years and they don’t know where we are.”
The former abandoned trolley station on Michigan Avenue — sparse, with rusted cargo container-like structures seemingly left to rot — is now a campus-like art gallery complex with a trendy, old industrial feel, housing 30 art galleries, production houses, a cafe and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. It is one of the premier locations for contemporary art and a valuable asset in the city’s cultural arsenal.
But the problem is, many people don’t know about it.
Jessica Cusick, the city’s cultural affairs manager, is hoping that will change with the development of Santa Monica’s Cultural Arts Master Plan, a detailed assessment of the city’s cultural assets, from playhouses to public sculptures, coupled with an action plan that will seek to promote and expand the arts over the next five to 10 years.
“Santa Monica has the greatest number of people per capita who work in some sort of creative field, over any other city in the state... perhaps the country,” Cusick said. “We need to double check that, and that is one thing we will do as part of this cultural planning process.
“The last time the city did a cultural plan was in 1996, so it’s been a while since we updated our inventory.”
Last week, the City Council agreed to spend $90,000 to develop the master plan. Cultural Planning + Group, an art consulting firm, has been selected to lead the process. They have developed plans for Pasadena as well as San Antonio, where they instituted a plan that links economic development with the arts.
David Plettner of Cultural + Planning said they will begin soon and will look for the first six months to collect as much information from residents, artists and others in the community on what they would prefer to see developed, whether it be more public art, an expansion of the performing arts or simply more funding spent on cultural programs at local libraries.
“We don’t want to create a cultural plan based on expert advise,” Plettner said. “We will consult with artists and other players, but our job is really to learn as much as we can about the community, find their goals for the future and implement them.
“This is not rhetoric. I really mean that. The community has the steering wheel.”
The planning process should take a year, at which time Plettner and his colleagues will present a final product to the City Council for adoption.
Santa Monica is already far ahead of most cities when it comes to supporting the arts, experts said. It has developed a comprehensive arts education plan and a cultural plan. The council also sets aside money to purchase art to be hanged in public buildings. Every time a public improvement project is done, the council sets aside money for a sculpture or mural.
“There has been a trend to allow artists to become part of the design team, so that from the beginning to the end of the project there is an artist there helping with the conceptual design,” said Jan Williamson, a member of the city’s Arts Commission and co-executive director of the 18th Street Arts Center, a non-profit which provides subsidized work space for artists.
Williamson said the arts community in the city is in its “early 20s.”
“It’s young, but it’s been through those rough teenage years,” she said. “If you compare us to some place like Bakersfield, we’re way ahead. But compared to Manhattan (New York), there is plenty of work yet to be done.”
Cusick said City Hall spent a little more than $1 million funding the arts last year, including organizational support grants totaling $270,000, and community arts grants of about $70,000. City Hall also spent $12,000 on transporting students and other groups to art galleries and performances, and another $65,000 on the Santa Monica Festival.
“And then there are lots of other things we do and give support to,” Cusick said. “The council members will at times give money out of their discretionary fund for events.”
Cusick said some of the major cultural assets in the city include Bergamot, the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica Playhouse and others like it, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, not to mention the many murals, sculptures, design firms and post-production houses.
“I think all of those things represent a starting point and now we will move forward from there in identifying what else the city has to offer,” she said.
Artist Michelle Danner of the Edgemar Center for the Arts said if one thing can come out of the cultural planning process it should be more money for programs, and to bring more exhibits such as Ashes and Snow, a photography exhibit in the Nomadic Museum near the pier, which is on display until the middle of May.
“To approve of something like (a cultural plan) is inspiring,” Danner said, “especially when the government is constantly cutting programs for the arts … Often, when people think of Santa Monica they think of the Third Street Promenade. We want to show them that there is so much more and hopefully with this (cultural plan) we can blow people away.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 21, 2006. Read the original PDF.